Hacker News Reader

Comment by badcppdev | Hacker News Reader

You can tell demand is high because ticket prices are very high.

Airlines have opted and are opting to fly fewer planes with higher ticket prices. It's a price over volume optimisation that seems to be in fashion in many industry segments. [0]

I will note that some airlines have been affected very badly by issues with rebuilding staffing in ancillary services like luggage and airport security. That uncertainty I think leads to them being less ambitious with growth.

0 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/transcrip...

View on HN

The causes you propose may be true but don’t respond to “higher than never”. I’ll add to your note the not-totaly-solved risk of petroleum not being infinite and while the industry is not freaking out, it has started to questioning itself.

I can buy “prices are very hight” but how would you measure that ? Also did you took inflation into account in your estimation ? Flight “recovery” is largely due to Asian market booming, so prices may go up in the US while decreasing in the biggest market share.

You are absolutely correct. Demand exists but is it "higher than ever"? I don't know. I don't even know what units are used to describe demand. I don't even know enough economics to be able to tell you how you measure demand. For instance I would like to buy some long haul flights but will have to delay due to being outside my budget. Is that demand?

Regarding prices obviously you can adjust for inflation and affordability changes but all statements like that have to be accepted as only being valid/pertinent for certain time periods. I think in this context only a few people are interested in a comparison to the 1920s, 1960s, etc

Ticket prices are high because demand in the front of the plane is low. Economy class tickets have to go up a lot to make up for empty first and business seats.

I'm seeing higher coach prices on some routes that I know well than I could get (domestic) first class for in 2019... so that makes up for a LOT of empty first class seats...

They've gone up in the front cabin(s) as well. Sometimes quite a lot.

Ticket prices are high because we’re paying for the revenue loss during the pandemic, still. And that people are willing to pay the prices obviously.

(And a bit of “everyone else is raising prices” and greed, naturally)

And also because deregulation is far enough behind us that all the companies combined and can milk the resulting limited market competition. We can see this in prices (at least if you actually compare like with like, ie add on bag fees) are coming back up to pre-deregulation prices

That’s interesting insight.

Anecdote: I just took a 50 min flight on a budget carrier: £230. Didn’t even include a checked bag.

You can’t just compare costs between now and the past either because you get much less for your money now, pretty much just a seat on a very cramped bus.

I’m not old enough to have flown pre deregulation but I did fly in the heyday of EasyJet and Ryanair etc.

The flying experience is significantly more stressful and cramped than 10-20 years ago.

I have no problem paying £200-300 for a flight but I want good leg room, good staffing levels, good service in face of disruption etc. Even flying business class in Europe is hardly worth it as you’re still flying the low-cost airlines/subsidiaries, so you’re just paying for a tiny bit of extra legroom and luggage, and some crap lounge access if you’re lucky. And some short flights in Europe are absurdly priced (eg £816 Manchester to Amsterdam in June/July)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com