Capacity into London

[cwatters]

I'm not against building another airport to serve London but I'm finding it hard to underatand why more capacity is required.

Fares for short haul flights to/from some London airports to Europe are range from extreemly cheap ($1+tax in some cases). To very expensive. This suggests that airlines can't sell tickets on some routes. Perhaps what's needed is a better/different slot allocation process first?

[FlyingForFun]

I'm sure some marketing person will correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the reason tickets are sold of at £1 is not because there is spare capacity at all - if this were the case, these would be the last tickets to go, but the cheap ones are actually the first ones to be sold, with prices increasing as you get nearer to the date of your flight.

The reason these tickets are sold so cheaply is to give the carrier a reputation for being cheap. It is well-known that RyanAir, EasyJet, etc. sell tickets cheaply, sometimes for £1. So when you want a cheap ticket you log on to their website. The cheapest ticket you can find is £50, so you buy that ticket, "knowing" that it must be a good price because "RyanAir/EasyJet/Whoever are always cheap". I suspect that the average price of tickets is only slightly lower than the major carriers (which is accounted for by the lack of meals, lack of pre-assigned seats, etc.)

Demand for capacity is always increasing. Even if there were spare capacity at the moment, it wouldn't last very long. Which is a good thing for us in the industry (or hoping to get into the industry in my case!) but a bad thing for eco-warriors.

FFF
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