DADISGARYK

Good luck to you and the rest of your fellow employees.

Alpha Golf

D'oh! You have to tell me everything.

In the immortal words of teh great Emily Leteller... "Never mind..."

haddon90

i'm a UA loyalists. i've never flown DH. but i feel bad for all of their employees. i do hope they can get jobs elsewhere, because DH's timing of this is bad, not to mention their business plan was flawed to say it nicely. but i thought it was good that they tried to expand dulles into being one of the busiest airports in the US. even though i won't be sad to see them go, i feel for the employees and appreciate the competiveness they brought to iad.

fwfdan

And why, pray tell, do you? People losing their jobs, less competition, higher fares in small markets (how many times do you fly IAD-GSO?).

I for one will not only miss them, I am holding out hope that a miracle will happen.....

FlyI was victim to many things - fuel, timing, equipment and people will argue what killed them, but I believe that UA would not have been any better for them... Lets see how AWAC makes it....

flyin´ruddl

No, I´m not. I´m happy for UA being able to strenghten its position. That´s it.

F.R.

curbcrusher

What a schmuck.

mdc57

Well said, curbcrusher. ^

chicaloca453

As a flyer in a small market, I can tell you that UA will strengthen its position by tripling fares. It's very unfortunate, especially for small town flyers. To the person who will now choose RIC, you're fortunate you have B6. I live near TYS (Knoxville), and we have nothing. Our fares will triple by summer. It happened the same way when DL ran Air Tran out of here by matching and even beating their low fares. Then, Air Tran is gone, and travelers here got it stuck to us -- that is until Fly I came along.

I feel badly for the employees. They wanted this to work so badly, and they obviously loved their jobs a lot. It showed in their attitudes and job performances. I feel for them as they are now forced to seek employment elsewhere in a very unstable market.

I also wish to thank the good folks at Fly I for giving small market flyers some hope at least for a little while. You did good. And in a more stable market, you could have been the next WN or B6.

Good luck and God bless.

BobH

According to an article in the 12/30/05 Detroit Free Press, they need a loan or an investor by the first week of 2006, or they're done.

Bob H

haddon90

i lived in knoxville for 5 years before flyi arrived. sure, fares dropped to iad (not that much), but to fly out to california it was still less than $400. and from a small market city, less than $400 isn't bad. flights to national (no flyi) were sometimes less than to dulles. so the "UA will triple the fare" rant isn't entirely true.

vatraveler

We'll see. I am watching the GSO fares, where I travel often to visit family. The UAL fares were crazy, and I really mean crazy, before FLYi.

chicaloca453

Your experience was years ago. Add in fuel shortages today, and you're looking at much higher fares that the airlines can back up. The lowest all in right now to LAX is @ $425. Contrast that to BNA which has 2 LCC's, and you get a $200 difference.

And where they really get you is on the last minute stuff. With Fly-I in the market, you could get reasonable last minute fares. But when they're gone, expect $1000 + on most long-haul flights.

Right now, a last minute fare to LGA from TYS is in the $300 ballpark. That will baloon up to $750+ without Fly-I. UA may not exactly triple the fares, but they will far exceed what they are now, which is simply a shame.

Seat2C

So everyone's upset about FLYI going out of business. That's understandable. And the reason why they're upset about FLYI going out of business is that prices will increase.
Did you folks take any Econ classes? The reason why FLYI went out of business is that they sold their product (airline tickets) for below production costs. FLYI lost money on just about every ticket they sold. A LOT of money. Take a look at previous quarterly statements.
Jul-Sep 05: -$47.7 mil
Apr-Jun 05: - $98.5 mil
Jan-Mar 05: -$103.7 mil
Oct-Dec 04:P -$82.7 mil

Even during the busiest quarter of the year, Jul-Sep, FLYI lost money hand over fist. Look folks, you were given a gift with the low FLYI ticket prices. Investors (not very bright investors) subsidized your tickets every time that you flew. Somewhere to the tune of, on average, around $100 per ticket. That's why fares were so low. FLYI simply ran out of investors stupid enough to dump their money into a company that sold their product below the cost of production.
I read of people angry that their ticket prices will increase. Big, bad JetBlue and United will raise ticket prices to a point where they're able to stay in business, and that's not right. It's every consumer's right to be able to fly for less than Greyhound/Amtrak charges. After all, flying gets you there sooner, so airlines should have to pay a penalty (lower ticket prices) for that passenger inconvenience.

So for those of you who complain about ticket prices increasing, please let us know what your profession is, so I can compute a 'fair' price for your services.
Doctor, routine office visit for being sick: $5 is fair; how hard is it to diagnose a routine cold and write out a prescription?
Lawyer, writing someone's will: $10 is fair; heck, they've got templates for that stuff.
Realtor, commission on selling a house: $200 is fair; all you've got to do is find an interested buyer. The bulk of the paperwork is done by the title company.
Hotel rooms should be less than $10/night; how expensive is it to replace the soap/shampoo and wash the sheets?
Everyone get the point?

I bought an airline ticket for my mother-in-law to visit us in Boca Ration, FL from Newark, NJ. Nonstop roundtrip was less than $130 (just above $150 after taxes); the cheapest form of transportation to get here. That breaks down to less than 7 cents per seat mile, below Continental's production cost of more than 8 cents per seat mile (which assumes 100% of the seats full). And we're talking a peak demand period, Christmas time. It was a nice gift from Continental, but entirely unexpected.

I wonder how many people would have flown FLYI if they charged an additional $100/ticket (their production cost).

mid

Seat2C makes a good point. I, for one, was eternally grateful that investors assumed the risk of DH and subsidized the cost of my plane tickets to BOS. Thank you thank you thank you.

And therein lies the rub: DH had to do SOMETHING to attract attention to them. Low prices was the easiest way to do that. As it turns out, people (like me) bought tickets FAR into the future at prices that were incredibly low. I'm a big believer in hedging and since I knew I needed flights for the next 4 months, I contracted for those flights at prices that were artifically low.

NOW, if FlyI had been smarter, they would have hedged their fuel costs as far out as they could afford to. Doing this, they would have been able to predict what a seat mile would have costed them when they were expected to deliver it. As it stood, they had to deliver a seat mile for MUCH more than they had sold it for.

And that's the risk.

If fuel costs had dropped from where they were, DH might have been able to bootstrap themselves into becoming a real airline. They would have sold something in the future which would have dropped in price by the time they were expected to deliver it.

vatraveler

Yeah, and $900 for flights that are about 40 minutes each way also makes sense, right?