AOPA will never get another dime from me

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Let's all knock off the personal jabs then, and get down to discussion. There's actually some good info in this thread once the wheat is separated from the tons of chaff here.
 
Velocipede said:
Love all the Velo hate speak. Who is talking about user fees? You GA types are.

I'm not suggesting user fees to limit GA, though I AM in favor of them.

Perhaps just restricting GA from Class B airspace and airports served by airlines would do the same thing. The LGB midair is an outstanding example of why GA should be kept away from airline approach corridors.

You all remember San Diego and Cerritos don't you?
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No hate speak from me towards you at all. Just responding to the root of the AOPA/ALPA issue.

Now, as far as misrepresentations, I certainly didn't mean to...but we have all read in threads where you seemed to like the idea of fewer pilots coming in, and certainly your bias of military vs. civilian is well known.

As far as he "fat cats" comments - you have said that in user fee arguments, I simply rebutted it here.
 
Velocipede said:
Love all the Velo hate speak. Who is talking about user fees? You GA types are.

I'm not suggesting user fees to limit GA, though I AM in favor of them.

Perhaps just restricting GA from Class B airspace and airports served by airlines would do the same thing. The LGB midair is an outstanding example of why GA should be kept away from airline approach corridors.

You all remember San Diego and Cerritos don't you?
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I remember both, and in the SAN case there were two things that stood out to me:

1. SAN was on RW27 at the time, which PSA 182 was entering north downwind for, for the visual. The Cessna was missed off the practice ILS to RW9 and being vectored opposite direction (traffic-wise) on a northeasterly heading towards the north downwind, before being accidently run over by the PSA, who was attempting to search for him after having him pointed out by ATC (possible they saw the wrong Cessna, but were confused on that in the CVR transcript). So to me, on this point, the non-standard opposite direction practice approach placed the Cessna where it was, thus being somewhat contributory.

2. IIRC, SAN was a TRSA back then. Ever since, it has become a TCA. With that expansion, would you say it's become safer? Or do you think the directly-proportional increase in congestion/traffic has negated the safety that the implementation of more-restrictive airspace should have brought with it?
 
Like I said, lets all knock off the cheap shots and left handed jabs, and get to the meat of the subject here.

Man, this place resembles a WWF wrestling ring sometimes with a tag team match going on......where guy diverts the referees attention, while another does illegal moves behind his back.
 
Velo, pardon me, I know I didn't word that well.

Actually I may have some issues with some of the posts that you brought up. I will deal with those issues, as I always try to do, behind the scenes and as I feel appropriate. That's all that you will hear on the topic, thus "I got nothing" is my public response.

You caught my attention with your note about "Velo hate speak", so I asked. You answered. Thanks. Good night.

Moving on...
 
WacoFan said:
Airlines seem to be loathe to raise ticket prices. Cut expenses to the bone, but for God sake, don't charge people more. That needs to change.
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I don't see why they don't do it.

I was on five flights last weekend. Know how many empty seats there were on them?

Zero.

And not just on one flight, my friends, but on all five of them combined.

If you ain't got the balls to say, you know what, every single seat on the plane is full, I'm going to raise fares now, when will you?

Oh, sure, it's bad to raise prices during a recession.

Yeah?

Where are they going to go? Another carrier that's just as booked?

And if the fares were raised and you did lose some business but had a few empty seats, so what? That would mean that, ohmigawd, if there was a problem with a flight, you could actually put someone on another one. You wouldn't have a situation where missing a flight would mean that someone would not be able to get where they needed to until a day later than he was supposed to.
 
Alright folks-

Knock it off, stay the hell on topic or go talk about cats in the lavatory.

I don't have any patience for a 'whoah is me', 'suicide by mod', 'I'll go down for the team' attitude from any of the combatants in the thread.

Don't be chumps, folks. Be professionals.
 
tonyw said:
I don't see why they don't do it.

I was on five flights last weekend. Know how many empty seats there were on them?

Zero.

And not just on one flight, my friends, but on all five of them combined.

If you ain't got the balls to say, you know what, every single seat on the plane is full, I'm going to raise fares now, when will you?

Oh, sure, it's bad to raise prices during a recession.

Yeah?

Where are they going to go? Another carrier that's just as booked?
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What I don't get is that every time an airline DOES raise fares there's big press coverage about it....

Who is watching fares that closely? When I want a ticket I go find the best price for one, or a compromise between my schedule and prices and buy it. It seems like they could raise fares discretely by the time anyone noticed it'd be like "Yeah, welcome to 2 months ago." ;)
 
Velocipede said:
Here you go. Insults, misrepresentations, and denigrations. But, I guess as long as its directed at someone who is not "approved" its all good.
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You don't think you insult, misrepresent, or denigrate people that don't agree with you?

While I personally think the way you represent yourself on here comes across brash, rude, abrasive and derogatory towards anyone that doesn't agree with you 100%, you don't deserve to be personally insulted. One should strive to exemplify the behavior that they don't receive from you.

You come on here and insult people due to their: age, training background, company they work for, company they aspire to work for, general thoughts and ideas not in line with your own.

I hope you, and a couple others, realize that while there are times you are 100% correct, your manner in presentation makes it difficult for even those who would agree with you to argue your idea with you.
 
tonyw said:
I don't see why they don't do it.

I was on five flights last weekend. Know how many empty seats there were on them?

Zero.

And not just on one flight, my friends, but on all five of them combined.

If you ain't got the balls to say, you know what, every single seat on the plane is full, I'm going to raise fares now, when will you?

Oh, sure, it's bad to raise prices during a recession.

Yeah?

Where are they going to go? Another carrier that's just as booked?

And if the fares were raised and you did lose some business but had a few empty seats, so what? That would mean that, ohmigawd, if there was a problem with a flight, you could actually put someone on another one. You wouldn't have a situation where missing a flight would mean that someone would not be able to get where they needed to until a day later than he was supposed to.
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This has been a mystery to me for years Tony, and I have never been able to figure this out. If I am running a business and am booked solid all the time, I'm going to raise prices.
 
WacoFan said:
This has been a mystery to me for years Tony, and I have never been able to figure this out. If I am running a business and am booked solid all the time, I'm going to raise prices.
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The airlines have this down to a science, as much as we'd like to believe that they don't have a clue.

Fare optimisation is a huge deal for them, and they have experts studying what happens with every fare increase or decrease. Keep in mind that there can be multiple fares paid for each and every flight that departs. Pax A probably paid a different price than Pax B in the seat next to them. This is because the airline very carefully studies how to maximize their income, and adjust rates (daily?) to do so.

In the example above I can easily see how the airline may have decided that the optimum scenario is to price to have a fully sold out plane. If they lowered prices by 0.01 they might attract a few more pax, but then they'd have to add a flight which would add cost greater than the increased revenue. Raising prices by 0.01 might mean some pax will fly on another carrier instead.

It's a delicate balancing act that the airlines play. Believe me, if they thought that they could make more money by raising fares they would do so in a New York minute. The problem is that there is still way more capacity in the total system (all airlines) than there is demand, so prices are driven to rock bottom by the competition between them all.

You can easily see the difference by looking at prices where someone is traveling from a small market to a hub. As an example it used to be much more expensive for me to fly from GRR to DFW on American non-stop, then to fly another carrier with an aircraft change. I can fly Delta, Northwest, United, whomever, and get to DFW by connecting in their respective hub and all of those airlines would be within spitting distance of each other on price, while American charged much more for the convenience of the non-stop flight. (I presume that the minor differences between the other airlines were because of variations of their current and anticipated pax loads, and they would constantly jockey their prices to best maximize revenue.) American didn't have competition for a non-stop so could (and did) charge more.

We might not like airline management, but they aren't stupid.
 
SteveC said:
The airlines have this down to a science, as much as we'd like to believe that they don't have a clue.

Fare optimisation is a huge deal for them, and they have experts studying what happens with every fare increase or decrease. Keep in mind that there can be multiple fares paid for each and every flight that departs. Pax A probably paid a different price than Pax B in the seat next to them. This is because the airline very carefully studies how to maximize their income, and adjust rates (daily?) to do so.

In the example above I can easily see how the airline may have decided that the optimum scenario is to price to have a fully sold out plane. If they lowered prices by 0.01 they might attract a few more pax, but then they'd have to add a flight which would add cost greater than the increased revenue. Raising prices by 0.01 might mean some pax will fly on another carrier instead.

It's a delicate balancing act that the airlines play. Believe me, if they thought that they could make more money by raising fares they would do so in a New York minute. The problem is that there is still way more capacity in the total system (all airlines) than there is demand, so prices are driven to rock bottom by the competition between them all.

You can easily see the difference by looking at prices where someone is traveling from a small market to a hub. As an example it used to be much more expensive for me to fly from GRR to DFW on American non-stop, then to fly another carrier with an aircraft change. I can fly Delta, Northwest, United, whomever, and get to DFW by connecting in their respective hub and all of those airlines would be within spitting distance of each other on price, while American charged much more for the convenience of the non-stop flight. (I presume that the minor differences between the other airlines were because of variations of their current and anticipated pax loads, and they would constantly jockey their prices to best maximize revenue.) American didn't have competition for a non-stop so could (and did) charge more.

We might not like airline management, but they aren't stupid.
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Thanks for this - it was a fun read. Appreciate the insight.
 
I don't pay much attention to the Southwest Airlines blog anymore, but Bill Owen (Lead Planner) will sometime weigh-in with a good read about why the airline does-what-it-does in terms of cities and service.
 
SteveC said:
We might not like airline management, but they aren't stupid.
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Yes, now they just need to turn their crack team of statisticians and social scientists on to the thorny problem of "making a profit".

FWIW, I agree with your assessment and am just being glib.
 
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