Originally Posted by
Proudelitist
Norwegian has been flying to the US for a few years now. I took them from LAX to CPH a few years back and yes, it certainly illustrates just how low a lcc can get. They subcontract everything to cheap companies, including gate agents and cabin crew. The food is terrible enough to be poison. The service spotty. The crews are annoyed. All you get is from point A to point B, and I guess that's what you have to be prepared to put up with. Buy cheap, GET cheap.
As someone who can afford more, I have no problem parting with more money not to get what legacies offer, but to AVOID lcc service. My hope is that legacies will get more competitive to survive against the lcc's and drop their own prices, but the reality is that in order to do that, THEY have been dropping services and benefits in order to afford it. And this is the race to the bottom.
I am much the same in being willing to spend more but I do not want the mainline carriers to drop their prices. The formula is simple and never changes. Price minus cost equals profit. When you change one, you change them all. If you reduce price but not cost, then you reduce profit. There is no sense in doing that obviously. So if you reduce price you must reduce costs to maintain profit and that inevitably means you reduce service in "order to afford it" as you say.
The only other way to maintain profit without reducing costs is to increase sales but as the majority of travellers today focus only on price, the mainline carriers are not likely to be able to increase sales of seats as long as people keep booking the cheap seats on low cost carriers. A true 'Catch 22'.
I'd like to see mainline carriers increase the number of premium seats(what used to be a standard economy) per plane and I'll pay for one. But that's not likely to happen, it's the opposite that is more likely.