Originally Posted by hobarthoney
I am sure this has been debated on this thread before but I will say it again EK does get help from the Government (Royal Family). It may not be documented but it would be foolish to believe a carrier as good and modern as EK can constantly undercut the competition and have no help from their home town.
Do you have a source for this? All official sources that I have read, explicitly state that EK received no government favours. This is different from other benefits that it receives (such as low oil prices - but this is because oil is cheap in Dubai, not because EK is getting the easy way out.) I do not have connection with the top management at EK (sadly
) but I do know some people that work for them, and I have been reassured many times that nothing happens that it off the books. If this did happen, other countries would probably close their doors to EK, and they would have nowhere to fly to.
Originally Posted by bensyd
Yes, When I was in year 6(12 years old) i used to hire out my gameboy to people at my school for $1/game. Someone else started doing it for 80c/game, so I dropped my prices to 40c/game and sent them out of business. My success was my pricing strategy. But without Government subsidy (my parents) I would have never been able to afford the cost of fuel (batteries).
Airlines are quite different, in that they use price discrimintation. In your situation that would mean charging 80/c per game to the people that were willing to pay a max of 80/c per game, and chargin 245/c a game to people that were willing to pay. I find EK to be more expensive that most of its competitors especially from European cities.
Cheers