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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vendit™ who wrote (8058)	4/21/2005 8:11:13 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8752

Maybe labor costs a lot (union or non-union), but it is a relatively fixed cost. Fuel is not, and that's the problem. $700 to fly from ATL to DC? You got ripped off big time unless you had a stopover in Paris France or it was a chartered flight with all the free beer you can drink and dancing girls on board. <gggg> But seriously, that's gotta be apples and oranges there---I fly too, and airline tickets have not dropped 84% ($700 to $114) in two years. My gestalt is they are about the same now as 2 years ago, or if they have decreased, the decrease is modest. Also unsustainable in the long run if fuel costs keep rising at the rates we have seen over the last two years. A quick glance at the futures charts or the various relevant indexes will convince you that oil and its derivatives have about doubled or so in the last 2 years (at least): futuresource.com I don't know for sure how labor costs have changed in that time for the airline industry, but no way they have increased anything close to that figure. More than likely, with industry consolidation and downsizing, and cost-of-living increases limited by the reported low rates of inflation and so forth, net labor costs have if anything decreased a bit over the last 2 years, but I don't have figures at hand.... just a guesstimate. T