Re: Re: Re: Distinguished Order of MiserabilistsUpdate

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

The airline was Northwest.  Other flights I took on this trip (three other
legs) also had a lot of empty seats, but nothing extraordinary such as the one
I mentioned.

Gene

Jim Devine wrote:

> Eugene wrote:
> >Today I was on a flight from Memphis to San Francisco.  An Airbus 320,
> >must hold 180
> >people or more. -- only 24 people in coach.  Everybody in coach could have
> >had a
> >sleep with a  three seat row each!!  I've taken this same flight -- a year
> >or so ago
> >--when every seat was filled and people were turned away.  I haven't seen
> >an empty
> >plane like this in years and years -- maybe 10 years.  I knew the airlines
> >were
> >hurting but this shocked me.
>
> what airline? if it's Southwest, this seems a symptom of recession... (If
> it's Spirit, the faith-based airline, maybe not.)
>
> Doug writes: >Last month, every leg of the New York-Tokyo and Tokyo-Sydney
> route was (miserably) packed to the gills. I'd be wrong to conclude from
> that that the Pacific Rim is booming.<
>
> I think there's an asymmetry here, since the airlines work hard to
> over-book or do whatever else fills the plane up. But they don't try to
> under-book.
>
> but the following question is quite relevant, since anecdotes can easily
> deceive: >What are the industry load factors looking like?<
>
> Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine