Archive for the ‘miles’ Category:
The Data Will Set You Free
25% of Airline Delays Due to Volume
Have you wondered recently why air travel seems to have gotten worse but you can’t exactly understand why? Are more people traveling? Is the economy going gangbusters? Is Social Media bringing the world together?
A quick stroll through the transportation department bureau of statistics is truly revealing. The airline industry is methodologically reducing capacity AND increasing profits. This does not make sense – how can any product sell less and make more?
The number of domestic flights has reduced from just over 10 million in 2005 to only 7 million in 2011. This is the same number of flights as 2000
- Domestic Airline Profits
Revenue passenger miles have fallen from 570,854,623 to 473,968,295 over the same time period. That is roughly 100,000,000 less seat miles flown.
That makes sense because available capacity has dropped – seat miles have diminished from 739,841,385 to 571,129,091
Meanwhile load factors (passenger-miles as a proportion of available seat-miles) have jumped from 77% to 83%. Yup, that means that airplanes are a lot more crowded.
- Revenue from Cancellation / Change Fees
So then it should not be surprising that 25% of all delays are from overloading as airlines pull away from smaller airports and work the hubs harder.
Well, we know that aviation is a difficult business and that the industry racked up major losses but things are better now right? The industry profits are well over 5 billion dollars.
But where is this money coming from? Well, first the reservation change/cancellation fees collected are 2.3 billion dollars in 2010 – this is the money that we pay the airlines for delivering ZERO service, seriously. The baggage fees collected are also over 3 billion dollars. So there are $5B in fees and $5B profit…do the math.
Does anyone see what’s happening? Can anyone see what direction these trends are headed in? Does anyone see the alternative? We do – the future opportunity is to build an alternate system of non-stop service using public charter certification on private jets. If you are a traveler, set yourself free. If you are an investor, Social Flights is a magnificent opportunity getting better every day…