• Welcome to the FREE TUGBBS forums! The absolute best place for owners to get help and advice about their timeshares for more than 32 years!

    Join Tens of Thousands of other owners just like you here to get any and all Timeshare questions answered 24 hours a day!
  • TUG started 32 years ago in October 1993 as a group of regular Timeshare owners just like you!

    Read about our 32nd anniversary: Happy 32nd Birthday TUG!
  • TUG has a YouTube Channel to produce weekly short informative videos on popular Timeshare topics!

    All subscribers auto-entered to win all free TUG membership giveaways!

    Visit TUG on Youtube!
  • TUG has now saved timeshare owners more than $24,000,000 dollars just by finding us in time to rescind a new Timeshare purchase! A truly incredible milestone!

    Read more here: TUG saves owners more than $24 Million dollars
  • Wish you could meet up with other TUG members? Well look no further as this annual event has been going on for years in Orlando! How to Attend the TUG January Get-Together!
  • Now through the end of the year you can join or renew your TUG membership at the lowest price ever offered! Learn More!
  • Sign up to get the TUG Newsletter for free!

    Tens of thousands of subscribing owners! A weekly recap of the best Timeshare resort reviews and the most popular topics discussed by owners!
  • Our official "end my sales presentation early" T-shirts are available again! Also come with the option for a free membership extension with purchase to offset the cost!

    All T-shirt options here!
  • A few of the most common links here on the forums for newbies and guests!

Get ready for higher air ticket prices

Carolinian

Guest
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
Messages
11,854
Reaction score
1,328
Location
eastern Europe
America West and US Airways have already merged, Northwest and Delta are close to merging and American and Continental are talking about merging. Who's United going to merge with?

Pretty soon the so called legacy carriers will be down to 4. However, there are enough so called no-frills carriers to provide compition to keep rates reasonable. The Airtran's, Frontiers, Spirt, Jet Blue and Southwest's of the industry will help keep the costs down and, who knows they may expand even further.

As it is now the legacy carriers might as well be considered no-frills as the free soda and bag of pretzels have been replaced by a free pop and the chance to buy a snack box for $5 on flights longer than 2 hours. The legacy carriers have reduced the allowable weight limits on luggage from 70 lbs to 50 lbs and United has announced a 1 checked bag limit and a $25 charge per bag for anything over 1 bag.

The way their going, driving is looking like a better option every day.
 
The US Airways / American West merger is a bit of a sideshow. The NW/DL merger followed by CO tying up with someone, will really change the landscape and lead to an oligopoly of three mega carriers who will try to reduce capacity to drive up prices. That process will also drive down avavilibility of award seats.

Yes, they seem to be overlooking the fact that the LCC sector will simply make more seats avaiible, but they may figure, that outside of Southest, none of the LCC's can expand that fast to fill the gap. But they may have forgotten to look across the Atlantic, where RyanAIr is getting ready to invade their turf, and RyanAir will give them more heartburn than they ever got from JetBlue or Southwest. Just when Ryanair has announced that it will be starting trans-Atlantic service and is studying setting up a US domestic carrier, the legacies conveniently try to alter the market in a way that RyanAir can really come roaring in and eat their lunch.

In the short term, these mergers will bring higher prices and less ff seats, but in the medium to long term, they will mean the demise of the legacy carriers.
 
Personally, with the top heavy management and the union deals in place at the legacy carriers, I feel most of them are just dead men walking anyway. Many are about to become the next Pan Am's, Braniff's, Ozark's and TWA's of the world.

IMO, 9/11 only slowed the transition down by knocking out a couple of the start up no-frills carriers (Vanguard and National) and slowing down the others.
 
Top