Posted by Seth on January 30, 2012 under Flying, News | 
I love when our elected representatives decide to speak up and express just how idiotic their thoughts are. I’ve heard a Representative state for the record that she thought Adobe Acrobat should be outlawed, for example, but I’m not so convinced that her view there is more ridiculous than that put forth today by Representative Tom Graves of Georgia. Graves, who represents Georgia’s 9th Congressional District (North of Atlanta, up to the Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama borders), has announced that he will be introducing legislation which will repeal the DoT rule requiring airlines to list the full price of tickets, including all taxes, when they advertise.
This rule, put forth as part of the DoT’s consumer protection efforts, has come under attack from such legendary consumer advocates as Sprit Airlines, who is complaining the rule violates their first amendment rights because they cannot advertise one number and then charge a completely different number when the customer goes to actually make the purchase. Seems like just the sort of actions that should be protected, right?
The Congressman has a very simple premise for why the rule is bad: It prevents the airlines from indicating what part of the fare is actually the fare and what part is taxes and fees.
The federal government should not be inserting itself in the private sector to limit consumers’ ability to see how much they’re getting taxed. If the American people can’t see these costs clearly, I fear it will be easier these fees and taxes to be raised without their knowledge.
There’s just one problem with this line of thought (two, really, but I’m ignoring that the second line there isn’t a complete sentence): it is completely unfounded in reality. There is absolutely nothing in the rule that prevents the airlines from explaining in excruciating detail how much the taxes are and how much the fare is. There is nothing preventing them from reminding the consumer that there are a dozen or so different taxes and fees on the average airfare and way more on international itineraries. What the rule does, however, is prevent an airline from advertising a $9 fare which cannot be purchased for less than $20, no matter how hard you try. And that’s a good thing for consumers.
Fare listings like these, which are fully compliant with the rules, make it quite clear what the taxes and fees are, without violating the DoT rules:
And, yet, somehow apparently it is actually impossible for the airlines and OTAs to actually publish the information this way, as they are inhibited by the DoT rules. Strange, isn’t it, how they’ve managed to do it anyways??
I understand the complaint that nothing else in the USA is required to be marketed with the all-in price rather than allowing for customers to be surprised at the cash register. Let’s not use the examples of things that are bad for us as citizens as examples of why progress shouldn’t be made. Let’s got the other direction instead. Let’s hold hotels and rental car companies accountable, too. Let’s stop rental car companies from hiding the 50%+ surcharges until the final page of the check-out process. Let’s stop hotels from adding on $15-30 or more, per guest, per night, as a "resort fee" rather than actually including those charges in the fine print. After all, you cannot avoid paying them.
There is nothing wrong with calling attention to the fact that the average airfare has so many taxes associated with it. But pretending that there is some unwritten rule out there which is somehow preventing airlines from actually doing so is just plain lying.
Time to step up and face the facts, Congressman Graves: you’re full of it. Step up and do something that actually helps your constituents rather than lying to them. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it when elections roll around.
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Posted by Seth on January 24, 2012 under Flying, News |
Spirit Airlines is protesting the new fare rules requiring full disclosure of all costs for a flight, claiming that the government is requiring them to hide the taxes from their customers. And they’re doing it in style. Their main homepage now shows this when you visit:
If you click the link offered you get this:
Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest fare rules, Spirit must now HIDE the government’s taxes and fees in your fares.
If the government can hide taxes in your airfares, then they can carry out their hidden agenda and quietly increase their taxes. (Yes, such talks are already underway.)
And if they can do it to the airline industry, what’s next?
As the transparency leader and most consumer-friendly airline, Spirit DOES NOT support this new USDOT mandate. We believe the better form of transparency is to break out costs so customers know exactly what they’re buying.
The scary thing here is that I almost actually agree with them.
It is true that, by requiring the big, final price number to be displayed to the customer the actual tax burden is obfuscated. So they’re not really wrong there. But that obfuscation also prevents all sorts of other fees from being hidden, the sorts of fees that Spirit is famous for. And that’s a good thing.
Plus, at the end of the day, most customers care much less about how much of the fare is for taxes and how much is for the airline. A $300 ticket is a $300 debit on my credit card. Whether the airline keeps $150 or $250 of that doesn’t skew whether I think it is a good price for the trip.
Besides, there is nothing stopping Spirit from showing the full breakdown underneath the all-in price. That way they can continue to be a "transparency leader and most consumer-friendly airline" as they always have.
Posted by Seth on December 28, 2011 under frequent flyer, points |
Yeah, I said it. So did Chris Elliott recently, and perhaps for the only time ever I’m going to mostly defend his point of view on this topic. I think he went too far in suggesting that all customers should walk away wholesale from the programs and that the programs are "corrupt and corrupting" (especially without explaining what he means there). And I disagree that there is a problem with only some passengers enjoying all the benefits of the programs. But there is definitely a large group of folks for whom focusing on the points is absolutely not the smart play.
Sure, collect them if you’re making the transaction anyways, but don’t be too disappointed if they expire (or use a service like GoMiles.com to help prevent them from expiring). And certainly don’t let points drive you to irrational spending decisions, like paying markedly more for the exact same product, just to earn a trivial number of points. That’s foolish even for the folks who can actually benefit from the programs and doubly so for folks who don’t benefit from them.
For the vast majority of travelers there are only two things that matter: price and schedule. And for most of those folks it is only price. Yes, there are significant differences in the way the travel experience will play out depending on which carrier you fly on. The difference between flying from New York City to Ft. Lauderdale on JetBlue or Spirit Air could not be more dramatic for a pair of products that are arguably the same thing, 1000 miles in a coach seat. But at the end of the day, if the Spirit flight is notably less expensive they’re going to sell seats to a chunk of customers.
The other thing to remember is that the vast majority of travelers are not actually particularly frequent fliers. The number of folks actually flying 25,000 miles or more annually is a terribly small subset of the total traveling public. For the folks who are actually flying a lot – and 25,000 miles annually is just the tip of that iceberg – there is absolutely value to be had in the programs. And even for some folks looking to rack up crazy amount of points via credit card transactions (hopefully with someone else’s money) there is value in the programs. But, again, that 25,000 annual number seems to be a pretty smart place to start as a threshold considering the fees and opportunity costs of directing spend to different cards.
The most surprising and also internally inconsistent claim made in that column is that the programs, started to help differentiate the airlines in a deregulated environment as the service levels started to rapidly decline, should somehow find a way to provide the same benefits for everyone. The programs are, for the most part, rewarding the folks who provide the most value to the airlines. Just because a passenger thinks they’re being loyal by making sure their once per year trip is on the same airline doesn’t mean they are actually a loyal customer. They certainly are unlikely to be a profitable one to the carriers. By providing incentives – mostly in the form of improved service levels in some form or another – to their most profitable customers the airlines are generating exactly the type of symbiotic relationship that good marketing should build. It isn’t at all clear why this is a bad thing in his view.
Are the programs perfect for everyone? Of course not. The implication that they should be is a pretty ridiculous leap that Elliott makes and one that unfortunately detracts from the very accurate part of his claim: most folks do not benefit from the programs. I certainly do, but I also know which of my friends and family to guide more towards loyalty and which to guide more towards always buying the cheapest fare, based on travel patterns and reward goals. The vast majority of the scenarios tend towards avoiding the loyalty programs, or at least not using them to drive purchasing decisions.
And anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or lying to you.
Posted by Seth on December 8, 2011 under Flying |
Chatting with some folks today about JetBlue‘s new DFW-BOS service got me to thinking. And that’s never a good thing. JetBlue paid a king’s ransom by some accounts for the eight slot pairs each at LGA and DCA. They’re going to need to realize some serious profits on that investment. So they’re going to want to go to markets where there are high yields and limited competition. Both airports are limited by perimeter rules in terms of flight distances that can operate so it is basically Texas or east (and not even all of Texas works) for the routes. So what would I do if I were sitting at the white board working on routes?
A somewhat disturbing and almost certainly untenable option came to mind: Attack DFW.
Assuming you could get another gate or two at DFW, why not attack the American Airlines hub? JetBlue has already shown that they’re willing to attack a little bit, putting 3x daily on DFW-BOS starting next year. Why not go all-in? Sure, they don’t really own any market share at DFW. Or LGA. Or DCA. But they could try, right?
It wouldn’t be a half-assed effort like Spirit Air‘s gambit. We’re talking about a total of 19 daily frequencies, all to major business cities and all where the competition is VERY limited. US Airways flies E-Jets 3x daily on the DCA-DFW route. US, Spirit and Frontier all list DFW-LGA but they all fly it as a one-stop direct flight. Seems like there could be a lot of fun to be had with some new blood bringing competition on these routes.
Then again, it would require the additional gate at DFW. And the stage length is a bit high for fleet utilization and yield management. Still, showing up at DFW with that much lift would be an incredibly entertaining challenge to the incumbent.
Another great option would be service from Austin, connecting folks from the west coast, too, but that’s just outside the perimeter at both LGA and DCA. Sad.
Besides, what else are they going to do? Fake shuttle service?
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Posted by Seth on December 7, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
A couple months ago things seemed all nice and rosy between American Airlines and JetBlue. The two signed an interline agreement just over a year ago that added not only traffic feeds between the two but also a limited frequent flier reciprocity scheme and the relationship appeared to be growing stronger. Today JetBlue announced that they are going to be starting service to Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the two fortress hubs that American Airlines operates where they still hold some pricing leverage. Whoopsie.
JetBlue is launching 3x daily service between DFW and Boston starting in May. The pricing isn’t loaded into reservations systems yet so it isn’t clear what the impact will be on fares in the market but it seems more likely that JetBlue entering the market will have an effect versus the announcement from Spirit Air that they will also be entering the market in February. But with 3x daily from the largest operator at Boston it seems much more likely that the competition is really heating up.
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Posted by Seth on December 1, 2011 under Flying, News |
Common decency suggests you don’t kick a man while he’s down. That sort of policy doesn’t necessarily apply in business, however, and it definitely doesn’t apply for Spirit Airlines. Following on their $11 (plus a myriad of fees that no one can ever reasonably figure out) sale to celebrates American Airlines‘ filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier in the week, the Spirit announced a few new routes today focused on the troubled carrier’s fortress hub at Dallas Ft Worth.
Spirit announced this morning that they are launching four new destinations with once daily round-trip service this spring. The new destinations are LaGuardia airport in New York City, Atlanta, Boston and Orlando. The first three are big business markets where American will almost see an erosion of yields thanks to this move. That’s not going to help in their efforts to keep the revenue up. At least it is only once daily service compared to the AA frequencies on offer (BOS – 8, ATL – 12, LGA – 15, MCO – 11) so there is still going to be plenty of opportunities for AA to keep most of their business.
In other bAAnkruptcy-related news, AA has filed the paperwork to return 24 aircraft to lessors, starting the process of shedding some of their costs. Most of the planes are already grounded so it won’t affect capacity. Yet. They’ve also canceled two pilot recall classes, shifting those pilots back to furlough status.
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Posted by Seth on April 7, 2011 under News |
Yesterday had a bit of a buzz on the internet regarding a piece about airfare pricing from Nate Silver that was published on his NY Times politics blog. The post, filled with mathematical analysis, attempts to use statistics to determine which airports have unfairly high fares relative to others providing comparable service. And I’m sure the math involved is accurate. I have no doubt that someone as statistically gifted as Silver got the regression analysis correct when he ran the numbers. But the findings are still miserably flawed.
Why? Because several of the assumptions made simply do not apply to air travel.
Silver acknowledges that most the other folks who have tackled this topic have made specific flaws in their assumptions. He aims to correct these but instead makes some tragic assumptions of his own.
Let’s take a look at the factors he considers:
The first factor is the distance traveled — we use the distance from the origin airport to the destination as though it were a nonstop flight, whether or not there was a layover along the way….
The first factor cited – distance traveled – is probably one of the last things that actually comes into play when airlines are figuring domestic market pricing. Should they? I can see that argument being made, but it ignores the general concept of market pricing and supply/demand dictating the going rate for a ticket. If the airlines wanted to price everything based on distance they could, but they’d be leaving a lot of money on the table for the shorter flights and they’d never sell the longer ones. Even just using the average costs to operate a flight as a price basis you’d be looking at $600+ on average for a round-trip transcontinental flight. They seem to sell a lot better in the $300 range, at least in major markets.
Silver chose to ignore whether there is a connection or not. While that is reasonable for calculating the distance traveled, it ignores perhaps the single greatest factor that drives travel bookings for business travelers, the folks paying the higher fares: schedule. When you’re a business traveler hopping between cities and trying to get to that next appointment on time and then home as quickly as possible you pay more for a non-stop flight. Should you? Maybe, maybe not. But you do. This pricing function is probably more directly traceable in cargo numbers and there is a ton of data available on that, including in Greg Lindsey’s Aerotropolis, a pretty good read. But the same concept absolutely applies to passenger travel as well. There is a very real value in speed out in the real world; there apparently isn’t one in Silver’s.
Silver found that Newark was about 25% more expensive than JFK based on his data. And there is no doubt that is the case on some routes. But when you also consider that Newark has quite a few more domestic destinations available as a non-stop flight than JFK does that price premium isn’t nearly as surprising. After all, folks pay for speed.
Certainly demand factors into the pricing as well:
Second is a variable representing the demand for travel at both the origin and destination airports. Demand is assumed to be a function of the number of origin-and-departure passengers that an airport handled (not counting passengers who passed through the airport on a layover), but with a modification for average ticket prices. In other words, if the average fare at an airport was high, the model assumed that more people would have wanted to fly there but were deterred by the cost, and if the average fare was low, that some passengers would not have flown if the fares had not been such a bargain.
Indeed, one can expect that fares to smaller destinations will be higher. And they generally are. But assuming that more people really want to be traveling to smaller cities but choose not to because the airfare is too high misses the point. They are smaller cities with lower demand for travel because they have fewer businesses, fewer residents traveling (or being visited) and generally less volume. They aren’t seeing lower air traffic because they are too expensive, they are seeing lower traffic because they are small. Lowering fares may translate to a small increase in volume but it most certainly is not a linear path.
Moreover, the ability for a new entrant to operate in a market requires a certain base level of demand. No matter how cheap the fares, you aren’t going to survive long as a startup carrier if your hubs are in Columbus, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina, for example; just ask SkyBus. This means major metropolitan areas see the up-starts, and those up-starts bring lower fares because that’s how they attract customers. Their fares go up over time – JetBlue and Southwest have proven this – but that’s where it begins. And that explains a lot of the pricing trends that are seen today.
Finally, Silver looks at the most important factor, competition:
The regression analysis also accounts for three other factors that have significant effects on pricing. These are, respectively, the market share at the origin and destination airports held collectively by the five “legacy carriers” (United, American, Delta, Continental and US Air); the market share held by Southwest Airlines; and the market share held by the largest single carrier at that airport (for instance, Delta and its affiliates are responsible for about 66 percent of all traffic at Atlanta).
…
Passengers at Newark paid an average of 12 percent more than those at J.F.K. for their trips to Los Angeles, 49 percent more for those to Chicago, 65 percent more to Dallas, and 118 percent more to Washington, D.C.
Given those numbers, it is probably useful to take a look at the competition in those markets. There is zero competition between Newark and Washington, DC. National airport is only served by Continental and Dulles is served only by Continental and merger partner United Airlines. Plus, those routes are not generally reasonable to fly with a connection. The travel time is so short that when you add the connection it is silly to fly when total travel time is important, as it often is. The Dallas route sees a bit of competition from American Airlines, as does the Chicago route. Los Angeles has a tiny bit of competition but it also has the advantage of being a long enough trip that making the schlep over to JFK to save some money on airfare doesn’t actually completely ruin the speed=value margins. Ditto for connecting flights that add a smaller percentage of time to the travel experience.
Somewhat ironically based on the first factor Silver names, longer distances traveled can actually drive down prices as the impact of connections or less desirable departure or arrival airports is decreased as the total travel time increases.
It is actually surprising that Silver didn’t note the disparity on pricing in the Newark/JFK – Boston market. For quite some time now Continental has held a monopoly on that route. Similar to the DC runs, it rarely makes sense to connect for such a short trip and Continental exploited that price disparity. Right up until JetBlue announced their entry into the market. The fares dropped quite quickly at that point. Hardly a surprise, really. Competition, not the airport, drove the pricing.
Here’s a much more simple way to figure out if an airport is expensive or not:
- Is it a mostly leisure destination? If the answer is yes then it is almost certainly not going to be as expensive on average. Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and most the rest of Florida all come to mind, and not surprisingly they’re all on Silver’s list of good value airports.
- Is it dominated (60%+) by a single carrier?
- If that carrier is United, Continental, US Airways, Delta, American or Southwest then odds are it will be a more expensive airport.
- If that carrier is AirTran, Spirit Air, JetBlue or Allegiant (and, to a lesser extent, Frontier) then odds are it will be a less expensive airport.
- Is it a particularly large metropolitan area? If not, fares are going to be higher because demand is lower.
Three easy questions that don’t take statistical regression or misguided assumptions. Silver actually gets some of these, particularly regarding the competition factor. But he also has a couple huge misses, especially around distance traveled and the price/demand curve.
It would also be interesting to compare the actual costs of travel versus just the base fare data. Spirit has a pretty incredible ancillary revenues per passenger – to the tune of an extra $35/head on average – so those "cheap" airports can come with significant surprises once the customer gets to the airport. Indeed, the airlines are quite keen to sell these ancillary bits to their customers and many are now stating explicitly that these fees are where their profits are. The airlines even want to control the way those fees are marketed to the customer by cutting the GDSes out of the pricing loop. Not a good deal for consumers.
Oh, and the suggestion he links to about searching for the best airfares on weekends is horribly wrong, too. Tuesday or Wednesday mid-afternoon is the time you’re most likely to find deals. On the weekends the airlines are raising fares and limiting the cheaper inventory in an effort to cash in on folks shopping for their vacations while their home with their family.
Silver should stick to baseball and politics, two things that he appears to understand a lot better than air travel.
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Tags: AirTran, American Airlines, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Continental, Delta, fees, Florida, Flying, Frontier, JetBlue, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Southwest Airline, Spirit Air, United, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on March 3, 2011 under News, TSA |
Sure, there was tremendous uproar when Spirit Air announced their plan to charge passengers to have larger carry-on bags on the plane. But what if the TSA, the idiots charged with securing our transportation infrastructure, suggests something similar? Will the same congress-critters who displayed outrage maintain it or will they roll over to the "anything for security" mantra?
It looks like we are all going to find out soon enough. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, testified to congress this week that the costs related to carry-on bags are in the range of $260MM annually because of the need to have TSA agents screening those bags. These are the same agents who are great at spotting bottles of water and apparently not so much at spotting things that are actually arguably dangerous, but that’s a whole different rant.
The Secretary conveniently managed to skip over the part about how there are other agents who are inspecting all the checked baggage; if the bags are checked instead of carried on someone is still going to have to check them. Then again, the checked baggage systems (particularly the new ones) are much more automated and faster, in part because there is more space to work with in those sections of the airport and in part because they’re actually looking for dangerous goods instead of extra large tubes of toothpaste or sunscreen.
The statement from the Secretary was in response to a rather leading question from Senator Mary Landrieu:
Checked bagged fees are increasing, it looks like, the cost to TSA because people don’t want to pay the fees so they are not checking bags and putting more on the planes. My question is, do the taxpayers have to pick up this fee? Or should we be looking at the airlines for some of the profits that they make from these fees to offset the cost the taxpayer.
The Secretary is trying to convince Congress to increase the fees paid by passengers to the tune of $600MM annually. No word yet on what other wasteful projects the spare $340MM will be earmarked for. Apparently the Senator is just looking for a cash-grab.
Our government, hard at work.
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Posted by Seth on September 21, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points |
So, just how much extra can you expect to pay on top of your fare to travel? While it depends on the airline you’re flying the number is about 6% on average. Sortof.
Tracking the reality of airline pricing is, at best, a gray magic sort of scenario. There are quarterly reports, annual reports and a myriad of different acronyms and categories of statistics reported. Some of the reports are required by the Department of Transportation and then aggregated and distributed by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Even those numbers are incomplete, however, because the reporting requirements simply have not kept pace with the flood of fees that the airlines are coming up with. So all the numbers are soft. The BTS states it rather clearly:
Revenue from seating assignments and on-board sales of food, drink, pillows, blankets, entertainment, or any other ancillary items are reported as Transport Related Revenue and cannot be identified separately.
So they cannot identify all those details but that doesn’t mean that the details are trivial. The Q2 2010 report was just released and the numbers it documents are rather impressive. The industry realize $2.1 billion in “ancillary revenue” in Q2 2010. Of that nearly $900MM of the revenue came from checked baggage fees. Another $600MM came from reservation change fees with the balance attributed to standby fees, pet carriage charges and sales of frequent flyer miles to business partners.
Putting the number in context, the total industry profits from the reporting carriers during the time period was a hair over $3 billion. If there was any doubt about just how important these fees are to the profitability of the airlines this report (along with the past few that have told similar stories) should put said doubt to rest.
As for which airlines are seeing the bulk of the profit from these fees, the usual suspects are pretty well represented. As the largest carrier in the world (for a couple more weeks) Delta is atop the list for total ancillary revenue. The soon to be largest carriers, a combined United Airlines/Continental at about half the total revenue that Delta realized in the quarter ($681MM v. $340MM combined). US Airways is holding strong in its position near the top of the list which is quite impressive, especially considering how much smaller than the other airlines it is.
There’s Southwest, coming in at $200MM in ancillary fees collected in the quarter. Sure, the may not charge for checked bags (and they love to publicize that in their commercials) but their customers are still paying plenty of fees, enough to see them above the industry average in terms of revenue from fees compared to total operating revenue (6.4% to the industry average of 6%).
And, just to make sure that they’re on the top of some list, there’s Spirit Air. The carrier realized 24.2% of its revenue in the quarter from ancillary charges. Ouch.
Of course, if the total cost is the same then no big deal but the numbers generally are not well published or particularly clear for customers meaning that the total travel cost is often not known by passengers until the trip is over, after it is too late to make a fair fare comparison. There are a few folks out there trying to help level the playing field (check out TruPrice for a pretty solid example) but it is still nearly impossible for customers effectively compare prices in advance.
Lots more numbers in the report, including fuel costs (figure ~$3.5 cents per seat mile flown, so that 2500 mile trip from New York City to Los Angeles costs the airline about $85 in fuel for your seat. Kindof hard to believe that they still sell the seats for not much more than that so often.
Tags: Continental, Delta, DoT, fees, frequent flyer, merger, points, Southwest Airline, Spirit Air, United, US Air
Posted by Seth on September 14, 2010 under News |
The Aviation Interiors Expo-US may be a smaller version of the Hamburg version held each year, but that doesn’t mean it is without interesting news. This year the buzz is all about the SkyRider seats from Avioninteriors. Why? Because they offer a nearly upright “seat” with only 23 inches of pitch. When the seats take up 25% less space that means room for a lot more passengers (and revenue) for the airlines.
But will folks actually be willing to sit in the seats? And can they even fit? Important questions and ones that the company hopes to answer for interested parties throughout the show. The booth was heavily trafficked, with media outlets conducting interviews and interested observers hoping to give the seats a try. After watching others take their turn for about an hour and watching their reactions I finally settled in myself to give the seats a ride.
Take a couple employees and seat them on the “saddle” that acts as the seat and things don’t look all that terrible. They actually seem pretty happy there, though they are also in the “bulkhead” row with nothing in front of them so they can stretch out their legs a bit.
But try to get a reasonably small cameraman in there (seriously, guy, a pager??) and the camera simply will not make it.
There are even tray tables and what looked like a simulated 7”-ish IFE screen in the demo set. With your face only 7” away from a 7” screen it would be incredibly large, probably actually too big for most folks’ range of vision. I cannot imagine that working out well. With the fisheye lens the seats actually don’t look so horrible.
The saddle styling of the seat is interesting. One person mentioned that it was like riding a horse, without all the space normally associated with equestrian activities. Indeed, for folks who are outside the normal height range that the seats are designed for the saddle could prove to be rather uncomfortable. A 6’ 4” reporter from one of the news outlets tried to get into the second row and was rather unsuccessful. Similarly, I would imagine that the saddle would be rather uncomfortable for folks shorter than around 5’ 2” tall. I really have no idea how it would work for most kids.
So, how did I fare in the seat? Here’s the photo. I got in and sat there for about 5 minutes. I even moved into the middle when another guy showed up and wanted to experience it as well. The good news is that the middle seat didn’t feel particularly cramped relative to the aisle seat. The bad news is that all the seats are a pretty tight squeeze. I figured that, much like riding the subway, anything would be fine for 30-45 minutes if needed. The problem is that there is no such thing as a 30-45 minute flight. My trip from Las Vegas to Long Beach this morning was only 45 minutes in the air but I was on the aircraft for nearly double that with boarding, taxi and deplaning time. And I’m not so sure that there is actually a price point at which the airlines can sell this product that would make me comfortable enough flying it. Maybe it is just a function of getting used to the experience, but I’m not particularly convinced. It isn’t a seat and you’re not quite standing. Limited head clearance (the seats are taller to make up the missing pitch) and no under-seat space would mean less capacity on the planes for carry-on bags. Plus it just feels cramped. Way more than traditional seats and even more than the rather tight space in the back of a Spirit Air plane.
Actually maybe not on that last one. Just maybe the SkyRider would be better than the tight squeeze that some carriers offer in a traditional layout today. I certainly wouldn’t fly Spirit again based on just how awful the seats were in the back on a 150 mile flight I took with them so perhaps they have nothing to lose by giving something like this a try. Maybe there is a market for these after all. That’s a rather scary thing to consider.
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Posted by Seth on June 12, 2010 under News |
As of 5am this morning Spirit Air pilots walked off the job, executing a strike against management that has been threatened for several months and one which has been delayed at least twice during negotiations with the company. The airline’s fleet was grounded and all flights for today and Sunday, June 13 are cancelled as a result. No word yet on future cancellations as there is no announced schedule for a renewal of negotiations between the two sides.
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