(no subject)

[randomness]

Calling Beauvais–Tillé (BVA) a Paris airport is much like calling Manchester–Boston Regional (MHT) a Boston airport. It's clever marketing but not particularly accurate.

Claiming Châlons Vatry (XCR) as a Paris airport is just ridiculous.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

From where I live (Waltham), it takes longer to get to Manchester than Logan, but I don't have to worry about the traffic, so I actually prefer to fly out of Manchester. Unfortunately, Manchester ticket prices are consistently higher. Presumably BVA has a price advantage...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I used to fly out of Manchester when the airport ran its free shuttle service to Anderson (Woburn) and Sullivan Square stations. At the time, for various competitive reasons, ticket prices from Manchester were sometimes cheaper than either Logan or T. F. Green in Providence.

Then Flight Line took over the route and started charging a fare that basically negated any difference in ticket price. Around the same time, again for various competitive reasons, ticket prices from Manchester stopped being a better deal as much of the time.

I stopped flying out of Manchester.

Beauvais–Tillé does have a price advantage, sometimes, but. The "but" is that it is served (I think entirely) by low-fare airlines, led by Ryanair. I think Ryanair serves Beauvais–Tillé as its only "Paris" airport. In my experience low-fare airlines fail badly. That is, if everything goes well, which it does for me most of the time, the trip is fine. If it doesn't, however, you are screwed and it is your problem, not the airline's.

The network airlines have dropped some fares to compete with Ryanair, but because Beauvais–Tillé is so far out of the way--it really is about the same distance to Paris as Manchester is to Boston, and the bus takes almost the same amount of time, though it is much cheaper than Flight Line--Air France doesn't have to lower its fares as much to keep people flying into Charles de Gaulle and Orly rather than Beauvais–Tillé.

If there's a good enough fare into Beauvais–Tillé and I'm not trying to connect out and I have no plans that won't survive a cancellation, I'm willing to fly into and out of there, but that's a lot of "and"s.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I know that Ryanair is famous for being spectacularly unpleasant. Are the other low-fare airlines that go to Europe the same? My impression is that low-fare airlines in the US aren't noticeably worse than majors.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I actually haven't flown on many of the low-fare European airlines. I have flown on Ryanair, and though I certainly agree they won't win any prizes for service, I wouldn't call them spectacularly unpleasant, just unpleasant.

I would probably fly them again if they were significantly less expensive than the alternative, or flew to an airport that was actually convenient to where I was going. But I would definitely look at other airlines before I went ahead and booked.

I think of Ryanair as a lot like Spirit Airlines, who seem to think innovation consists of devising new and more cunning ways to levy fees. Both their CEOs have historically shown a certain amount of contempt for their passengers.

I didn't have any particular problem on easyJet, who I think are the number two low-fare European airline. I actually rather like them, and would fly them again.

But as far as I can tell there's no European equivalent of Southwest, who actually appear to have some very customer-friendly policies--their flight change policy is very generous even by network airline standards--which appear to be in keeping with their general philosophy.

As I said, all low-fare airlines are pretty much okay when everything goes right. But when things go wrong is when you find out how much they suck.

(Edited to reduce repetition.)

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

As I said, all low-fare airlines are pretty much okay when everything goes right. But when things go wrong is when you find out how much they suck.

Interesting... it comes down to a question of how much insurance you want to buy. (Who bears the risks?)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's true, although the incentives are a bit messed up. When you fly on a low-fare airline, you bear the risk...for a failure of service by the airline.

This tends to encourage a race for the bottom in terms of service quality. Ryanair and Spirit seem to be the market leaders in that race.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

OTOH, the customer has a fairly good idea of the risk, because the airline can't escape its reputation. One way to look at it is the customers are differentiated in the money value of not getting there on time. If you're a law firm going to pitch a big client, or even a business sending a "professional", delay of a person costs several hundred dollars. If you're a tourist, it may be $100 or less. So "What would you pay to avoid a 5% chance of being delayed 1 day in arrival?" may be vastly different. So the optimal way to run an airline may be different for the two classes of customers.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

OTOH, the customer has a fairly good idea of the risk, because the airline can't escape its reputation.

Some do, some don't. I think in general business travelers, or the offices which arrange their travel, have a better idea than the average leisure traveler about airlines and their reputations. And airlines with bad reputations do put quite a lot of effort into obscuring that reputation. Occasionally they go so far as to change their names if the reputation is bad enough.

One way to look at it is the customers are differentiated in the money value of not getting there on time.

It is certainly true that customers are differentiated in the value of their time. However, I think even leisure travelers can incur significant costs if they encounter a problem. The key is that they seem to look at the up-front cost and ignore the risks. This is bad practice but leisure travelers generally don't have as much experience or interest in the ins and outs of travel: they're trying to get somewhere and would prefer not to spend much time or effort on the journey. This makes it easier for an airline (or really, anyone else) to take advantage of their inattention.

In general, my experience with business travel has been that businesses place a greater importance on the downside risks and are willing and able to pay more to minimize them. The other thing a leisure traveler can do which a business traveler often cannot is to build flexibility into their trip to mitigate the effect of problems.

In some ways the big network airlines already do this sort of differentiation when they break up their aircraft into different classes: the level of service one gets in first or second (business) class is in my experience much better than that in third (economy). The difference in-flight is only a part of the improved service.