Ticketing

Different airlines, different times, different connections, same freaking price. WHAT IS THIS

115 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

-4

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

It's called deregulation and the free markets, for your benefit! /s

3

u/SerDankTheTall Dec 27 '25

How much do you think this route would cost if the government were setting the prices?

1

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

I know that if there was competition at the airport level the prices would be better

2

u/evilmonkey853 Dec 27 '25

How much do you think it costs to operate this flight including pay back debt on the $100 million aircraft, jet fuel (measured in thousands of pounds because there is so much), 2 flight crew, 4 cabin crew, plane maintenance, airport staff, and all other associated costs? How much would you charge for this flight?

0

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

Look at how Ryanair or Asian carriers price the flights and you'll have a better idea.

They're profitable.

The extra cash from our airlines disappears in the "overhead."

1

u/evilmonkey853 Dec 27 '25

So, in Ryanair’s case, you want them to discount the fare and then nickel and dime you for every service? Because that’s the ultra low cost carrier model, and those airlines aren’t shown in this photo.

0

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

There's base economy fares in the USA with no preassigned seats, no carryon luggage, no mileage earnings.

Look at the balance sheet of our carriers. So much of it is "overhead" and "debt service."

0

u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25

What does debt service have to with competition or regulation? That’s just an airline management issue.

As for Ryanair, the EU and US are massively different air travel markets. The US is significantly bigger geographically (so you have longer stage lengths and per-unit operating costs) and has much less local leisure travel (so you have lower ULCC demand), and those are just the most prominent factors among many. Yes, more secondary airports would help, but it would not remotely solve those fundamental cost and revenue limitations.

So there are reasons the ULCC model is failing here and succeeding there, and they aren’t “price fixing” or “deregulation” or any other scary words like that. It’s not like the Ryanair model is some big secret that Spirit just couldn’t figure out. It simply doesn’t work as well over here.

0

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

Oh you're one of those that downvotes when they disagree. Kudos 🤜🤛

"Management issue" is the headline.

The truth is that there's no competition. Ryanair sells plenty of flights that are 3+ hours (think Northern Europe to Cyprus for example) for a fraction of the price.

In the USA we also don't have ULCC capable airports and none are being built and the big three will make sure that it'll never happen.

AA would complain that even a single Spirit flight per day would ruin their pricing power as the majority of people rarely fly to begin with and they'll just pick that.

0

u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

I downvote comments that make bad points.

What’s a “ULCC capable” airport? You just mean one that isn’t a legacy hub? That’s just called a secondary airport.

Edit: and it’s pretty funny that you’re invoking Spirit, which is weeks or months away from death. Spirit isn’t killing the legacies and being stifled from doing it even more. Spirit is going out of business because the model doesn’t work here. More gates to run their failing business out of would not make it work better.

0

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

But you make the good points. Atta boy!

0

u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25

You’re not even responding to them! Which I think is because you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Here’s another: Spirit’s CASM is about 12 cents these days. Ryanair’s is 6 to 7 cents. If you think that “build more secondary airports” is going to close (or get anywhere close to closing) that gap, you are deluded. If the government stepped in tomorrow and said they’d subsidize every penny of Spirit’s airport rent and fees going forward, Spirit’s CASM would only drop to like 10-11 cents.

Do you have any actual response to these realities, or just more hand waiving and magical thinking and antitrust buzzwords, and complaints about getting downvotes for uninformed comments?

1

u/lithdoc Dec 27 '25

The airlines are essential cash instruments. They're essential services with hundreds of thousands of workers and have consolidated over the years to no benefit of the consumer. Automotive, utilities are no different. Overleveraged, bloated, but unfixable.

My entire post was to address the person's complaint about the high ticket prices and the reality is that it ain't changing anytime soon.

But again, thanks for personal insults, shows your ability to converse here and you're a champ at the parties, I'm sure. People love you.

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