The end of aviation as we know it?

ChasenSFO said:
So...before this thread gets locked...

I'm going to look at this from a buisness perspective, not looking at it the way I'd like to see it for the sake of my flying career. If we go back to the first post in this thread about why should we have 5 ERJs doing a flight that 2 MD-80s can do while carrying the same ammount of people, theres a good reason behind it. There are pretty much TWO types of travelers. Buisness travelers who travel at least once or twice a month, or more. Then there are leisure travelers who travel once or twice a year, maybe a little more or less. I'd say "Buisness travelers" account for at least 70-75% of the flying public each day, if not more. Meaning "Leisure travelers" account for only 25-30% of the people who step on a plane each day(other than maybe the holidays and spring/winter break). The two biggest differences between these groups? One picks flights to get from point A to point B most direct and at the most convienient time, the other picks flights that get them from point A to point B the cheapest, even if it means stopping in points C and D.

Here is an example. Right now Skywest has 5 daily CRJ-200/700 flights from SFO-BUR. Lets say every flight went out full, the 4 CRJ-200s would carry 200 pax while the daily CR7 would carry 66, thats 266 pax. United's A319s carry 118 people or so. Lets say they switch the flight to 2 daily A319s, one in the morning and one in the evening, to carry 236 passangers a day. What we would probably see happen is both flights take a huge hit and maybe go out half empty everyday. United may now sell 110 seats a day when they were selling 266 with the RJs. Why? The buisness travelers now have only 2 ways to get to Burbank, take it or leave it. If that schedual works for them on that day, great, if it doesn't, they're going to SNA or LAX on Southwest instead or driving to OAK or SJC and getting to BUR that way. The leisure travelers don't care, they can still make it to SFO from MFR, RNO, SMF, ect in time to catch the flight, whats a longer layover if its cheaper than flying MFR-LAX nonstop on Horizion? But as I said before, the leisure travelers aren't (usually) what fills a plane. And reducing the frequency from 5 flights to 2, regardless of the size of the aircraft, isn't going to appeal to MOST flyers.

And when you DO have 5 flights a day, you probably won't fill 5 A319s on SFO-BUR, but an RJ will fill up. Infact, United used to have 5 or 6 flights a day on the route with 737s back in the "Shuttle by United" days, and they figured this out. It makes sense and it makes money.

Like I said, I'm not supporting regionals taking all the mainline routes, I'm just shedding some light as to why this is not an ideal solution in most cases.
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I agree with what you say. It's now apparent that the vast majority of regional pilots will have to make the regionals a permanent stay. The few mainline openings in the future will be highly competitive and the majority of those will go to military pilots.

I see mainlines reducing domestic service even more in the future, so when the "big retirements" hit in a few years, rather than hire, they will just outsource more flying to the regionals.
 
poser765 said:
In no way am I trying to diminish military pilots...BUT, I would imagine landing on a carrier is just another skill that can be accomplished with the appropriate training. If there was a carrier landing endorsement and facilities to train for it just as many people would have it as have a tailwheel endorsement.
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Yeah right....
try doing it after flying a 6 hour flight in bad guy territory with the back of the boat moving up and down and at night.

Whatever dude.
 
poser765 said:
You guys are probably right. I think my point is that it IS a trained skill. A hard skill, yes, but still one that could be acquired through training. It is not required to have some mythical jedi like trait that makes you something more than human but less than god.
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Just like competitive diving. People aren't born with that skill, they have to be trained to do it. Ergo, anyone can be a competitive diver with proper training.
 
I found this quote very telling.



The empirical evidence suggests that the theory was at least partially correct. The average yield (the average fare per passenger mile) for U.S. airlines in 1998 was 41% lower than its 1978 equivalent on a constant dollar basis,<SUP>3</SUP> at least partially validating the "guesstimate" made by the GAO more than two decades earlier. On the other hand, the industry remains highly concentrated. The five-carrier share of domestic revenues that caused concern in 1978 at 66% is up to 72% today -- and on the cusp of dramatically increasing.



Sounds like the creation of competition (the main reason for any form of de-regulation) didn't really pan out. We still have the majority of the revenues going to the small percentage of "legacy airlines" while average yield per passenger is down. Since airlines still have to maintain all of the same strict safety regs...they cut cost through employee overhead.
 
I've tried to stay out of this political discussion... I don't think any minds will be changed. But some random thoughts.
1. Deregulation was not done to help the airlines industry. It was done to help the consumer by reducing the cost of airfares. It has been a success.
Airline "deregulation" does not mean the airlines are not regulated by the government at all. Anyone involved for more than a day in a 135/121 operation can tell you this.
Deregulation has given us more freedom. People have more choice in how to travel. Growing up in the 60s/70s airline travel was an extravagance and my family almost always had to travel by car. More on that later and the affect on safety.
2. Freedom is a good thing. Freedom to succeed and fail. Given the choice of a guaranteed income but government regulation or a chance of failing, but freedom- I'll take the latter. After all, if we are regulated by the government, who gets to decide who succeeds and who fails? The government. Look what happened during regulation. If you wanted to form an airline, you could not just go out and do so; after all, the government controlled the routes and could step in and tell you your airline could not fly certain routes. Often this was done due to politics. I was sad at the passing of Pan Am as much as the next person, but Juan Trippe was very deft at getting the government to shut down his competition.
3. Airline safety has improved since deregulation. In addition lower airline fares are good for the overall mortality rate as airline flying is much safer than driving. Anything that increases the cost of airline flying actually increases the overall mortality rate.
An example. There use to be a push to require infant seats on airliners (I think it may actually be something the NTSB is still pushing). It has largely been dropped because requiring infant seats on airliners would actually INCREASE the overall infant mortality rate. How is it possible, you ask, for a safety initiative to increase the mortality rate? Unintended consequences.
Requiring infant seats in airliners would increase the cost of airline tickets. Increasing the cost of airline tickets would force some people to drive rather than fly. Driving is more dangerous than flying, so forcing more people into driving increases their risks of dying in a fatal car crash. It was found that the lower infant mortality rate from airline crashes where infant seats would save a child was more than offset by the increased mortality rate from more children being killed in car crashes.
This is something to ponder when considering changes in airline regulations- the actual cost of such regulations and the unintended consequences. This is why I'm also not so sure that requiring FOs to have an ATP will increase airline safety or overall safety. I'm not saying it's a bad idea or a good idea, just an idea that has not been thought through, studied, and compared to other possible solutions.
I am not saying we should not make improvements to airline safety. Just that we should ponder the improvements and make sure they will actually increase safety and not just satisfy political expedience.
4. Final thought on re-regulation. I am currently looking at my job being destroyed by the government. I'm an independent CFI. Currently there are a bunch of bureaucrats meeting in Copenhagen to discuss ways to control climate change and the EPA has already stepped in domestically. Of course when these bureaucrats discuss changes, they mean changes for us, not them. Over 150 private jets and 2000 limousines are being used for the transportation of these hypocrites to this conference while they stuff their pie wholes with mounds of caviar. The carbon footprint of this conference is greater than the annual footprint of many countries, to include Morocco. Does anyone really want people like this regulating their lives? I sure don't.
So, who is John Galt?
 
futurepilot1 said:
Sounds like the creation of competition (the main reason for any form of de-regulation) didn't really pan out. We still have the majority of the revenues going to the small percentage of "legacy airlines" while average yield per passenger is down. Since airlines still have to maintain all of the same strict safety regs...they cut cost through employee overhead.
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An airline is something that absolutely depends on an economy of scale. You will always have a small number dominating the business. Same reason you can't have 2000 competing railroads. Having a large route network makes an airline more competitive, hence, they need to be big.

Yield per passenger is down primarily due to competition. SWA, JetBlue, Allegient, etc are free to compete on almost any domestic route. In the past, this was not possible, as the CAB tended to give monopolies on routes and keep down competition.
 
How would you guys feel if there was one gasoline provider? Say, Exxon. Gasoline is vital to our nations economy, much more so than an airline is.
 
You guys ONLY want re-regulation in a hope of desperation that the government will step in and mandate some sort of livable wage at the regionals.
 
A-300F4-622R said:
You guys ONLY want re-regulation in a hope of desperation that the government will step in and mandate some sort of livable wage at the regionals.
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I'm in favor of some reregulation, but that would not be my reason.
 
Doug Taylor said:
I'm in favor of some reregulation, but that would not be my reason.
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Then what WOULD be the reason for wanting a government bureaucrat to run your life, decide how much you can be paid, decide if your company should succeed or fail and decrease the safety of the population?
 
poser765 said:
You guys are probably right. I think my point is that it IS a trained skill. A hard skill, yes, but still one that could be acquired through training. It is not required to have some mythical jedi like trait that makes you something more than human but less than god.
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Sure it is required. Heck, look at me for example :)

I'm not saying military pilots aren't talented, i'm just trying to imply that have different skill sets that don't really translate over to a civilian counterpart. I get kind of irked when people imply that military pilots are somehow a finer product than a civilian pilot. Hell, I remember reading an article shortly after the hudson landing that was talking about how the decline in greatness of the airlines was due to the hiring of more civilian pilots than former military.
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Not everything in military flying can be trained, since not everyone can do it. It's not the training, you also have to "have it" or not, you have to be better than the average person, or not. And whether anyone likes it or not, that's why not everyone.....even with training.....can pass the training needed for tactical flying. Some don't have the hands, the ability to think quickly, the ability to be cool under severe stress. The tactical flying starts with the proper person coming into it, and then the training is applied. It doesn't necessarily work the other way around.

I do find it mildly amusing that those who aren't military aviators and haven't been through the program, can speak with authority on how easy it would appear to be and how its "just a matter of a little training." :banghead:
 
A-300F4-622R said:
You guys ONLY want re-regulation in a hope of desperation that the government will step in and mandate some sort of livable wage at the regionals.
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for someone who wanted to come here for a more civil environment...someone one who wanted to "join" us it sure seems like it's always "you guys" or "those guys" I have yet to see you try to be a part of "us guys" (Boris excluded:laff:)

It's always you vs. us...I don't get it.
 
Okie_Pilot said:
Well let's all just hope and pray that he doesn't sign the Copenhagen Treaty.
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I agree but we think he is any different than 40+ before him...why???

Here is the process, if the polls show the people want him to sign it, guess what it gets signed....and I'll bet 10 bucks he can convince the sheeple that its in their best interests...after he gets his favors from the lobbies of course. Oh wait, you mean nothings "CHANGED"...say it aint so
 
Blackhawk said:
Then what WOULD be the reason for wanting a government bureaucrat to run your life, decide how much you can be paid, decide if your company should succeed or fail and decrease the safety of the population?
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That was NOT the world prior to deregulation.

Please read a little about the CAB.
 
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