Labor Day Travel, Overall Airline Revenue Both In Freefall
It seems like the airlines' current business plan, which as near as we've figured out goes something like "alienate our customers by repeatedly raising a bevy of opaque fees," has failed to reinvigorate air travel. They will still perhaps manage to fill up their planes this Labor Day, but only because they've also dramatically scaled back their fleets:
U.S. airlines will carry 16 million passengers during the eight-day Labor Day period, a 3.5 percent drop from a year earlier. And airlines already are offering discount fares for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's travel...While fewer people are flying, full planes will be more common because U.S. airlines pulled at least 500 aircraft from service since the start of 2008 to better match capacity with sagging sales.
Total losses for the global airline industry in the second quarter, as of this morning: 2 billion dollars. Total losses for the first six months: 6 billion. And that first report has the line "there was a material improvement in July," which should give you an idea of what airline execs are facing.
Which leaves us with this question: are we horrible people for feeling just a little bit relieved that airports will be just a little bit less crowded next week? Feel free to express outrage or guilty agreement in the comments.
[Photo: Robert Couse-Baker / Wiki Commons]
Related Stories:
· Labor Day travel down, yet planes will be full [Seattle Times]
· Airline News Coverage [Jaunted]
· Airports Coverage [Jaunted]
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