yustr

Here's a radical idea: change your business practices before you go out of business.

One change: sell tickets ahead of time for one seat on one flight. You miss the flight - not our problem. Not enough tickets sold - flight canceled, here's your money back, try again tomorrow. And before you say it will never work remember that is how they do it everywhere else; ball games, movie theater, Broadway. Imagine going up to the ticket booth at Fenway Park and saying: my meeting ran a little later than I thought, can you give me tickets to tomorrow's game instead of these?

Its the reason they give discounts for early purchase - so they'll have an idea how many seat will have butts in them. And we all know that 90% of the "mechanical troubles" that cause flights to be canceled are really just not enough seats filled to make the flight profitable. Just say so - but there's rules against that...sheesh.

Here's another novel idea: who cares? Business will adjust. Trains will flourish on short/medium runs, web conferencing will actually be made to work, and someone will step up and start an airline with the philosophy: It costs me X to fly this plane from A to B. It can hold 150 people so the price for each seat is X/150. When it's full - off we go. As it is now, I bet every one of the 50 people actually on it paid a different fare.

Second idea:

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I didn't mean to say it. But I meant what I said. J. McMurtry

In Vino Veritas