Originally Posted by
Antarius
They eat into margin. Pricing is largely set by the market. A European airline isn't going to be charging markedly more than what the competitor charges for an equivalent market.
Every time someone talks about costs just being passed along to their customers, I wonder if they've ever taken at least five minutes to learn about the most basic elements of the supply/demand curve. Sure, an increase in costs might push an airline to want to charge passengers more for the same flight, but customers get to choose what prices they'll accept as well, so unless demand is completely inelastic, they can't increase prices without reducing the number of tickets they'll be able to sell. The reality is that prices will probably increase somewhat, but some of it will come out of margins as well.
But we don't have to have this conversation on a theoretical basis. There's been actual studies of the topic, and the
most recent data from the EU [PDF] shows that the cost to airlines is something like 4 Euros per passenger. So even if the full cost were directly passed on to the passenger, it's way cheaper than the private insurance offerings that US airlines push, which often wouldn't cover the sort of disruption in the OP in any case.