Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Remember the old gag about mailing yourself in a box to save money?
It seems that that notion is a thing of the past. So is driving. I've brought this comment, from a bona fide airline pilot, to the main page. He makes some very interesting points:
Driving is much more expensive. You can buy a round trip ticket from Boston to Los Angeles today for $238.¶ 7:43 PM
If you drove a magic car that got 35 mpg and needed no maintenance or insurance, and you used a magic credit card that let you pay only $2.50/gal for gas, and you didn't need to stop for sleep for the 90 hours and 6010 miles of the round trip, or need any food for the same period...
...it would still cost you $429.28 to drive.
You could pack yourself into a box and ship yourself as freight. The round trip would take 8 days. Assuming you were small and took only enough luggage to fit into a 200 lb. package, it would cost $792.46.
If 8 days in a box is undesireable, you could ship yourself as overnight freight. The round trip would then cost you $2041.60.
The passenger airline industry in this country is completely broken. Freight pilots are paid 3 to 4 times as much as passenger pilots, their companies are making record profits, and no one is asking them to take pay cuts.
Think about that.
Comments:
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I remember reading a few years back, that from 1920 or so through the (recent) present, the total net profits of airlines in all that time was... negative, a net loss.
Two problems:
1) Airlines are a sexy business, attracting new entrants even when they don't make business sense.
2) The high capital cost of airplanes, which earn nothing on empty seats, and are mobile and so competing with almost every other plane in the country. This will usually lead to pricing those seats at below average costs.
Two problems:
1) Airlines are a sexy business, attracting new entrants even when they don't make business sense.
2) The high capital cost of airplanes, which earn nothing on empty seats, and are mobile and so competing with almost every other plane in the country. This will usually lead to pricing those seats at below average costs.
Airlines are a sexy business, attracting new entrants even when they don't make business sense.
You could be writing about the restaurant industry.
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You could be writing about the restaurant industry.
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