www.CostaRicaTicas.com

"and boarded a half empty plane.... normally this flight is full because AA only runs 2 flights a day from Miami to Baltimore"

I've heard on a couple Colombian flights only half full also. It is the economy.

"I used to get roundtrip to Cali for as little as $380 from Miami. Now Avianca wants over $600"

I know. Kinda reminds me of the 70s and early 80s before the airlines became derugulated and they charged whatever they wanted. I still go on trips but man do I ever plan them to save the most money and go to the destination with the best deal!

Think you have that a little backward. Before dereg all domestic routes, fares, etc. had to be approved by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). Alfred Kahn changed all that with deregulation and allowed the market, theoretically, to determine fares and routes rather then the government.

Did it pan out as he planned? That another whole other subject that can be discussed and argued without agreement.

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

Not to take issue but to clarify--before airline deregulation, there were fewer airlines and no scheduled discounted ones. They may not have been able to charge anything they wanted but the CAB was something of a rubber-stamp when it came to fares, accepting an airlines proposed fares with few questions. Dereg opened all that up. So both Brothers ID and Jester are correct, in different ways. Also as a holdover from those days, no foreign carriers are allowed to fly strictly domestic U.S. routes. On the other hand, taken as a whole all U.S. carriers combined since 1926 have a net loss from operations (this doesn't count Postal subsidies for carrying mail, etc. etc.).

_________________
"A man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratification of mankind"--Dr. Johnson
"Amen, brother"-ED

Ok. Think you been around a few more than me so agree with your disagree on the history. Hey nice rhym!!!

Now when can I please head back down Medellin Colombia!

I agree that business is off, last week none of the chicas asked me for more than $60. One didn't even mention a price. She just said, "I know you will be fair." I was.

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Providing humanitarian assistance to self employed chicas, one cash grant at a time.

While that may have some validity it is only a small part of the story as fare regulations were a minor part of their authority. The CAB wielded enormous power over the airlines besides fares. They controlled routes, frequency, number of seats offered to a market, etc. Being in the industry during the time period "dereg" was passed and implemented I can relate to just how fundamentally the industry changed. The following article will provide some information on the powers that the CAB held far better then I could describe them.

www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Govern ... /POL16.htm

_________________
Pura Vida
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups:
alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.
Alex Levine

JB, ID is right .

The CAB was renowned for its bureacratic inertia not "rubbertamping". If the CAB was doing any "rubberstamping" of fare requests it was only because it was so easy for the airlines to show that was what was needed to turn any reasonable profit, given the much more limited routes and schedules that they were allowed to fly, and even that was based on load factors that they weren't always able to acheive.

In a way, regulation was actually a good thing for them back then because, despite all the restrictions on when and where they could fly, at least they couldn't shoot themselves in the foot. Everyone was forced to charge the same high fares even if they wanted to offer lower ones (no one could try to undercut anyone else). It also kept out the competition from upstart low-cost airlines. As we all know, once they were left to their own devices, the fares that they voluntarily chose to set for themselves were much lower than the breakeven rates that were supposedly "rubberstamped" by the CAB. Each airline tried to increase total revenue by offering incredibly low fares in an effort to steal passengers from their competition and thereby increase their load factors. Since they were ALL doing that, all of their load factors stayed the same or even went down as all the airlines added more and bigger planes and newer discount airlines also entered the picture. If ever there were a more myopic idiotic industry than the US car industry, the US airline industry is it.

Anyway, we can debate about the nature of the relationship between regulation and the industry all you want but we can't escape the simple fact that however it has been structured the airline industry has been losing money for years and now more than ever with the recent spike in jet fuel prices. IMHV (view), I don't look at recent airfares as really being all that high as much as the fares during the period following deregulation as being artificially low (due to cutthroat competition, internecine price wars, etc.). Recent fares only SEEM high compared to what we've become used to paying. With most airlines flying at a loss, it was only a matter of time before something had to change and even now it remains a big question what will become of many of the major carriers. Hey, it was nice while it lasted but all good things eventually come to an end.

Even when they had low fares, simply "getting there" was always one of the biggest costs of travel and now more so than ever. The more expensive it was to get someplace, the longer one would need to stay there to "justify" the cost and thats still true. Many people are now choosing to travel closer to home. I used to say CR was good for a weekend or a week, Brazil a week or two and LOS for at least 2 weeks or longer. Now, even though the flights themselves to get to those places take the same amount of time as before, I'd probably stretch the time estimates for how long you need to stay at each place due to the radically higher airfares. With airfares from FL to CR now typically running close to $400 (and with local escort prices dropping to not much more than HDR colombiana rates), it becomes a bit extravagent to say the least to go there for just an extended weekend trip.

I've seen this coming for a while which is a big part of why I've restructured my career (into contract consulting) so that I could take more time away with each trip. For me personally, to cut down on the bite that the airlines take out of my travel dollars, I plan to take a lot fewer but much longer trips. That might mean taking that long delayed trip back to the far east, but with airfares out there being so much higher as well, it will probably just mean more extended trips south of the border.