Originally Posted by dittymau
It strikes me that most people must still maintain their emotional ties to the style of travel in the 90's, I miss those days too, but today the world and this industry is radically different.
What Delta is doing is something that happens every day at companies around the world, changing products and pricing to reflect the market demands. This is marketing, they are doing what is necessary to stay in business. As mentioned earlier, the other majors will ultimately have to also evolve to stay in business.
What I actually think this will do is moderate the pricing, and bring the ultra-low and the ultra-high pricing in to a reasonable window. From a business persepective, the way legacy carrier pricing was a lot like welfare, the business fare paying passengers were subsidizing the loss leader super saver fare paying passengers tickets. That model was broken and has to change.
Myself I often remember fondly the days of grand travel experiences, but today we have to deal with the reality that airlines can only respond to what the market demands are, low prices, mediocre service. I used to consider my travels, over 3 million miles over the last 10 years, to be a perk, now it is just a long, painful commute to work. After the first year of post 9/11, it finally sank in, this is the future, get used to it.
The emotional ties to the airlines need to fade, my friends. Travel now is just a comodity, like gas or groceries, you can go to Whole Foods and buy the $9.99 brie, or Wal-Mart for the 0.99 Velveeta. Or somewhere in between. that is where the industry is heading. That or re-regulation, I think.
Our problem is, too many Wal-Marts in retail, and too many Wal-Mart airlines... it is not that different from a business persepective.
Regards,
Not sure I get the "welfare" analogy. Nobody forces the airlines to make super-saver fares available, and nobody forces businesses to buy $2000 seats to "subsidize" the $150 seat.
I don't think it's a
problem. If anything, what Delta is doing is what we've all wanted all along. How many threads are there here that grouse about how unfair the legacy airline pricing structures are? Well, here we go: a more-fair structure from what I can tell. Southwest Fans will rave about how easy to understand their structure is. Looks like DL is moving a step closer to that.
Will the cost of a super-saver seat now creep upwards? We'll see what the market will bear...
As for the quality of service, I've had nearly perfect on-time performance over the past 2 years or so, compared to dreadful performance in the late 90's. Their safety record since 2001 has been perfect. (I'm talking major US carriers here.) The fact that we actually are sitting around grumbling about whether or not we get a snack onboard tells me that they must be doing the important things right.
When I think about all of the changes that have hit the airline industry over the past 30 years, one personal experience comes to mind: we once paid $550
in 1977 dollars per seat to go to Italy. At the time, we thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save enough money to go to Europe. I don't remember much about the flight itself, but I'm sure the food was great.
Now, Italy is a nice "long weekend" destination. $325 R/T MCI-MXP shows up every spring on AA, plus you earn almost enough miles for a free domestic ticket after you get home. But the onboard meal probably sucks...oh well, maybe I shouldn't go.
Will those opportunities for cheap Europe tickets go away? I don't know...I have MCI to about 10 different European cities listed on My Yahoo...today, nearly all of them can be had for about $400, after taxes, including the separate MCI-ORD ticket if necessary. And the
really good fares won't roll out for another 2-3 weeks. My guess is that changes to the high-end of the structure won't have much effect on demand for seats on the low end. Maybe some "fare creep" as the economy continues to grow, but not a disappearance overnight of opportunities to take sub-$500 R/T trips to Europe or sub-$250 trips in the US.