Especially when it's this brilliant:

Apparently there are too many planes and too many seats, but they can't raise prices despite all the planes and all the seats being full.

Yay for logic.

 

 

Makes perfect sense to me... domestic flights aren't very full, but international flights are. They can't use many domestic jets for international flights (they'll run out of gas and that makes for very unhappy passengers). So they have a buttload of empty domestic planes sitting on the tarmac.

 

Seems straightforward to me. . . they have to wait for the leases on the planes to expire. . . unless there's something I'm missing.

 

You haven't flown this summer, have you?

Domestic flights are running at very high load factors - typically 0.95 to 1.0 for popular flights and roughly 0.8-0.85 for all flights. It's never been close to that high before. International flights are quite a bit lower but still higher than they've ever been. The load factor at most major airports is also approaching 1.0 even on perfect weather days, so the slightest hiccup puts them well over 1.0.

The main reason for the high load factors is that the airlines have moved their bigger planes (757, 767, A330, etc) into international routes and replaced them with smaller planes (737, A320, E195, etc) for the domestic routes. For what it's worth, NY-London is only marginally further than NY-LA, and both routes are well within the range of small/medium airliners.

 

Cliff notes: The first part about excess capacity is total

 

Ah, I thought the statement itself was in question, not the facts supporting it. My bad.

Please, allow the bashing to continue

 

It's just a contradictory statement. I suppose you need some knowledge of the airline industry for it to (not) make sense.

 

I mean, it's a legitimate beef IF (and only if) a competitor is getting better margin per passenger/mile . . .

. . . but as WSB is pointing out, the numbers on this don't add up (but one would have to know the numbers to decipher it).

You're still #1 in my book Jefe!

 

Thanks.



The airlines have really done this to themselves. The shrinking of planes on domestic routes means they limit the number of tickets, particularly the last minute business tickets (where their profit comes from). And the way they price tickets hinders their ability to price them according to their actual costs.