RichardMEL
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Posts
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This is about capacity vs demand.
And it's not just QF. Have a friend in PER bemoaning VA pricing too (and has an aversion to JQ, but even their pricing is steep).
look at the availability on many flights on key routes for busy periods and you start to see why - very few discount fare buckets generally available. Have the airlines upped the pricing on their more flex Y categories... sure - there have been several rounds of pricing increases over recent times.
Here's the thing that annoys me about media commentary on this stuff.... I heard people jumping uip and down about $700 one way fares to SYD as being the only ones available. look a bit deeper.. they quote "for travel today" - well uh yeah... last minute travel in heavily booked flights with perhaps only Y available... then yeah... but the media turn around and say the airlines are screwing the customer.. but to me hat isn't the entire story here and it's not fair to give a headline of $700 fares to SYD when I can see more normal <$150 type fares for say next March or May - ie out of the peak and not flying last minute.
I'm not defending airline pricing per se, but this is how the model works more or less and always has.
the way to provide lower fares at peak times is to provide capacity. Sure... but airlines pulled BACK on capacity du to the lack of ground staff and other issues causing huge delays, planes leaving without bags and all that stuff.. which is bad. of course.. so one needs to look at that side of things as much as getting in crew to operate the planes, or possibly even the aircraft to fly (for example QF is using 332's to fly LAX-BNE that could be elsewhere, but 787's have their own issues.. so that capacity can't easily go into domestic high volume sectores like it used to more). Remember the days QF would dump a 747-300 or -400 on say SYD-PER for capacity? nope. not a thing now. VA has no more 330's so they are capacity constrained too.
I was called earlier in the week by QF to change a flight out of OOL to an earlier one as they'd overbooked it. It actually worked out as I ended up on an A332 out of SYD in J. That A330 was totally full. it was mad. Every flight I saw that afternoon was 0's everywhere.
my point being, and the above is very simplistic, that it's not as simple as pointing to a price and crying "Evil money hungry QF!" because for me THAT is the simple headline way of looking at it, There are many reasons to bash the airlines but I prefer them to be accurate rather than sensationalised commentary based on a not full or reasonable understanding of the big picture.
imo.
And it's not just QF. Have a friend in PER bemoaning VA pricing too (and has an aversion to JQ, but even their pricing is steep).
look at the availability on many flights on key routes for busy periods and you start to see why - very few discount fare buckets generally available. Have the airlines upped the pricing on their more flex Y categories... sure - there have been several rounds of pricing increases over recent times.
Here's the thing that annoys me about media commentary on this stuff.... I heard people jumping uip and down about $700 one way fares to SYD as being the only ones available. look a bit deeper.. they quote "for travel today" - well uh yeah... last minute travel in heavily booked flights with perhaps only Y available... then yeah... but the media turn around and say the airlines are screwing the customer.. but to me hat isn't the entire story here and it's not fair to give a headline of $700 fares to SYD when I can see more normal <$150 type fares for say next March or May - ie out of the peak and not flying last minute.
I'm not defending airline pricing per se, but this is how the model works more or less and always has.
the way to provide lower fares at peak times is to provide capacity. Sure... but airlines pulled BACK on capacity du to the lack of ground staff and other issues causing huge delays, planes leaving without bags and all that stuff.. which is bad. of course.. so one needs to look at that side of things as much as getting in crew to operate the planes, or possibly even the aircraft to fly (for example QF is using 332's to fly LAX-BNE that could be elsewhere, but 787's have their own issues.. so that capacity can't easily go into domestic high volume sectores like it used to more). Remember the days QF would dump a 747-300 or -400 on say SYD-PER for capacity? nope. not a thing now. VA has no more 330's so they are capacity constrained too.
I was called earlier in the week by QF to change a flight out of OOL to an earlier one as they'd overbooked it. It actually worked out as I ended up on an A332 out of SYD in J. That A330 was totally full. it was mad. Every flight I saw that afternoon was 0's everywhere.
my point being, and the above is very simplistic, that it's not as simple as pointing to a price and crying "Evil money hungry QF!" because for me THAT is the simple headline way of looking at it, There are many reasons to bash the airlines but I prefer them to be accurate rather than sensationalised commentary based on a not full or reasonable understanding of the big picture.
imo.
