I cannot give enough credit to Mark Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem, for calling attention to the way market forces operate, often in spite of government interference intended to get people to behave in a different way.
Today, I’d like to call your attention to this:
[Carriers] will aggressively cancel flights before and during storms—even if the bad weather never materializes. The threats could foreshadow significant changes in air travel, making it even less reliable for millions of road warriors and vacationers. By canceling flights, it could take days for all travelers to get home when storms strike.
Here’s the issue: carriers have no idea when “acts of god” will interfere with their ability to get you from point A to point B. Because of logistical concerns with boarding and unboarding, they would prefer to keep you on the plane in cases where they believe they’ll be able to take off and get you to point B.
And they really, really do want to get you to point B, because if they don’t, they usually have to deal with a lot of bitchy customers and sometimes refunds. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s WAY better when they can just fly your bitchy asses where they want to go.
But if they spent a lot of time letting you run on and off the plane, then the airport looses money because it could let another plane park there and the airline looses money because they can’t process as many flights.
As much as it sucks, if airlines keep you on the plane, you are more likely to get where you want to be.
But the government has increased the fees for people who, for whatever reason, don’t get moving to their destination at the 3 hours mark. This means that airlines would be better suited by avoiding the 3 hour mark. Let me try to make this more clear:
A passenger on the plane proceeding to their destination without worry is worth $100.
A passenger on the plane delayed for any amount of time going to their destination is worth $50.
A passenger who deplanes and doesn’t get to their destination is work $5.
A passenger who sits on the plan, delayed, for more than 3 hours under new legistlation: -$Eleventy Million Dollars.
Basically, it’s more profitable with this legislation for carriers to simply not offer new flights in the event of weather delays with are beyond their control. As a business, they have to choose between making $5, the cost of paying off people whose flights were cancelled, or paying eleventy million dollars because they try to fulfill the original ticket requirements.
Once again, the government is making things harder and more costly for us while allegedly trying to make things easier and cheaper.
