- Joined
- 14 March 2006
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- 5
Why "hit them where it hurts", they are providing the service that you are paying for.
If you think that you are going to get the same service etc on no frills LCC's (Low Cost Carriers) that you had when the Ansett/Qantas duopoly existed over ten years ago, and at less than half what you would have paid then you are kidding yourself.
Friends of ours sent their kids to the football in Melbourne a while ago with some of their school mates on a LCC because the fares that are available were affordable, they couldn't have done that ten years ago.
LCC's have made air travel available to many more people than it was available to many years ago, unfortunately they are the group that bitch and whine the most because they are still grappling with the concept of complying with a time deadline.
Basically, you now have a broad choice in Australia, you choose how much service etc you want and then you pay for it, simple.
You should see regulation in Canada. Any non-Canadian based carrier is not allowed to pick up Canadian passengers from domestic airport to domestic airport. So it's ok to fly to St.Johns, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver from another country but it is illegal for an international carrier to take passengers from the city they land and carry passengers onto another domestic route. Australians are lucky to not have this kind of anti-competitive protectionist garbage to inflate airfares.
The reason they protect the air from competitors is that the main carrier is a crown corporation. If they opened it up to competition the carrier would fail, costing tax payers millions and millions. Canada's airspace is not valuable enough for more than one large and a few small player's, at least not on the east coast.
You know it costs more to fly from Fredericton NB to Toronto than it does from Harbin to Hainan!
But at least the carrier, and all those jobs are still in business.
Agree its not perfect, but who is going to take the chance on that business.
CanOz
Fair point Can.
But are either of the two routes you mentioned longer than say KL to Sydney or even Brisbane for that matter. Are they price comparative to Jetstar or Virgin?
Canada has a larger population than OZ too, as I'm sure you are aware. Crown corporations??? Give me a break that's like saying Aussie GOC's deserve a better deal. Aren't people taxed enough already???
Fred to TO is like, 1000 kms
Harbin to Hainan is 4000 kms
My point is that the East cost routes are expensive because of the monopoly by the state carrier, so they make money from those routes so they can take less margin on the routes with Westjet.
I don't like the crown corps, but its politics, lots of jobs at stake, lots of Unions.
CanOz
sorry to jump in ... but is the service better on the state run Canadian Airlines than jetstar, qantas etc? if so, and in the context of this thread, perhaps deregulation and competition aren't the best model for air travel?
seems like the model in aust is lacking though, certainly by the response of this thread. bad customer service, no one to complain to, lack of accountability, fugly hostess. theoretically a business like that shouldn't survive, but in the absence of an alternative...?
or ... perhaps people still have the expectations of good service as a hangover from the days of high cost air travel on gov't run airlines. especially the average citizen taking his/her annual leave after saving for months. maybe people just need to view air travel like everything else. you get what you pay for. cheap fares = cheap service, (high fares = better service)?
or ... is the option the return of some government standards, complaints board?
Looks like I might have to give Jetstar another go after all.
Can't even book with Virgin - just keep getting silly "time expired" messages from their website. Tried several times and still no luck, and I wouldn't consider entering all relevant details in under a minute to be taking too long.
And airlines wonder why they end up losing money! It's fairly hard to be profitable when your attempted customers are turned away by your primary point of sale two weeks in a row.
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