Originally Posted by
sbjnyc
Originally Posted by
kebosabi
Flying solely in the US:
2. Everything is in the imperial system (gallons of fuel, miles to destination, pounds of luggage checked, Fahrenheit temperature of engine)
2. Again, not sure why this is a problem, unless you're NASA.
Or the
Gimli Glider fueling crew.
That said, I respectfully disagree with
kebosabi's premise here. All of those issues are significant and do have to be dealt with, but I highly doubt that they're the fundamental reason why running a global (or semi-global
) airline like AA is vastly more expensive than running a short-haul operation (whether it's purely domestic like WN or includes some short-haul international flights like JetBlue, RyanAir, easyJet, etc).
With a purely short haul operation, everything about the operation is much simpler:
- you don't have the enormous fuel costs of long haul flying
- you don't have the scheduling challenges of 8+ hour flights traversing 8 or more time zones (which can significantly limit aircraft utilisation -- time zones and distances essentially require planes to sit on the ground all day in South America, for example, an expense WN never has to incur)
- you're catering to a much wider range of customers (the "get me there for the lowest fare -- schedule isn't crucial" types, the last-minute travellers who fundamentally need to get there, as well as the true premium customers who are paying for and expect a much better product than a coach seat)
- and the list goes on.
One thing you didn't mention is that WN operates only 1 type of aircraft (at least that used to be the case not sure about now), reducing training and maintenance costs, but that doesn't have much to do with domestic vs international flights. Plus there is only 1 cabin.
Exactly. This does have a lot to do with short haul vs long haul. If there were significant money to be made flying east coast to Hawaii, the US-based long haul carriers would operate many trips on that route and have the same issues as they do with international long haul flights -- all of which outweigh the currency and Customs issues mentioned by
kebosabi, in my (uninformed) opinion.