Flattening out the fare structure sounds democratic, but if anything it's the key that dragged the airline industry out of the sixties to today. Before any says that JetBlue, WestJet and LUV do 'flat' pricing, I'd suggest they check their numbers. They ALL do yield based pricing, albeit with fewer tiers (3 instead of maybe 20.) Yield Management works. Competition has also worked. The airlines biggest problem is labor. Those that have their labor costs in check (LUV, JetBlue, WestJet and even Delta) are doing better. 40% of United/AA/US/CO's costs are labor. For grins, divide the total # of employees of an airline by the size of their fleet. I think United is up around a 100 staff per craft. Then calculate what they are paid. Ouch! No wonder United is cash-flow negative. My conclusion is that until (the majors) Airlines can get morale up, efficiency up, and labor rates down, they are all in big trouble. (Labor costs are up something like 30% at the majors, yet fares have barely budged in years.) Scary. Matthew On 5/3/02 5:39 PM, "John Kurtzke" <kurtzke@up.edu> wrote: [snip] > > As for a solution, raise coach fares, lower first class fares so that they > are only 20 - 25% more than coach. It would be curious to see what would > happen. Or for a really off the wall suggestion -- charge everyone the > same, and let the best-dressed sit in first class (as judged by the flight > attendants.) > > john > > -- > John F. Kurtzke, C.S.C. > Department of Mathematics > 278 Buckley Center > University of Portland > Portland, OR 97203 > 503-943-7377 > kurtzke@up.edu >