airline seats being dumped en masse ?
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$999 BNE or SYD/LAX return in peak xmas school hols
now there are $999 return fares (including taxes) from both BNE & SYD to LAX departing from 10JAN, which means could do 2 weeks in USA & still get back before kids go back to school January 27 or 28.
Why are airlines doing this ? & we're not talking just a few seats here.
Many bus class types don't pay their own fares, so these aren't as price sensitive.
Why are airlines doing this ? & we're not talking just a few seats here.
Many bus class types don't pay their own fares, so these aren't as price sensitive.
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more seat dumping
at loss leader prices
SCOOT $139 OOL/SIN ONE WAY
CEBU PACIFIC $199 RETURN SYD/MNL/SYD
all taxes included, but no food, drinks or checked baggage, but no that much extra.
eg. SCOOT 20kgs checked baggage & basic meal & drink $34.
Take out the $55 OZ departure taxes & security charges & not left with much !!!!!!!!!!!
SCOOT $139 OOL/SIN ONE WAY
CEBU PACIFIC $199 RETURN SYD/MNL/SYD
all taxes included, but no food, drinks or checked baggage, but no that much extra.
eg. SCOOT 20kgs checked baggage & basic meal & drink $34.
Take out the $55 OZ departure taxes & security charges & not left with much !!!!!!!!!!!
Singaporeans have no experience whatsoever in running low-cost carriers, and I don't expect they ever will. Tiger and Jetstar Asia have been poorly managed business that have together lost over $1 Billion.
Singapore clearly have demonstrated they will bail out Tiger at any cost, they have thrown hundreds of millions at failed ideas. Funding losses does not seem to be a problem so I'd expect Scoots losses wouldn't be an issue over the next decade, until the money dries up.
Id expect Scoot to head down a similar road as Tiger and bleed millions every year, just you watch, they will never hold the 20 787s on order.
The fact that Scoot is re routing its Gold Coast flights via Sydney says it all really.
Singapore clearly have demonstrated they will bail out Tiger at any cost, they have thrown hundreds of millions at failed ideas. Funding losses does not seem to be a problem so I'd expect Scoots losses wouldn't be an issue over the next decade, until the money dries up.
Id expect Scoot to head down a similar road as Tiger and bleed millions every year, just you watch, they will never hold the 20 787s on order.
The fact that Scoot is re routing its Gold Coast flights via Sydney says it all really.
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And how precisely are you going to get back?
I just did a dummy Scoot return trip (OOL-SIN-OOL) and the return price is (all figures AUD) $562 ($139 +$239) (+20Kg baggage + hot meal each way). I'm only at stage 2 of the booking, but already I can "upgrade" my hot meal to a premium (+$4 each leg available online only). I could also have included a 2nd carry on bag (+$30 each leg).
To go further through the process, I am required to actually start the booking with real names. No doubt in further stages of the 5 step process I could choose such things as a blanket, seat allocation, exits rows - each for a modest fee, but they all add up. I'm sure there is a credit card surcharge somewhere in there too, probably I'd discover it after investing a lot of time to make it through the web maze.
The price ($139 for Scoot) you quote is taken out of context, you are indeed quoting a loss-leader - but only for a single component of a bundle system that you must purchase, usually a return trip + bags at minimum. You need to look at what most passengers would actually be required to do, not quote just a single component of an integrated bundle. The marketing trick here is to only show you an artificially cheap component that in essence cannot be purchased as a standalone item.
Further, there is the "moment of truth" after the shopping holiday at the airport when you have busted you 20Kg baggage allowance and they literally can charge you an arm and leg to get the rest of the booty home. I'm sure there are lots of other gotcha's embedded in there for unsuspecting travellers, all fixable by handing over your Credit Card.
Look at the total cost, not individual items.
I just did a dummy Scoot return trip (OOL-SIN-OOL) and the return price is (all figures AUD) $562 ($139 +$239) (+20Kg baggage + hot meal each way). I'm only at stage 2 of the booking, but already I can "upgrade" my hot meal to a premium (+$4 each leg available online only). I could also have included a 2nd carry on bag (+$30 each leg).
To go further through the process, I am required to actually start the booking with real names. No doubt in further stages of the 5 step process I could choose such things as a blanket, seat allocation, exits rows - each for a modest fee, but they all add up. I'm sure there is a credit card surcharge somewhere in there too, probably I'd discover it after investing a lot of time to make it through the web maze.
The price ($139 for Scoot) you quote is taken out of context, you are indeed quoting a loss-leader - but only for a single component of a bundle system that you must purchase, usually a return trip + bags at minimum. You need to look at what most passengers would actually be required to do, not quote just a single component of an integrated bundle. The marketing trick here is to only show you an artificially cheap component that in essence cannot be purchased as a standalone item.
Further, there is the "moment of truth" after the shopping holiday at the airport when you have busted you 20Kg baggage allowance and they literally can charge you an arm and leg to get the rest of the booty home. I'm sure there are lots of other gotcha's embedded in there for unsuspecting travellers, all fixable by handing over your Credit Card.
Look at the total cost, not individual items.
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plenty of $139 fares each way.
Plus talking to people flying over to SIN, it seems many are travelling very light, so many may not need any checked baggage & buying clothes etc in SIN.
Some said they were only going as it was $139 each way.
There's talk around that either Air Asia X, Scoot or Cebu Pacific might start flying the Tasman, although would have thought it unlikely that Scoot would do it, being owned by SQ.
If any did, they would really thrown the cat amongst the pidgeons.
Cebu has something like 436 seats on their A330's, which means their costs per seat must be very low.
Plus talking to people flying over to SIN, it seems many are travelling very light, so many may not need any checked baggage & buying clothes etc in SIN.
Some said they were only going as it was $139 each way.
There's talk around that either Air Asia X, Scoot or Cebu Pacific might start flying the Tasman, although would have thought it unlikely that Scoot would do it, being owned by SQ.
If any did, they would really thrown the cat amongst the pidgeons.
Cebu has something like 436 seats on their A330's, which means their costs per seat must be very low.
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BNEA320, you began & titled this thread with a question airline seats being dumped en masse ?
Here is what you posted first #1
You appear to determine to prove this your your assertion,as a foregone conclusion. This technique is "positivism", and it one that lawyers would use to advance their clients interests, not to genuinely attempt to get towards an objective truth. A defendants lawyer is not required to assist in convicting his client, fair enough.
Scientific enquiry on the other hand is generally accepted as falsification - if I can't disprove something, with all the evidence in hand, then it must be considered provisionally true until more evidence is found, but I must continue to search for evidence that disproves my theory.
However, you appear to entirely to discount any evidence, even your own [Cebu has something like 436 seats on their A330's, which means their costs per seat must be very low] to the contrary. Your right, their cost base are much lower as they pack 45% more seats compared traditional carriers. Does this provide evidence that they are dumping seats because there are no customers?
As I indicated in post above, the web headline fare is a lowball marketing technique to stimulate interest. Why would airlines, particularly a LCC want to do this? Probably because Google & fare comparison sites rank by price. The only way to get the customer to click through is to at the top of the list as the lowest price. Once you have been taken to the airlines website, it is much more difficult to do comparisons between carriers once all the restrictions & hurdles are added.
Mobile phone & internet companies do exactly the same thing with their contracts. Companies are carried by a wholesale base carrier (eg Virgin carried on the Optus network) resell virtually identical services - phone calls, SMS's & data. Yet they make it exceedingly difficult to do a direct comparison. There are a myriad of other things that happen behind the scenes (technical support, data priority etc). The end of the day most get an identical service, yet have paid different prices for this item. That's down to the skill of marketing department, to reap as much as they can from the market for an identical product.
Can you directly compare the "value" of each of the 436 seats on an Cebu A330 (Cebu Pacific presents the world's most cramped long haul A330 ) vs each of the 400 seats on a Scoot B772 for 16 hours of travel?
Can you compare the "value" of customer support of each LCC when your aircraft breaks down and you may be left on your own? For the most part LCC's will do only the bare legal minimum. LCC push all the risk they can back onto their customers, fair enough, as long as the customer understands. Some simply refuse to refund their customers money for cancelled flights (AirAsia X stalls on flight refunds for cancelled Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur route ).
Yes, there will be some incredibly price sensitive customers who will spend days trawling websites to get one way fares, go without food and water & carry 7kg of hand luggage to a foreign destination as one of 436 passengers. But really, is the bulk of the experience for travellers, especially families who cannot split up for different flights?
The limited evidence you have presented thus far fails to make your case in my opinion. You seem to only see the evidence that suits your argument, and ignore anything else. This is not to discount that you may actually be correct, however ignoring evidence that doesn't suit your arguments simply doesn't make it go away.
Here is what you posted first #1
Originally Posted by BNEA320
it appears that the public aren't buying airline seats in any great number to anywhere at the moment.
Air Asia last week was doing $67 one way from Australia to ports beyond KUL like Langkawi, Penang etc. ($67 is basically the taxes)
Scoot dumping seats to SIN from $139 (OOL/SIN) in school holidays.
...
Air Asia last week was doing $67 one way from Australia to ports beyond KUL like Langkawi, Penang etc. ($67 is basically the taxes)
Scoot dumping seats to SIN from $139 (OOL/SIN) in school holidays.
...
Scientific enquiry on the other hand is generally accepted as falsification - if I can't disprove something, with all the evidence in hand, then it must be considered provisionally true until more evidence is found, but I must continue to search for evidence that disproves my theory.
However, you appear to entirely to discount any evidence, even your own [Cebu has something like 436 seats on their A330's, which means their costs per seat must be very low] to the contrary. Your right, their cost base are much lower as they pack 45% more seats compared traditional carriers. Does this provide evidence that they are dumping seats because there are no customers?
As I indicated in post above, the web headline fare is a lowball marketing technique to stimulate interest. Why would airlines, particularly a LCC want to do this? Probably because Google & fare comparison sites rank by price. The only way to get the customer to click through is to at the top of the list as the lowest price. Once you have been taken to the airlines website, it is much more difficult to do comparisons between carriers once all the restrictions & hurdles are added.
Mobile phone & internet companies do exactly the same thing with their contracts. Companies are carried by a wholesale base carrier (eg Virgin carried on the Optus network) resell virtually identical services - phone calls, SMS's & data. Yet they make it exceedingly difficult to do a direct comparison. There are a myriad of other things that happen behind the scenes (technical support, data priority etc). The end of the day most get an identical service, yet have paid different prices for this item. That's down to the skill of marketing department, to reap as much as they can from the market for an identical product.
Can you directly compare the "value" of each of the 436 seats on an Cebu A330 (Cebu Pacific presents the world's most cramped long haul A330 ) vs each of the 400 seats on a Scoot B772 for 16 hours of travel?
Can you compare the "value" of customer support of each LCC when your aircraft breaks down and you may be left on your own? For the most part LCC's will do only the bare legal minimum. LCC push all the risk they can back onto their customers, fair enough, as long as the customer understands. Some simply refuse to refund their customers money for cancelled flights (AirAsia X stalls on flight refunds for cancelled Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur route ).
Yes, there will be some incredibly price sensitive customers who will spend days trawling websites to get one way fares, go without food and water & carry 7kg of hand luggage to a foreign destination as one of 436 passengers. But really, is the bulk of the experience for travellers, especially families who cannot split up for different flights?
The limited evidence you have presented thus far fails to make your case in my opinion. You seem to only see the evidence that suits your argument, and ignore anything else. This is not to discount that you may actually be correct, however ignoring evidence that doesn't suit your arguments simply doesn't make it go away.
Last edited by CurtainTwitcher; 17th Apr 2015 at 05:39.
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$999 return to lax from bne for peak season departures from 10 jan Extended.
According to airline rep sales at these prices are very slow.
Am thinking flights will be cut next or airlines will start failing left right & centre.
It looks like being a very rough 2015 for many airlines.
According to airline rep sales at these prices are very slow.
Am thinking flights will be cut next or airlines will start failing left right & centre.
It looks like being a very rough 2015 for many airlines.
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poppa said
quote
The fact that Scoot is re routing its Gold Coast flights via Sydney says it all really.
>>
only 2 flights per week are SIN/SYD/OOL & they are on brand new 789's, as are all SYD flights.
Got back today on TZ & virtually no difference between TZ & JQ.
Curtaintswitch said
>>
Further, there is the "moment of truth" after the shopping holiday at the airport when you have busted you 20Kg baggage allowance and they literally can charge you an arm and leg to get the rest of the booty home. I'm sure there are lots of other gotcha's embedded in there for unsuspecting travellers, all fixable by handing over your Credit Card.
Look at the total cost, not individual items.
>>
yep & total cost is vastly less than any legacy carrier. Every airline these days legacy, LCC or ULCC, will hit you with excess baggage charges & don't think TZ charges are higher than anyone else.
People will always pay ($139 + $34) x 2 sooner than they will pay $346. Why it sounds cheaper.
quote
The fact that Scoot is re routing its Gold Coast flights via Sydney says it all really.
>>
only 2 flights per week are SIN/SYD/OOL & they are on brand new 789's, as are all SYD flights.
Got back today on TZ & virtually no difference between TZ & JQ.
Curtaintswitch said
>>
Further, there is the "moment of truth" after the shopping holiday at the airport when you have busted you 20Kg baggage allowance and they literally can charge you an arm and leg to get the rest of the booty home. I'm sure there are lots of other gotcha's embedded in there for unsuspecting travellers, all fixable by handing over your Credit Card.
Look at the total cost, not individual items.
>>
yep & total cost is vastly less than any legacy carrier. Every airline these days legacy, LCC or ULCC, will hit you with excess baggage charges & don't think TZ charges are higher than anyone else.
People will always pay ($139 + $34) x 2 sooner than they will pay $346. Why it sounds cheaper.
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$799 is just plain stupid marketing by the kiwis (bestjet is former strategic/Air Australia's CEO's wife we believe)
If people will pay $799, they'll pay $999 including some ground content, either car &/or accom.
Or even $1499 with $700 ground content.
All these low fares create a benchmark in the average punters mind & they'll hold off booking in future, until similar type of fare appears.
If people will pay $799, they'll pay $999 including some ground content, either car &/or accom.
Or even $1499 with $700 ground content.
All these low fares create a benchmark in the average punters mind & they'll hold off booking in future, until similar type of fare appears.
$799 is just plain stupid marketing by the kiwis
Secondly the Australian economy isn't positive and people are not spending the way they were 2 years ago. All those FIFO workers that now have no work have no money for the Disney trips.
The same discounts can be found on flights to the UK and Europe.
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So what is going to eventually happen in this apparent race to the bottom?
Yet another Airline going belly up or what?
Yet another Airline going belly up or what?
given that websites address, is that $799usd?
Bestjet.com is 100% Australian
Fortitude Valley, QLD, 4006
I have also seen Return Flights SYD-LHR for $1289 for next month
(via Delhi each direction)
There are plenty of heavily discounted seats even next month
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VA now matching QF $999 fares to LAX Xmas school holidays
VA are matching BNE & SYD/LAX rtn for AUD$999 inc tax & now also offering MEL/LAX rtn for $50 more.
Truckloads of seats for departure from 10 January onwards.
How is govt going to restore consumer confidence ?
Truckloads of seats for departure from 10 January onwards.
How is govt going to restore consumer confidence ?
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Sounds like a crisis.
The Chinese word for 'crisis' is a combination of two words - danger+opportunity.
I suggest that you take note of the latter word and profit from it.
The Chinese word for 'crisis' is a combination of two words - danger+opportunity.
I suggest that you take note of the latter word and profit from it.
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when you have big travel groups taking only $99 deposit on Xmas fare specials, with balance 10 weeks out, you know things are very VERY slow in booking land.
Usually any specials these days are book now, pay(in full) now.
Usually any specials these days are book now, pay(in full) now.