OverThereTooMuch

No, it won't.

Kagehitokiri

but these articles are only being published right now because of current political environment

Tchiowa

^^^

RussianTexan

I quake at this ad from the future:

News Flash from 2043: UnitedDeltaVirgin announces the introduction of Economy Wing class. Passengers will enjoy the luxury of their own sleeping bag and oxygen mask while experiencing panoramic views during flight, courtesy of being bungee-corded to the wing by trained flight attendants just prior to take-off. Occasional bird strikes will provide in-flight meals during take-off and landing, and passengers are assured there will be no queues for the toilet facilities (as there are none, except of course the inside of the aforementioned sleeping bag). Fares are wonderfully cheap(ish...) of course.

GUWonder

Current political environment, my foot.

The gap, between the front of the flying bus and the back of the flying bus, in service and service levels has been widening. Current political environment hasn't changed anything with regard to this.

For the vast majority of US passengers, it's now a case of pay more than before and get less than before -- excepting perhaps when in the front of the flying bus.

That doesn't -- it can't -- show what has happened to the average American household's portion of discretionary income available for leisure travel in the past twenty years and how such income's purchasing power applicable to air travel has dropped in the past 5, 10, 15, or 20 years.

It's amusing how some data misleads people into thinking something is more affordable in the US now than before, when the data is clear that it has become less affordable. But this is not surprising, as relying upon simplified silos of data doesn't educate anyone in the way more complex econometric analysis does.

The portion of air travel costs captured in fare pricing data has also been changing. Think about what that means for affordability too.

lhrsfo

Of course, the point more generally is that the disparity between rich and poor is increasing. The point with the airlines is that disparity between rich and middle class is increasing. It's not the poor who fly, it's the middle class and it's their relative income which is declining at a fast rate. The economy section of the plane is where they sit, and so the offering will decline in line with their income.

But, yes, it's clear that Premium Economy will become more and more relevant for the top end of the middle class scale.

Quite. Not everything is about America.

jcwoman

Also not included in the analysis is the fact that more companies require their employees who travel to do so at the cheapest no refundable fares. Business class fares were developed and marketed based on the idea that companies had deep pockets and would pay more, and that's no longer true. My point being that the statistic of people voting with their wallets is not entirely true for business travelers. There is an extra variable in that equation that people are ignoring.

swag

"Meanwhile, business class keeps on getting comfier." This is certainly true for the long haul flights mentioned at the end of the article, but for domestic (non-transcon) first class, things are declining there as well.

Tchiowa

Except the stats show the prices have been cut in half in constant dollar terms.

So rather than making up stats, show some.

The statement that travel is less affordable seems to defy the fact that more and more people are flying. If it was less affordable, fewer people could afford to fly.

GUWonder

What prices, published ticketed fares? They have been cut in half in constant dollar terms between which periods of time? They certainly haven't done that in the most recent one-year, three-year, or five-year period.s Has that taken place in the most recent ten-year period? No. In the most recent fifteen-year period?


It has nothing to do with making up stats; it has to do with letting people go fish for themselves if they so wish to challenge their own political prejudices in support of the industry.

I'm not here to spoon-feed adults on demand or to be a tutor for those incapable and/or unwilling to try to work on analysis of this too. Numerical literacy matters, and I encourage it by not babying adults.

I find it cute when people rely upon "Airlines for America", as that is an industry lobby group which would be more accurately described as "Airlines Against America" since it is so very customer-unfriedly and wants to keep peddling a story about airline affordability to try to justify their customer-unfriendly positions. They are the purveyors of that chart in your link.

Less affordable in some markets has taken place while becoming more affordable in other markets. Don't confuse the US for the rest of the world.

When the world's population has grown by a few billion in our lifetime and when relative wealth has increased in much of the non-OECD world where low cost carriers have increasingly become the norm, THEN divergence in affordability between different markets and a large growth in the absolute number of people flying shouldn't be a surprise. But that doesn't say anything about what has happened in the US to affordability of air travel for the average American household.

Tchiowa

Go back to the link on my previous post.

In other words, you have nothing to back up what you said. So the only stats published are the several links I provided. Unless you have something more authoritative, they stand. Don't you agree?

HMO

The air traffic is USA is increasing over the last years:

Year. United States
2009 679,423,408
2010 720,497,000
2011 730,796,000
2012 736,699,000
2013 743,096,000


http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR

jrl767

even though the total numbers are still increasing, both the year-to-year increases and percentage of increase are slowing

get 25 economists or statisticians or analysts in a room (or on a FT thread) and you will get at least 50 reasons as to what story the raw data actually tell

HMO

But are still increasing

More than the USA population growing rate. ^

GUWonder

The frequency of air travel by a unique person is not in that item. That a rich subset of the American population can take multiple more trips annually than the average American household masks how air travel has become less affordable for the average American household even as the wealthiest amongst us take more flights than a decade or two ago. This just goes back to the notion of the gap between the richest of us and the rest of the country is rather wide and wider than it used to be at some prior points in time.

The fact is that silo data doesn't paint a meaningful picture in the way that more complex analysis of silo-crossing data does.

The difference in ability to understand comes down to who wants to be and needs to be spoon-fed and who doesn't need to be spoon-fed data to figure this out on their own instead of relying upon a silo metric or two that masks what it doesn't track.