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Rime posted:Ryanair is planning to launch $25 cross-atlantic flights in the next few years. Well isn't that just loving great. As if the airlines needed another reason to keep our pay criminally low. Here's the thing, guys and girls; the laws of physics dictate that an aircraft flying a certain distance will burn a given amount of fuel, regardless of whatever colours are painted on the side. Additionally, the cost of parts and maintenance, especially these days when airlines purchase service contracts, is pretty much the same around the world. So, where do the savings come from? From the pockets of me and my coworkers in the aviation industry. This race to the bottom means that airlines are demanding their employees, especially those of us in flight operations, to work longer hours, often for less pay. Where it gets ugly is when Airline A gets a concessionary contract from their staff, now the pressure is on Airline B and Airline C and Charter Company D and Air Taxi E and Flight School F to match the concessions that A got, because nobody wants to be holding the bag when their competitor or the guys up above do. I'm aware this sort of thing is in no way unique to aviation, but it is certainly almost at its worst in aviation. Never mind working for fewer inflation a adjusted dollars than 25-30 years ago, huge numbers of us are working for fewer dollars period...even before you adjust for inflation. PT6A posted:They were running it in and out of YYC for a while, but now it's a 767 again. Meh, I put up with Air Canada economy last year to Frankfurt. I'm gonna tell you a little secret... Calgary is a notoriously lovely air travel market; the typical yield to and from Calgary to, well, anywhere apart from Houston, is among the lowest of any city of comparable size anywhere in the world. The reason? No premium traffic.
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Mar 18, 2015 04:08
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That's loving bullshit. I once paid $1500 for a flight from Vancouver to Calgary.
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Mar 18, 2015 04:10
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Perhaps air flight is not a sustainable model until we figure out a better fuel source.
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Mar 18, 2015 04:11
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Ryanair will just charge $500 per piece of checked luggage, that's how their business model works: the fat assholes with nine suitcases for a weekend subsidize the one-baggers. 
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Mar 18, 2015 04:22
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Cultural Imperial posted:That's loving bullshit. Remember what thread this is dude...reality doesn't apply to Vancouver.
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Mar 18, 2015 04:25
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MrChips posted:Remember what thread this is dude...reality doesn't apply to Vancouver. The price of inter-Canada air travel is ridiculous, Vancouver or not.
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Mar 18, 2015 04:35
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Book a flight to Newfoundland sometimes 
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Mar 18, 2015 04:54
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I've been on two transatlantic Air Canada flights in cattle class and neither were awful and you all sound like big babies
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Mar 18, 2015 05:09
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Take it from me, air canada is pure poo poo. Source: i flew 75k miles one year.
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Mar 18, 2015 05:17
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unlimited shrimp posted:I've been on two transatlantic Air Canada flights in cattle class and neither were awful and you all sound like big babies No one is saying flying AC will give you a butt disease. It's just way worse than Lufthansa or BA or any non-Ryanair carrier for equivalent money.
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Mar 18, 2015 05:36
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Brannock posted:Perhaps air flight is not a sustainable model until we figure out a better fuel source. Air flight would be perfectly sustainable if people weren't such cheap cunts all the time. Flying is cheaper now than it ever has been, and we're still not satisfied. Then we bitch that the service is terrible, but the airlines do that because, no matter what people say, they'll fly Air Transat, Sunwing or some other airline run by loving sadists just to save 95 cents. If there were money in making the premium economy section bigger than it is, airlines would be over it like stink on an ape's rear end. MrChips posted:I'm gonna tell you a little secret... This is odd. Every flight I've flown on out of Calgary to Europe has been packed rear end to elbow, and I've seen many people connecting through YYZ to destinations that are served direct out of Calgary. Is it all leisure traffic, or what?
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Mar 18, 2015 05:43
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Is Cathay Pacific just a really good airline or something, because flying economy with them wasn't anything near the horrible experience you guys or anyone else talks about. Granted, I took a zopiclone to put myself out for a good chunk of the 15 or so hours to Manila, but the time I was awake wasn't a nightmare or anything.
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Mar 18, 2015 09:54
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Rime posted:Ryanair will just charge $500 per piece of checked luggage, that's how their business model works: the fat assholes with nine suitcases for a weekend subsidize the one-baggers. You don't honestly think that will stop management from telling their aircrews and other staff "you'd better take a pay cut and defer your raises as stipulated in your old contract because we have a stack of thousands of resumes from people who will"? HookShot posted:The price of inter-Canada air travel is ridiculous, Vancouver or not. Lack of competition is certainly a part of it, but there is a good reason why there isn't room for more than two national domestic airlines in Canada - our market is very small and spread out over incredible distances. As an example, flying from Calgary to Toronto is roughly the same distance as flying from Dublin to Istanbul...clear across Europe, in other words, and that's barely more than halfway across Canada. Remember when I said that an airplane will burn X amount of fuel, need Y amount of maintenance spending and Z amount of salaries to fly a given distance? If those distances are large, X+Y+Z is gonna be a big number. There are other reasons that preclude competition in the Canadian aviation sector, but they start to get complicated and would require an effortpost that frankly is beyond the scope of both this derail and this thread.  PT6A posted:This is odd. Every flight I've flown on out of Calgary to Europe has been packed rear end to elbow, and I've seen many people connecting through YYZ to destinations that are served direct out of Calgary. Is it all leisure traffic, or what? Bingo. Almost all of Calgary's international traffic is leisure-related or even worse, VFR (visiting friends and relatives - the other definition of VFR in aviation) traffic. Coxswain Balls posted:Is Cathay Pacific just a really good airline or something, because flying economy with them wasn't anything near the horrible experience you guys or anyone else talks about. Granted, I took a zopiclone to put myself out for a good chunk of the 15 or so hours to Manila, but the time I was awake wasn't a nightmare or anything. They're pretty good. You have to remember that the lovely Airline Experience® is largely a North American (and to a lesser extent) a European phenomenon, though it is starting to show signs of taking root in Southeast Asia. Even still, the so-called "legacy" carriers in Asia and (to a lesser extent) Europe usually try to make the experience for the passenger as comfortable as possible, and pride themselves on their attention to detail when it comes to customer experience, even if it means some frankly archaic attitudes toward things (looking at you guys, ME3 and Singapore). In North America, especially in the US, nobody in the business really gives a poo poo how miserable your flight might be. OK, this derail has prpbably gone on long enough. Someone go post some graphs to show how hosed/stupid we are when it comes to our finances! MrChips fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 11:22
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I'm thinking RyanAir's "25 dollar seats" will be like Megabus advertising that they have "trips from as low as $1". They'll be a few seats at this heavily discounted rate (primarily for marketing purposes), subsidized by a large number of normally-priced "premium" seats.
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Mar 18, 2015 11:38
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MickeyFinn posted:I flew on Air Canada from Buenos Aires to Santiago and it was pretty nice for me. Although this one lady got harassed by every single flight attendant for not sitting in the correct seat on a 70% empty flight. It's less important when cruising but you need to be in your assigned seat during take off and landing so it's easier to identify the charred corpse.
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Mar 18, 2015 12:11
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unlimited shrimp posted:I've been on two transatlantic Air Canada flights in cattle class and neither were awful and you all sound like big babies Guy who's been on less flights in his life than some people take a month declares coach acceptable.
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Mar 18, 2015 12:15
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Saltin posted:Guy who's been on less flights in his life than some people take a month declares coach acceptable. Frequent flyers are a fraction of the air travelling population, so I'm guessing the opinions of people like me carry more weight with the airlines.
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Mar 18, 2015 12:30
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MrChips posted:Bingo. Almost all of Calgary's international traffic is leisure-related or even worse, VFR (visiting friends and relatives - the other definition of VFR in aviation) traffic. I'm sorry, I know you wanted end this derail but i have to ask. What is so bad about VFR's?
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Mar 18, 2015 13:05
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unlimited shrimp posted:Frequent flyers are a fraction of the air travelling population, so I'm guessing the opinions of people like me carry more weight with the airlines. You don't need to be a elite status frequent flier with an airline to fly enough that you don't want to be in coach. It loving sucks if you do it with any regularity at all, hope this helps frame up the thing you have little to no experience with.
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Mar 18, 2015 13:22
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You guys flying Air Canada have no loving clue how bad poo poo really gets outside of the western world. We routinely do proposals for airplanes with 28" and 29" seat pitch with minimal catering. Mr. chip can explain what that means to you guys. I would show you the engineering drawings of cabin layouts I've worked on but it would break my NDA. Airlines are trying to get the cheapest possible airplane with the absolute maximum possible amount of PAX in a given cabin. We haven't even scratched the surface of bad when it comes to flying coach.
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Mar 18, 2015 13:57
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Saw this yesterday and almost had to stop and buy a house right then and there! Thanks, weird off-brand bank!
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Mar 18, 2015 13:59
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triplexpac posted:Saw this yesterday and almost had to stop and buy a house right then and there! You don't need to go off brand - BMO announced 2.79 yesterday. Of course, it doesn't matter how low rates go if jobs are disappearing.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:07
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FrozenVent posted:Book a flight to Newfoundland sometimes Theres no reason to go there, and besides it's the winter so they are all on pogey waiting for warmer weather.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:32
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I noticed that Canada's inflation rate is somewhere around 1% you right now. With all the cheap consumer credit I kind of expected it to shoot a little bit higher. What's keeping Canadian inflation this low?
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Mar 18, 2015 15:21
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unlimited shrimp posted:Frequent flyers are a fraction of the air travelling population, so I'm guessing the opinions of people like me carry more weight with the airlines. Yes, that's why free upgrades are most often given to those who fly very rarely -- to entice them to come back! MrChips posted:Bingo. Almost all of Calgary's international traffic is leisure-related or even worse, VFR (visiting friends and relatives - the other definition of VFR in aviation) traffic. So, if you had to guess, is this probably why business class was cheaper than premium economy on LHR-YYC? Premium economy nearly full with leisure travellers, business class nearly empty? That's the only thing I could think of, but, at that point, why even show premium economy fares? Kraftwerk posted:You guys flying Air Canada have no loving clue how bad poo poo really gets outside of the western world. No one's saying AC is even the worst in Canada. We do have Sunwing and Air Transat (and now Rouge!) all interested in researching exactly how miserable they can make passengers before they encounter mass suicides on their airplanes. Air Canada just combines horrible service and a general lack of comfort with incredibly high prices. I would, however, point out that seat pitch is not the be all and end all. I was on a Lufthansa A321 with the revised cabin layout, featuring 29" seat pitch. It was much better than the average Air Canada seat because the seats were very thin, and sculpted in such a way that you got extra room for your knees, so there was a lot more room where it counted. I don't demand my seat be a Lay-Z-Boy recliner, I'd just like to not have my knees jammed into the seat in front of me all flight, and this accomplished that very effectively while maintaining a very dense cabin layout.
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Mar 18, 2015 15:22
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MrChips posted:You don't honestly think that will stop management from telling their aircrews and other staff "you'd better take a pay cut and defer your raises as stipulated in your old contract because we have a stack of thousands of resumes from people who will"? That's just the tragedy of living on a planet with 7 Billion humans, I'm afraid, and it's the same in every industry from software engineers to geoduck farmers in TYOOL 2015. 
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Mar 18, 2015 15:24
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Freezer posted:I noticed that Canada's inflation rate is somewhere around 1% you right now. With all the cheap consumer credit I kind of expected it to shoot a little bit higher. What's keeping Canadian inflation this low? The Phillips curve. Consumer credit has been cheap for years, it's probably reached the limits of what it can do to prop up the economy outside of housing.
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Mar 18, 2015 15:48
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triplexpac posted:Saw this yesterday and almost had to stop and buy a house right then and there! That catchphrase is familiar, is Save On Foods selling mortgages now? Do I get points for a mortgage?
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Mar 18, 2015 16:24
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Freezer posted:I noticed that Canada's inflation rate is somewhere around 1% you right now. With all the cheap consumer credit I kind of expected it to shoot a little bit higher. What's keeping Canadian inflation this low? You have to remember that central bankers look at inflation in terms of economic growth and not the price of milk or beer or magic cards. Inflation is targeted around 2% or something in Canada. That's because the BoC has determined that the economy is growing at a sufficient rate at those levels. Any less and it means that the economy is stagnating and people aren't getting richer. The current low inflation rate means that jobs are leaving Canada, exports are decreasing because no one wants to buy our goods (oil), and foreign businesses don't want to invest here. Hence the latest rate cut which had the desired effect of pushing down the value of the dollar. Rate cuts take time to role through the economy though. We'll have to wait until later this year or possibly next year before we'll see any effects.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:44
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MikeSevigny posted:That catchphrase is familiar, is Save On Foods selling mortgages now? Do I get points for a mortgage? PC Financial has been giving out PC Points with new mortgages for a while now, so yes basically.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:50
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Cultural Imperial posted:You have to remember that central bankers look at inflation in terms of economic growth and not the price of milk or beer or magic cards. Inflation is targeted around 2% or something in Canada. That's because the BoC has determined that the economy is growing at a sufficient rate at those levels. Any less and it means that the economy is stagnating and people aren't getting richer. Or never, we've been doing rate-cuts for years with doubtful effects beyond further sinking the mortgage rate. 
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Mar 18, 2015 17:03
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Kraftwerk posted:You guys flying Air Canada have no loving clue how bad poo poo really gets outside of the western world. Seriously. poo poo I even prefer AC over some American airlines.
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Mar 18, 2015 22:40
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I don't mind AC, even Rouge isn't that bad. I dislike Westjet. United is awful. Virgin is the only carrier in North America that actually is somewhat enjoyable to fly on.
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Mar 18, 2015 22:42
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Really? You don't like zone boarding? Do you have some masochistic desire for the Chinese fire drill it takes to get on an ac flight?
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Mar 18, 2015 23:02
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blah_blah posted:I don't mind AC, even Rouge isn't that bad. I dislike Westjet. United is awful. Virgin is the only carrier in North America that actually is somewhat enjoyable to fly on. Not even Southwest?
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Mar 18, 2015 23:04
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I dunno. Air Canada was thoroughly outdone by Cubana (service, price, and comfort-wise) the times I flew them, and that airline's run by a bunch of commie stooges.
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Mar 18, 2015 23:06
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Cultural Imperial posted:Really? You don't like zone boarding? Do you have some masochistic desire for the Chinese fire drill it takes to get on an ac flight? I actually prefer AC boarding, and I have priority boarding on United and not AC. By far my least favorite aspect of United is the secondary document checks they make you do, which I've never seen any other airline do. They basically force you to leave the lounge 15 minutes earlier so someone can look at your documents again, stamp them, and then have you walk over literally 10 feet so someone else can look at the stamp they gave you and then you can board. Oh also both United and AC lounges are pretty lovely, but AC is slightly better. bartlebyshop posted:Not even Southwest? Haven't flown Southwest in years, so don't really have an opinion there.
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Mar 18, 2015 23:14
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I have no idea how airline boarding works but they seem to have it down to a science to do it the most inefficiently way. Old or disabled? Go in first, you are the slowest so obviously we want you blocking the aisles asap. Rich? Yeah you board up in the front so go block that area. You probably have tons of bags too so we want you blocking everyone for as long as possible. Being on a plane isn't fun, boarding last should be seen as a privilege because it means you are stuck in the plane for less time than everyone else. Board the window seats first starting at the back, then the aisles, then families with kids, then rich people, then at the very end once the aisles are nice and clear let anyone who needs assistance get on so they can take as long as they need without being crowded. I often hang back and board as close to the end as possible (I always take aisle) because an airport is way more spacious and comfortable than a plane. For exiting though I'm surprised they don't use more doors. I'd be fine walking down stairs or something if I didn't have to stand half crouching next my seat for 30 min because a fat family has been spending the last half hour collecting all their carry-on poo poo from the overhead bins. Have the fancy gate ramp thing for the disabled and then roll up a bunch of stairs at every other exit and unload like a metro. \/ If your carry-on doesn't fit under your seat you are traveling wrong. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 00:05
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Baronjutter posted:Being on a plane isn't fun, boarding last should be seen as a privilege because it means you are stuck in the plane for less time than everyone else. Boarding last means your carryon has a decent chance of not making it into carryon space at all/a high chance of not being anywhere near you. ^ if you check bags you're doing it wrong. And if you don't check bags/don't do a carryon/can fit everything you need for a ~1 week trip under your seat I don't know what to say. blah_blah fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 00:07
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Baronjutter posted:\/ If your carry-on doesn't fit under your seat you are traveling wrong. It does, theoretically, but that's where my feet go. It's not like there's much room at the best of times. Besides, you should be able to go a week on a properly packed carrymax bag, and at least on larger aircraft, there's enough space for everyone to have one of those in the bin. The problem is when people think they need literally all of their belongings ever on the plane with them. I wish North American airlines would follow Europe's lead and strictly enforce a one carry-on limit.
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Mar 19, 2015 01:03
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