Originally Posted by
GUWonder
I'm not the topic, and it's not your business how money gets deposited in my coffers. So you will have to keep praying to see how your off-topic question gets a response or doesn't beyond what I've already said.
That was an expected response. The financial metrics of your industry are likely much more monopolistic than the airline industry, where many startups have emerged since deregulation and few survive.
[QUOTE=GUWonder;31169059]It's the TATL-flying legacy majors -- more specifically, those granted governmental waivers and favors to collude -- that are undercutting the prices of Norwegian to such a large extent that it puts to shame your concept of Norwegian selling below costs. Wasn't it you that said that it's legacy majors that have higher costs than Norwegian? And yet it's the legacy majors that are undercutting Norwegian prices for September travel tickets for EU/Schengen-US roundtrip travel. Go figure.
[/QUOTE]
Pure fiction. Are you now suggesting that governments are part of this imagined cartel/conspiracy to price tickets at such 'high' levels? In reality, airline ticket prices have risen less than just about every other item one purchases. There's a reason why so many people travel today, and it's not because of high ticket prices.
And you're now claiming that legacies have lower prices than Norwegian for September? Pick a couple of city pairs. I looked (posted below) at it's just another made up statement by you.
ucdtim17 wasn't able to find anything close to Norwegian's fare for Paris-OAK (SFO area) in September. I tried to, and the only thing I could find was French Bee.
I pulled up a New York to London price on Kayak for September and the only airline that was lower than Norwegian was Aeroflot. None of the legacy majors.
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
Sodas may have been a nickle in your time, but they generally weren't that nominally cheap 20 years ago or even today when it comes to vending machine purchases or even purchases at say middle/junior high school sporting events. Given what you said above, I must say it seems like you are admitting that you are the 'I remember when sodas were a nickel and candy bars this big (both arms fully outstretched) were a dime" guy, while my mention here just covers the FT era.
Here's the bottom line in that analogy: you do not understand the input costs and grossly underestimate them in order to come up with your crazy thesis that most airlines are overcharging customers. It's quite the opposite, which is why so many airlines have gone out of business.
This cartel that you rail against is the result of decades of deregulation, where the airline industry lost so much money that the only way to achieve the current rational pricing was consolidation.
One can now fly from one coast to the other, round trip in first class, for less than the latest iPhone. Air travel is dirt cheap, no matter how often you say otherwise. The problem is that you do not understand how much it costs to fly an aircraft from point A to point B.