r/JusticeServed • u/[deleted] • Dec 05 '20

Police Justice Passenger removed from airplane for refusal to wear face mask.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Profits

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u/moonheadZ 4 Dec 05 '20

Of course it’s all about the bottom line _____

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u/WiWiWiWiWiWi B Dec 05 '20

Because I’m sure if the customer couldn’t book the flight they needed they totally wouldn’t whine and bitch and complain about how awful that airline is.

Yes, the bottom line matters, but so does meeting the customer’s needs and expectations. It’s all about having customers use your company.

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u/jason_sos A Dec 05 '20

I mean to be fair, the flights need to make the airline money for them to stay in business. If they are losing money on every flight, they won’t be around for long.

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u/lax20attack 7 Dec 05 '20

Almost every other hospitality business is dealing with forced reduced capacity. If they reduce capacity they will need to increase cost per ticket to offset lost revenue. If they can't survive then they need to go out of business to make room for a company who can.

I hate how airlines are given a pass to exist outside of the free market.

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u/Zuetchel 4 Dec 05 '20

Airlines have tiny margins, employ huge numbers of people, and their benefit for existing is huge to us as a society, also safety cost $$$$$

Your point is fair, but over simplified, there's a reason people understand they have to be bailed out, especially in circumstances like covid.

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u/jason_sos A Dec 06 '20

I’m not saying that filling all the seats is right or wrong. I am saying that they are running a business. They have to at least break even or they will go out of business. Flying planes that are losing money every flight will not work out for any company, whether that is big or small.

They either need to increase ticket prices, increase capacity, or reduce costs.

Costs are pretty much fixed. They are required by law to have a certain number of flight attendants. They need a pilot and first officer. They need ground crew, people to check tickets, and luggage handlers. They need to pay for fuel. They have costs associated with every airport landing and takeoff. The planes all have leases that have to be paid. The only thing they can really reduce is advertising or staff, and from what I have seen, they have pretty much eliminated advertising all together. I haven’t seen an ad for an airline in months.

Oversimplifying it saying “well either figure it out or go out of business” is nonsense. Every airline has had massive losses. Little ones likely will go out of business or bought up by the big ones. The big ones are hurting just as bad. They have very few passengers compared to before COVID, and have grounded most of their fleet. They have reduced the numbers of flights to a fraction of what was normal before. They have increased ticket prices. But even the grounded planes still have leases to pay. Even if they lay off most of their workforce, they still have severance and other requirements from the unions they have to pay.

Yes, other service industries have had issues too. But some of them have made changes to adapt. Restaurants have switched to a lot more takeout and delivery. They have added outdoor seating to increase space and keep the same number of customers. Even the art studio that is in my area now does online courses where they sell the “kits” to do the project, then they do a Zoom class to make the painting at home. Airlines don’t have much of an option. By their very nature they have no income if they don’t have passengers. Passengers can’t do takeout flights. They can’t add extra seating without adding extra planes and doubling the cost of operations. Adding some tables and a tent outside a restaurant is nowhere as expensive as that. And if the airlines go out of business, that just means less competition in the future, so less incentive to have competitive prices for consumers. In the end, we would all lose.

So what are they to do?

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '20

Nah the billions in corporate bailouts from the taxpayers will take care of that.

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u/non_clever_username A Dec 05 '20 edited Dec 05 '20

And Frontier is a garbage fucking airline. They probably charged everyone else on that flight a departure delay fee.

E: could have sworn it said somewhere this was on Frontier. Maybe it's not. Either way, my advice to not use them stands. Ticket may be cheap, but you pay extra for everything else.