Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen H
NickN,
When will people realise that they were never raping the public on these routes... it was the cost of doing business.
You can claim all you want that you should have sub $1000 fares, but the fact of the matter is that at these rates, the airlines are making losses.
Enjoy them while they last, because at those fares, I can tell you airlines will go out of business. You get your $1000 fare, but Qantas is just scraping a profit and sacking its workforce, while SQ and CX are parking brand new aircraft up against the fence and laying off workers hand over fist.
Air travel is expensive, and maybe now some in the public will wake upto the fact that if you want a service, and you want to fly, you have to pay decent money to do it.
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Whilst i agree with your sentiments of airfares being high due to the cost of flying, Qantas and others like it have a history of having high airfares when little to no competition excisted. The TAA/Ansett duoploy is a good case. Its how they make good money and keep shareholders happy - not the flying public. They only lower airfares when they are forced to, as has now occured both domestically and internationally. Competition has now also forced Business and first class airfares down and they where certainly way over priced and since these have fallen by up to 50%, it is where airlines like Qantas is feeeling the pinch. It was how the airlines made good profit and now that those airfares have come down (as very few people are flying business anymore) airlines like QF, SQ etc are hurting.
Having high labour/infrastructure costs doesn't help either. Qantas and others like it will either have to down size whilst the economy is slow (as they are starting to do) or remodel to jetstar like airlines with reduced cost overheads.
People will vote with their money, not loyalty to an airline - the days of flying Qantas just because its Australian despite it being more expensive are long gone for many travellers. Either the airlines take note of this fact or fail.