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Old 10-04-2018 | 02:54 AM
  #9217  
dracir1
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Originally Posted by Wheelswatch
Everyone assumes that their stated goals are the truth. Anyone consider they might be advertising (via rumor mill no less) that they wan't 36 pilots but really only want 15?

So far they've cancelled only half of the vacations in any given month right? Frontier has more pilots than they know what to do with.

ROI. Ever heard of that? Look it up. You can stand on your soap box all day long and preach about how good customer service, Herb style cozy employee relations and a good contract will make them more money etc. They don't care. They're involved in an experiment and are brazenly confident in their hypothesis. The idea that they can cheap out in every conceivable fashion and the consequences/costs of cheaping out will be less than the costs to run an airline more traditionally. That delays, cancellations, meltdowns, and even lawsuits are known and acceptable costs. That 'their' customers are born faster than they can run them off. They've got virtual case study upon case study around the globe of how you can pay crap and make immense profit in doing so. This is nothing new. And it works. Especially because no one else is doing it, quite to this degree. If running a well maintained quality apartment complex was the only way for landlords to make money, you wouldn't have slumlords.

This isn't changing for us, probably ever. If they hold on to it, and build it up, albeit much more slowly than advertised. If they connect us to the world via Volaris and what not, we are looking at a new paradigm. Get used to it. They'll run it just well enough to not fall apart completely. And anything above and beyond that is bad ROI.

Going public is our only hope, and then maybe we can at least be as good as NK.
This only works for the short term. Eventually, that rate of ROI starts to dwindle as other "issues" become apparent - like labor discord, etc.

Indigo is making chump change compared to what they could be making - the real ROI is in the LONG money (especially now in these times). F9 posted around $189 million net income (from 2Q17-2Q18). https://www.transtats.bts.gov/carriers.asp?pn=1 They could EASILY double or perhaps triple this amount with multiple destinations and multiple flights per day between (just like SWA and the Big 3) within the next 2-5 years. Of course, it equates to less profit per passenger but the VOLUME of passengers is so great, the profit is much higher. I'm not mentioning anything profound here - but to think that Indigo couldn't be doing much better than they are is silly. The model works - cheap aircraft leases only go so far if you have no one to fly them. What makes more sense: doubling your labor costs for pilots but tripling your overall profit or staying status quo?

Of course, that assumes they actually want to keep F9 and be serious about being in the airline business...
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