Originally Posted by C175
If you raise the ticket prices, less people will fly. PERIOD.
Why? Because they can't afford to do it in the first place?
So since they can't afford to fly, we as employees should suffer? Please.
If prices are raised, we are not going to lose even 10% of the flying population. Your fear of people all of a sudden, no longer flying, is ridiculous. I'm not saying raise prices significantly in one solid swipe. But a gradual increase in prices is what will save the legacy airlines. Yes it'll hurt the customer, but it makes no economical sense to keep lowering prices and firing employees in the hope to increase the bottom line.
You can't lower prices, inturn getting less of a profit, and firing employees, in hopes of increasing your YTD profit. It doesn't work that way.
If people can not afford to fly, they don't fly. The flying population will adjust to increased prices. They have certainly adjusted to increased gas prices, I still drive past gas stations and see a bunch of middle class wannabe upper class individuals with their SUVs filling up when gas is >$2.90 a gallon. People in this country are still going to pay for gas if it reachs $3.50 a gallon, trust me. And sure enough, if the Airlines got some balls, and actually WANTED to make money, they could increase ticket prices and people would still fly. Yes the shock the flying public would have to deal with after the press releases come out would last 2 weeks or so, ticket purchases would drop 2-5% for those two weeks, and after that. . . people would realize that they still have to fly if they want to get from ATL - ORD in less than 4 hours.
So sure, if we raise prices, less people will fly. . . period.
You lose that 5% of the population that cant afford to fly, and you turn a profit on everyone else, and the 3% of the 5% that still think they can afford to fly.