star1

I realize this has been discussed before probably, but what do you think:

It seems to me that the generally low quality of service on domestic airlines vs. international carriers is a function of the number of passengers served. Domestic airlines serve perhaps an order of magnitude more passengers, and as an airline grows in capacity and service, it is natural for passengers to receive less attention and a lower level of service -- something which is evident in the increasing discontentment among travelers. (I want my elite status, otherwise I'll be treated like crap; I hate sitting in crowded seating next to screaming children or adults; I want to demand everything that's coming to me, etc.)

Unfortunately, price is the biggest determinant of this -- passengers want the lowest fare, and consequently get the lowest quality of service.

What if airlines sold fewer discount tickets, and expanded the quality of seating, service, etc. instead? Sure, it would cost more to travel, but I think passengers would be happier. Plus, a lot of needless (and sometimes frivolous) travel would be eliminated. (not to mention fuel consumption) You might not be able to visit the in-laws four times a year, or take three vacations, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to complain about it.

Of course, no airline would dare to try this, for fear of being run out of the market. But, do you think an airline's revenue would decrease very much if it tried this? (one of the carriers with an already fairly good hold on the market?)

pgupta011

I have often heard that US domestic carriers provide lower quality than international carriers, but in my limited experience this had not been borne out. I have taken a few intra-Europe flights on KLM - I think that KLM has a nice reputation. The first class seats were virtually identical to the coach seats, something that would be unheard of in the US, unless on a commuter plane where there are no first class seats. The only advantantage that I could think of was that alcoholic drinks were free on KLM. I would much rather have a lower cost ticket and people pay for their own drinks.

megamiles

Well, my experience is that most domestic flights (regardless of country or continent) have poor seating, terrible service etc. and most international flights (regardless of airline, country etc.) are much, much better. Of course, there are many exception to the above observation but on a general sense, airlines tend to (for good reason) devote their energies to intl. flights. I don't believe that there is a strong correlation between price and service - in reality a BA flight within the EU often costs about the same as a London to Toronto and the trans-atlantic segment has vastly better service than the domestic (within EU) one. Another personal experience would be Thai Airways within Thailand compared with Thai internationally there is a huge quality difference.

star1

My point, is that the number of passengers on any flight basically determines the quality of service. So, what if the airlines reduced the number of passengers by reducing the number of discount fares sold?

Merry Flyer

Let me put another spin on this...

Witin Europe flights are mainly taken for business, there are several reasons for this including:
- Leisure travel is mainly taken on CHEAPER charter airlines.
- Europe does not have the demographic shift the US has (ie. people do not move as far away from there home and therefore do not have to travel by plane to visit relatives).

Therefore the majority of scheduled flight are business trips (in which case price sensitivity is less of an issue) or premium level leisure, where people are paying extra for a better service than they would receive on a charter.

Ok, this gives the airlines a higher yield per mile than US domestic flights (this is a fact!) and therefore the service they offer is higher.

That is what we have come to expect and demand in Europe. There are of course a few exceptions!

Another point is that the percentage of paying premium (club/first/business whatever it is called passengers is much higher that in the US. Typically 50% of the plane of routes to/from major business centres.

There is also much less upgrading in Europe, the people at the premium end are a lot more likely to have paid for it, and therefore again increased revenue over US carriers.

They having been said, I do not believe the standard of service offered by US domestic carriers would be tollerated by main-stream Euro-Travellers. Euro-Travellers expect and demand free food and drink irresepective of the flight time; orderly boarding; use of lounges with free drinks and food.

In a nut-shell, in Europe you can get flights which are as cheap per mile as in the US, but a very high numbers of flighers don't (they buf full-fare flex) but a higher standard of service is expected in Europe.

In terms of traffic volumes, there is about the same amount of inter-euro traffic as there is US domestic.
MF

pgupta011

MerryFlyer, maybe I missed something but I did not think that my intra-Europe flights on KLM or British Airways entitled me to use of their lounges with free food or drinks. Again my preference would be that the cost of lounges not be built into the ticket, so that people like me who have lounge access to Diners Club lounges could get lower price tickets. Maybe ticket prices have come down these days or maybe I did not have access to discount tickets when I got my tickets - my impression at that time was that for comparable distances prices were cheaper in the US.

Merry Flyer

Try some of the 'discount' airlines such as EasyJet (based out of Luton - no frills but clean and cheap); GO (based out of Stanstead - owned by BA) or RyanAir.

I just had a look through their web-sites and managed to get London-Amsterdam for £56 ($90)return. London-Dublin £49 ($80) return.


From the charters (Britannia; Air2000 etc) UK-Spain £79 return ($125) etc.

My price-per-mile comparison was based on the imformation published in Business Travel World, which compares information provided by IATA/CAA/EC. And consistently shows that there is virtually no difference between US Domestic and inter-european fares.

The current trend is that inter-european fully-flex fares have increased by 15% over the last 12 months (ie. the airlines are hitting the business traveller) but price-per-mile has come down by 7% (mainly due to the increase in discount airlines).

There are bargains out there to be had. You need to know where to look - many of the discount airlines keep their prices down by NOT dealing with travel agents, so your travel agent (or web agent) will not be able to find the fares for you, you have to look at the propriatory web sites.

I think that there is a concensus that the Europeans expect better service than the American's. The US carriers certainly readily accept this - as many of the posts on this site testify. That is why Rudi and I get comp lounge access (ie. Free Red Carpet Club), because the US airlines understand that we would not expect to pay for that.

I'm hoping for some feed-back on this, but my experience is also that if you fly into the US from Europe and transfer to an onward US domestic flight, you are also likely to get upgraded. The US carriers will also give Europeans lounge access and beverage 'tokens' for their lounges which a US flyer would not get.
MF

megamiles

The main difference between NA and Europe prices is what MF alluded to - in NA there is a much wider gap between the cheapest "advance-purchase-fare-war" price and the most expensive "walk-up" price while in Europe the gap seems to be much, much smaller. I like the NA system as it is a great example of the economic theory of "price discrimination" - charging each customer what the consumer is willing to pay etc.

I know I'm belaboring my point, but anyways even through the "average price" might be comparable for NA and Europe, the standard deviation for NA is much, much greater.

To the other extreme is domestic flights in India (and other coutries) where the fare for a given route is fixed regardless of whether you buy a ticket 30 min before or 30 days before.

baobab

If you are flying on BA within western Europe & have a fully-paid economy ticket, you can upgrade to business for 16 pounds each way (about $27). This can be useful if you need more executive club points for qualification to the next level (ie blue, silver, gold), as you double the number of points you receive for the trip by doing this. It is also useful, if, like me, you miss your early morning flight to Cologne and have to fly to Dusseldorf instead - full fare economy doesn't allow route changes, while a 'Club Europe' ticket does.

As for Catman's question on another thread - a Club Europe ticket does give you lounge access, though the lounges aren't quite as pleasant as the Club World lounges.

Rudi

... and lounge access, with the european ff-programs I know, is free for ff that reached, depending on the airline/program, 35'000 to 60'000 status-miles/year.

With LH - non-german residents with 100'000 miles/year even get access to the Senator-lounge (LH's international first class lounge) disregarding what ticket they booked.

and drinks are FREE in european lounges.

kokonutz

I *DO NOT* want to get into economic theory here, but let's for a moment consider the "laws" of supply and demand. In US, the markets for "greyhound in the sky" create an incentive for all airlines (not just the cut-raters) to fill seats with those bodies.

As the savvy business traveller can now "beat the system" and travel at sub-economy class rates, the level of service provided has slipped as well. And since we are paying $230 to fly JFK-LAX, no one is screaming TOO loudly that they have to pay for a drink to do it.

The lack of the Greyhound effect (as I call it) in Eurpoe has spared air travellers there from a similar fate. With the relatively small geography and extensive passenger rail system as well as the intra-EU rivalries (that's you, Merry!), Eurpoeans have no real need for inexpensive flights for leisure travel, and so flying caters to a different market at a greater expense, hence the ability provide more service.

But when it becomes cheaper to fly Heathrow-JFK-Stockholm than flying Heathrow-Stockholm, the economic model may well collapse under its own weight...And perhaps realizing this, the EU and others limit slots to artifically limit supply of US carriers (this last bit may be a bit of a stretch).

I used to work aviation subcommittee issues on Capitol Hill, and there was a great deal of internal debate about this issue during deregulation hearings. It really is an interesting (if somewhat dry) subject!

Merry Flyer

Matt, I couldn't agree with you more.

The only bit I would question is the EU limiting slots, I am by no means a big fan of the EU, but I would point out that the allocation of slots is a two-way thing.

As happens everytime (last month being a case in point) that the EU, the respective European governments and the US sit down to discuss 'open-skies' it falls apart - nobody seems to want it!

The protectionism is all around, BA last week postponed it's link with AA because the US wanted BA/AA to give up so many transatlantic slots.
MF

PS: You can do LHR-Stokholm for under $100 return now - as I said you just need to know the discount airlines are there!!

Rudi

thanks to FlyerTalk our american friends here start to understand the basics of the EC. Please allow a Swiss (Switzerland is not an EC-member - so it may very well be that not only United Airlines forgets about Switzerland "if we don't fly there - does it exits?", but the EC may also forget us: I have to queu at/with OTHERS when I enter an EC-country) to show you an allimport example of the lastest "official" rulings on your ENGLISH-language in the EC:

Subject : Be Ready for Europe
The European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft
"c"....Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20%
shorter. In fase 3 in the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated
changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away. By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!!!

baobab

Roberto is obviously ahead of his time...

Merry Flyer

And I was the one accused of have inter-Euro rivalries!

For my part I think we should all go back to Latin (every Empire has had it's good points).
MF


PS: Alitalia's new BusinessFirst class is worth trying!