oliver2002

4 OT personal comments and response thereto deleted.

Regards Oliver2002
Mod M&M forum

FD1971

Again, you fail to understand the main point.

EK is publishing numbers and we have to take them for granted..., well, at least some of us.

We have a pretty good understanding of EK ops, well, at least some of us.

LH is also publishing numbers, however they do so without contacting Cindarella first.

Aside from that, it is a rather pointless discussion to debate isolated numbers with putting them into context, but we see it quite often in the stands...

FD1971

As pointed out before (talking about ignoring...) LH makes certain fares available, only to be critisized later on that those fares are never available.

But that is the main difference, on the NE3 I always find plenty of availability for promo fares, (not surprising, they hardly sell anything else) on other airlines, it is more difficult. The surprising result, very low RASK for the NE3 or other discount carriers

Is it possible that you 'lack' the basics of dynamic pricing?

Again, industry leading yield management at work. J9 anyone?

weero

Well I certainly do hold this view. And your question is a very justified one. I very often don't even see what they are debating as one side never provides even the assumptions and data the so called conclusions are based upon.

But many reasonable posters seem to find enough common ground to keep debating details which have never bee provided or substantiated.

Lack

You mean like the 2.3 vs 230 seats available on LH vs EY? No need to start your emoji fest with reading "consultant" reports, evidence to the contrary is clearly visible on LH.com and I'm yet to see any credible data from you. Hence - ignoring.
And if you're right, and LH is just doing bait and switch advertising (verboten in the US actually, not sure about EU but wouldn't be surprised if so) then what else the industry leading yield management can think of next, three-card trick for ticket changes?

Obviously, in your mindset, "I always find plenty of availability for promo fares" is proof enough and when someone says they're defecting to ME3, OneWorld or other greener pastures (with friends/coworkers following) it's just anecdotal evidence.

San Gottardo

Advertising low fares and then only selling very few at those fares - isn't that exactly what you (or your groupie, don't remember) criticized the LCCs for doing? Wasn't that in the context of "pricing integrity" or something similar?

PS: just to let you know that you can answer some of these questions by a simple "yes" or "no", or a number, or some numbers. No need to go Thomas Mann in terms of length, decorate it all with a childish over-dose of smileys to substitute for hard facts and coherent line of argument, all of without actually answering any of the questions brought up.

Thank you. Awaiting your answer.

FD1971

I have no idea what you are talking and not for the first time...

Last week, LH published a lot of numbers in their annual report, this report is based on guidelines, which belong to the most demanding on this planet and is not silent about many relevant issues, for example financing most of their assets.

Hence, it provided more than enough evidence that LH's strategy is sucessful, despite saints, naysayers, people lacking knowledge of dynamic pricing and guys sitting on 1a are on the wrong track, simply because they predicted the exact opposite...

Pointless side discussions whether isolated data is guud (like erkraft) or bad like NEC is the main reason why certain Deppenforen (copyright rb) exist.

Knowing some people a 45 post discussion whether Thomas Mann should have received his Nobel price earlier will probably follow this post...

Enjoy

TRAVELSIG

Most demanding on the planet? And how exactly can we manage most demanding on the planet? Relative to?

All I can say is Wow. Shareholders can sleep easy tonight.

seat 1a

Firstly ,I sit in 1a
Secondly , I have never predicted anything about LH results
Thirdly , a one year result hardly says anything about if a strategy is successful or not.

SMK77

There are no conclusions on the other side, there are only mantras.

If I tailor a cost savings and restructure program mainly around the part of my group that is buy with flying airplanes around the globe and said airline is (other then the rest of the group) not making money (or not making more money than it makes from saving on fuel cost) then I don't see a) a strategy, b) I don't see a working strategy and most foremost and c) I don't see any results.

Hence we are back to mantras and you can use them like text blocks used by Lufthansa which brings us right back to mantras.

Let our mantra-singer document here what big airlines he was advising in the last five years and a lot of noise would go away and heavenly silence would make us all feel better...

TRAVELSIG

And what a great point about heavenly silence (not to say the other points are not as good!).

And at this point- to help create the very heavenly silence cited here, I am going to take a sabbatical from this thread- once some new results come out from Lufthansa or one of their competitors I may chime in- but at least for a couple of weeks I will concentrate on other, more pressing threads, such as how to ensure getting into business class on the highly competitive and much cherished MUC/FRA route.

Cheers to all- and especially to FD who saved me 800 EUR this week (although I suppose he does have until the end of the day today to ticket the Australia flight for <1600 EUR in J allin roundtrip from Italy/Germany to Australia- at which point I will send the "bonifico" by IBAN immediately).

weero

But that is my naive view - the fact that so many reasonable posters with actual flying experience (including many HONs) keep engaging in these arguments should indicate that there is something to these claims. And be it only that they are outrageous and weakly supported.

That is at least noteworthy to some extent.

San Gottardo

weero, I'll post a little later tonight or this weekend when I have some time with some facts, data, etc to show that what "arguments" have been put forward have some individual grains of truth, but that the poster and his mini-me completely lack the ability to assess the facts and connect the dots, or are unable to back up their statements with facts & figures (maybe because they don't even have them).

The reason why I am still participating is because I enjoy exchanges with others (many are informative and enriching, also your posts are hilarious) and most of all because I enjoy playing with the buffone that we are having in our midst, it's like a toy. There is a famous French movie, "Le diner des cons" by Francis Veber. You get the analogy

weero

Thanks for the heads up.

That was indeed the intriguing part for me why someone like you who is well spoken, easily conveys their point, and is well able to direct to the supporting data finds joy in this exchange.

I myself find it very entertaining too though less for the information content but for the verbal exchange.

N1003U

Since German is a foreign language for me, I can't really speak to the merits of Thomas Mann's work. My wife loves him, however, I find that by the time I get to the conjugated verb at the end of his sentences, I have forgotten what the subject was, so he is for me too much work to read in detail and capture whatever beauty and/or profundity that exists in his texts.

As for dynamic pricing, IMHO, the Nobel Committee erred greatly (as they are often prone to do, either out of political spite or bald-faced ignorance) with the award to Merton and Scholes. The assumptions of lognormal price movements and perfect information diffusivity are really only valid at times when no one cares anyway, and don't even get me started on the assumption of constant volatility.

The real shame is that the Merton/Scholes Nobel prize lent credibility to nonsense (OK, I'll be generous, esoteric boredom) to the point where it has handed accountants and politicians an excuse to follow a very dark path in an effort publicize supposedly exorbitant executive compensation.

But, I digress...

It seems pretty clear to most folks here that LH is significantly shifting their pricing strategy in recent months/years. Whether or not the new pricing strategy is mutually beneficial to both LH and its customers is probably a fun thing to debate here.

What I would propose is that if the strategy is not mutually beneficial, it won't be stable, and we will continue to see changes in it, which is good for neither LH nor its customers. (though it might provide for more consulting opportunities to simple-mined ex-Bahn executives who don't even understand monopolistic pricing all that well... )