<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TomBascom:
Ticket prices are on a one way road -- and it isn't higher. The sooner the majors come to terms with that and rationalize their fare structures and start focusing on the value that customers expect in exchange for their money the sooner they'll become profitable. </font>
Right, and wrong.
Ticket prices
are going higher. For leisure travelers used to $200 trans-cons, that is. There won't be enough capacity left in 12 months' time to support those sorts of fares.
But at the same time, there's no way airlines can justify, or people will support, paying $2,000 for that trip in coach. The majors might like to think so, but with hateful policies towards their elites such as US is trying to introduce, is
anyone going to be able to justify flying them vs. WN or J6?
What I think we'll see instead will be a
compression of fare buckets, potentially into 3 or 4 instead of the 15+ we see now. Grandma and Grandpa will be paying $400 instead of $200 to fly SFO-MIA, while the last-minute traveler will pay $800 or $1,000 instead of $2,000 to fly the same route.
At least, that's what airlines will have to do if they hope to stay in business. Or they can follow US's route, and fly non-stop to Hell, with a short layover in Chap. 7.
Mook