
Why Budget Airlines Could Soon Charge You to Use the Bathroom - ryan_j_naughton
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-everyone-went-to-the-bathroom-before-boarding-the-plane-ticket-prices-might-be-lower/
======
uptown
Airlines love shifting revenue from ticket prices onto ancillary fees. Why?
Because they're not subject to the same taxation as the revenue generated by
the ticket price.

"The government funds a large portion of the aviation system through a 7.5
percent tax on the price of a commercial airline ticket as well as taxes on
certain kinds of aviation fuel. But the Treasury Department considers charges
outside the base cost of a ticket to be exempt from that tax."

[http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/baggage-airline-fee-
re...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/baggage-airline-fee-revenues-
draw-tax-scrutiny-93073.html)

It's basic tax-avoidance. If they need to raise an extra $5 per seat, they're
better off increasing the price charger per bag than they are increasing the
ticket prices, and that's exactly what has been happening.

~~~
WalterBright
I'm surprised it took so long to start doing this.

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omegant
Some fuel saving measures now studied by airlines are:

-slower speeds to save 100kg of fuel at a 2 hour flight -lower flap setting for landing, requires less thrust for the last 4 min of flight. But it requires more landing distance. -less water on the tanks for the toilets. 60kg less for 100 flights means a significa t saving. -ipads instead of 40 kilos of flight manuals for the cockpit. -taxing with only one engine (this is an old trick) -higher cruise level. -better radar control coordination. A direct vectors can save you minutes of flight. In aproach up to 10min -cleaner aircraft, to avoid drag. -adjusting the lubricating grease for the landing gear and flight controls. Excess uneccesary leaking grease means more weight. -lighter seats -lighter cabin apliances -even more important are newer aiplanes. It used to be normal seeing 20y/o+ airplanes flying in USA and Europe. Now anything older than 12 years is using 20% more fuel than newer versions. This is specially important for long haul airliners like jumbos a340, 767, 777 etc...

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MProgrammer
I would rather they took the fuel based component out of the ticket price,
then charged you an amount at the gate based on the total weight of everything
you are bringing on the plane, including yourself. Then you can pay less by
bringing less, or pay more to bring more. A gram's a gram.

~~~
rett12
That could be considered as discrimination against big tall men(not
overweight). Another thing is luggage.

~~~
DavidBradbury
In order for it to be discrimination, it has to be 'unjust' \- There is
nothing unjust about having larger people pay more because it costs a business
more to fly them. If anything, it is unjust that smaller people have to
subsidize the cost of others.

~~~
gaius
And there's nothing unjust about paying women less because they'll just quit
to have babies, right? Society has decided that that's not how it works.

~~~
dahart
I don't see how this analogy fits, or what you mean about society, but there's
a slight bit of difference between charging someone for direct costs, and
jumping to conclusions based on fear, stereotypes, or gender.

There's also a difference between charging someone for actual expenses, and
charging someone for presumed future expenses. And there's a difference
between someone being charged for what they use, and someone being paid, or
not, for purely indirect costs not related to their performance while on the
job.

Now, if a 120 lb woman was charged twice as much as a 120 lb man to fly, your
analogy might be more applicable.

~~~
gaius
Is paid maternity leave not actual expenses then?

~~~
dahart
Paid maternity leave is an actual expense, _if_ it happens. But you were
talking about salary. And it is unfair and discriminatory when equally capable
women are paid less than men, regardless of the reason it happens, and there
are many other reasons than the probability of a woman having a child.

While those facts are true, they don't improve the quality of your analogy,
the situation you're bringing up does not stack up the same way as
(theoretically) charging someone per pound to fly on a plane. There might be
reasons that charging by weight is discriminatory, but you're not convincing
me.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There might be reasons that charging by weight is discriminatory

Charging by X is always discriminatory (on the basis of X), the questions are
whether it is morally or legally acceptable discrimination, not whether it is
discrimination at all.

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notahacker
Airline executive Michael O'Leary's comments about charging you to use the
bathroom were a "we're cheap" publicity stunt; no more and no less.

Sure, there's almost an infinitude of theoretically possible micro and macro
optimizations that can improve airlines' profitability, especially across 133
million passengers (that's a lot of olives) but most of them aren't quite as
promising as they seem. Save fuel by replacing heavyweight but durable IFE
system with iPads, for instance? Bet you spend more than the actually
realizable fuel savings replacing broken or stolen iPads. By my calculations
you lose money if approximately 1 ticket holder in 1000 doesn't return their
$250 iPad intact, based on the original article's $32.7M cost saving (25 cents
per passenger) even without considering costs of actually rolling them out and
phasing out the IFE in the first place. Needless to say, forcing passengers to
empty their bowels before flight could have more significant effect on
airlines costs and ticket sales. Even Ryanair is on a charm offensive after
taking the "we're so cheap we don't care what our customers think schtick too
far)

If you really want to save weight or microoptimise revenue the excess
_passenger_ weight charge can has been implemented... in Samoa.

~~~
dkokelley
> _By my calculations you lose money if approximately 1 ticket holder in 1000
> doesn 't return their $250 iPad intact_

Why not install the iPads in the seat backs? It doesn't have to look any
different than another IFE, so long as it saves on weight. I'm not sure that
it would be worth the cost of retrofitting, but for a new plane it would
definitely be worth looking into, provided that the upfront investment is
comparable.

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joesmo
The article doesn't actually answer its own question fully. It does not list
the estimated cost savings of removing a bathroom (I assume that's how they
would save money but the article is incomplete) or of the weight saved by
empty bladders vs. full ones. It also assumes that such removal wouldn't have
any effect on longer flights, such as international ones, which are often
conducted using the same planes. Even the flight listed form Boston to Denver
is four and a half hours. It's unlikely that this would keep most people from
using the bathroom at least once, even if they had used it before the flight.
So the reasoning is flawed across the board and the article incomplete. The
other numbers are quite interesting, however.

~~~
ubernostrum
_It also assumes that such removal wouldn 't have any effect on longer
flights, such as international ones, which are often conducted using the same
planes._

It is important for your argument to distinguish international and inter-
continental flights. I have been on international -- in the sense of crossing
a border and landing in a different country -- flights operated on CRJs. But
those are short 30- or 45-minute hops from somewhere in the northern US to
somewhere in Canada.

The article's example aircraft is the Boeing 737-700, which can be and is used
for intra-north-America (Aeromexico flies them to several US destinations, for
example) international flights, intra-Europe flights, etc., but is not used
for inter-continental flights, which are generally beyond its operating range.

Aside from the anomaly of BA's specially-configured A318s which fly LCY-JFK
(and which can't take off fully loaded at LCY due to runway length,
necessitating a fuel stop at SNN on the westbound leg), the smallest aircraft
regularly operating such flights is the Boeing 757. And even it is limited in
the routes it can fly, often requiring fuel stops based on wind and weather
conditions; only the actual widebodies have the natural range necessary to do
those routes consistently.

Also, when international-configuration aircraft are used domestically in the
US, it is almost always a positioning flight for which tickets happen to be
sold (i.e., a plane landed at Hub A and needs to operate a flight from Hub B,
so will fly that route, or needs to get from a maintenance hub to the hub it
will actually depart from for international operations), or a temporary
sojourn from base for a seasonal flight (US Airways, for example, occasionally
flies its A330s to Orlando to carry Disney visitors, but keeps them close
enough to its international base at PHL to get them back when needed). Those
aircraft also _are_ configured differently; the biggest difference from a
passenger perspective is the existence of genuine business class or even
three-class configuration, which is rare on domestic flights -- typically only
the ultra-premium routes like JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO are operated domestic three-
class.

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old-gregg
What would happen if an airline published their pricing in $/lbs? You'll know
your price only after checking in your bags and getting into a plane by
stepping through a scale.

First of all, would that be legal? Secondly, how would that affect the
consumer behavior and the competition?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
A lot of the weight on an airplane is fixed, so there would still be a fixed
charge to add before weight.

I'm also sure many would avoid an airline where weighing in was required, even
if that meant paying substantially more to competitors, the airlines wouldn't
save enough to make up for lost business.

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justnotsure
The whole article is based on false pretense that fuel prices are highest in
the known history. The fuel price have been stagnant for the past 60 years. If
you use real money, i.e. gold or silver. Fuel prices, food prices, healthcare
cost, etc. are all flat line price chart as long as you use real money. Once
you use ever-dropping and hugely inflated USD or EUR, all prices _seem_ to
rise. _Seem_ is very important here because in fact they don't rise at all.
What happens is that the measure we use - USD - is collapsing in value. It's
like saying cars are faster and faster, but every year lowering value of
meters in 1 km. I.e. this year 1 km is equal to 1,000 meters, next year it
will be equal to 980 meters, and yet next year it will be 950 meters, so on.
So in 2024, 1 km can be as little as 760 meters.

A lot of economic news or developments don't make sense unless you understand
that we have lived in permanent inflationary times for the past 50 years.

~~~
crpatino
> The fuel price have been stagnant for the past 60 years. If you use real
> money, i.e. gold or silver.

Since most people would disagree that gold and silver are real money, the
burden of proof is on your side. I think an equally compelling explanation for
your observations can be built from the premise that gold in particular has
been inflating an speculative bubble during the same time frame of 50+ years
(or more precisely, that since about the 2nd half of 20 century gold price had
been recovering from a previous drop in historic prices, and that a bubble has
formed around that pattern and just began to inflate about ~10 years ago).

If on the other hand you consider the fact that petrol is a finite resource,
and that the challenges to build a flying device powered by either nuclear
energy, solar, wind or hydro, it is very likely that tourist class aviation
will be in permanent decay from now on.

I think the capacity to fly is extremely valuable, so it will be preserved by
nation states for as long as possible, mainly for military purposes, but also
for the rapid transportation of diplomats and other high ranking officials.
And if the technical capacity of flying is preserved in any way, the upper
layers of civil society will find a way to buy their ways in as well (bringing
back the original meaning of the term "jet set" as a side effect). But, mark
my words... the days of regular, scheduled flights for the hoi polloi are
numbered.

~~~
tommycli
If we didn't have cheap petrol, we'd use nuclear, solar, wind, or hydro to
produce somewhat-less-cheap ethanol.

It might be twice as expensive, but most people would still be able to fly.

~~~
crpatino
Yes, I agree. That's why I believe we are not going to loose the technology to
fly (at least within this century), unlike many people in the peak oil scene.

However, you have to consider the economic feasibility, not just the technical
one. If you follow news about airlines, you will recall that they have gone
through a series of hardships, raw times and infighting between different
groups of stakeholders (unions vs companies). You can write it off as random
incidents, or you can understand it under the lens of increased costs and
multiple competitors trying to get each a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.

I have seen during my lifetime how conditions for the passengers have
deteriorated. I recall as a teenager or a young adult, boarding a plane was a
wonderful experience. Now a days, they treat you like cattle, and I am not
just talking about the hardships imposed by TSA screenings (though they take a
fair share of the blame).

If you add two plus two, you will find that this decreased passenger comfort
is tied to cost cutting measures. But why to cut costs if you can simply pass
those cost to the customer and keep the quality of service up? I do not
presume to know the answer, but my intuition tell me that the leadership at
airline companies have run the numbers and figured out that there is some sort
of inflection point in the demand curve, and an increase in prices would cause
a severe drop in usage.

Instead, a less bad alternative is to cut cost, punish quality, and face a
small decrease in demand, but as long as the margin remains in the black the
company can keep operating, and wait for better days. My fear comes mostly for
the moment when airlines run out of comforts, and begin cutting cost in
critical areas of operations such as plain maintenance. Even a modest number
of non-fatal incidents may shift perceptions of safety and make the bottom of
the bucket fall from under the demand pool.

Now that I think about it, this is a market ripe for disruption.

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volune
Shitting my pants and sharing odor that with the rest of the cabin will still
be free, right?

