But they don’t appear on price comparison sites. So if you’re shopping around and you see a Delta flight for $300 and a Spirit flight for $200 you have no idea which is actually cheaper. Every time I’ve flown Spirit the baggage price has been variable (based on miles flown maybe? No idea) so it’s not like comparison sites could even add it if they wanted to.
I don't know which sites you use, but Kayak and Google Flights both let you input the number of checked and carry-on bags you're traveling with and include those fees in the comparison.
Right, and they don’t take into account things like “my credit card gives me 2 free checked bags on United”. So in the end it’s still too opaque to really compare prices easily.
Airlines like Spirit and Frontier are just the "bus fare". Want anything extra, like a carry on bag? You'll have to pay for it. Learned my lesson, will just book Southwest or similar next time.
Right, but if you’re not a frequent flier and are trying to just plan a trip, the amount of extra work it takes to determine the actual round trip price (incl. baggage fees) for several different airline is prohibitive.
Many people just pick the cheapest price on cheap tickets or something (which is usually spirit. They famously charge so much for baggage that they end up being more expensive than other airlines)
Don't most of the airfare searching sites let you include your baggage situation into your query? Kayak does, at least. I just assumed the rest did as well.
I feel like there's always a tradeoff. In the past year I've flown both Frontier and United. Frontier makes you pay for your bags (except for a single personal item), while United gives you a free carry-on and checked bag.
It would seem as though Frontier is milking you until you look at the ticket price. I calculated that if I took that United flight with Frontier instead and paid for 1 carry on + 1 checked bag (what United offered for free), the flight would still be cheaper than the United flight.
United basic economy does not give you a free carry on or checked bag, and United economy does not give you a free checked bag. And it has been that way for 10+ years.
It’s true investing in the airline industry has been a good way to lose money for a long time.
But citing early post pandemic years to make that point feels misleading.
It’s like saying someone drives badly and instead of pointing to their speeding tickets, it’s like pointing out their car is in the shop with body damage… from a falling tree branch.
All travel was shut down for a while and when it opened up business travel was nonexistent. It’s still down and expected to never return to prepandemic. It’s amazing they made any profit in 2023.
Yes, airlines are not highly profitable but pandemic years are a terrible example due to being a weird black swan event.
There are a ton of executives too, which might be an issue.
As for the workers (including pilots), the should abolutely get paid. I'm just pointing out that "profits" does not show the big picture.
Companies have a duty to their employees & customers; as well as their owners (shareholders). Low profit is heralded when it's Amazon, reinvesting in the company. Airlines are also investing back in the company.
Profit margin does show the picture for how profitable a business is. Employees’ pay, including executive, is irrelevant. They are still employees.
Unless you are claiming malfeasance and that shareholders are being fleeced.
An entire industry with low single digit profit margins amongst multiple of competitors indicates a very optimized business. It means the only way you can reduce prices for customers is to come up with a novel way to execute the business, such as new technology.
Profit margin at businesses that have high barriers to entry and low costs to scale are much higher. See software, real estate, pharmaceuticals, finance, etc. And again, the executive pay is irrelevant since publicly listed businesses have shareholders paying attention to that kind of waste (for the most part).
Discussing nominal profits when comparing various businesses' "profitability" is almost never productive.
Any business needs a certain amount of cushion to counter volatility, and to earn a return for shareholders. If you had a business with $1M of revenue and $20k of profit, surely you would not expect $20k of profit when you hit $2M of revenue (because 2% profit margin is objectively very low. I have yet to see of successful businesses operate year after year on less than that, and at 0% they become a charity).
Hence profit margin is almost always the relevant figure, especially when you get down to the low single digit percentages.
