Originally Posted by
cuthere
Supply vs. demand. When supply goes down (fewer seats on offer due to FR’s reduction), then demand for remaining seats goes up (as does the price).
That's back to front. Much air travel is discretionary, so beyond a base load the level of demand is established by the pricing.
It's not obscure economics, it's the entire basis of Ryanair's strategy! And indeed how Easyjet started (
fly to London for the price of a pair of jeans ).
On the Stansted, Easyjet seem to have calculated that they can maintain the route solely by milking the must-fly base load of passengers and discarding the opportunistic, discretionary demand that Ryanair had cultivated.