What I am pointing out is that (international or not) this is the FIRST time I have EVER seen more than a couple rows of added leg room seats (pay extra for) on ANY trip I have tried to book or have taken to Cozumel on Continental.. EVER. Now all of a sudden they are offering 8 rows on a smaller plane where they only offer 2 rows on the larger plane. Has nothing to do with international because it has always been an international flight but they have never done it before and, it is still just a 2 hour flight.
As ScubaWife pointed out after I posted the screen shots..
So this is a carry over from UA.. and a way to generate more income since they are removing regular coach seats on simple 2 hour flight.
I also saw an article the other day where they are in the process of upgrading all their planes with "added" overhead storage bins.. quote "because people are carrying on more bags because of the bag check fees". How long do you think it will be before they start charging extra (to everyone) for carrying your bags on the plane. I would be willing to bet it won't be long as I'm sure they aren't just feeling sorry for the passengers.
You might see the return of the pay toilet some time soon also, as long as consumers stay as stupid as they are thinking all that matters is the ticket price and not the total price.
The bottom line is a business to stay in business is going to get $XYZ from it's product. It might move one of the X shells and put the pea under the Y shell, or make Z free while X doubles in cost, but no matter what, if a business is going to stay in business it has to get what it takes to do so. The airlines have mastered the shell game because consumers created it.
The $200, $300, $400 fares were not reality, they were an exception, nobody is going to keep multi-million dollar products flying in the air everyday and lose money forever, not to mention running a business in one of the heaviest regulated industries on the planet. Those fares are gone, the reality is what we are seeing today, and I don't see those fares ever coming back, and quite honestly, I really wish they never came about in the first place. The entire shell game being played now sucks, but it's retarded consumers thinking being able to fly for $199 is reality and some kind of God given consumer right they should have. When it costs you less to fly then the gas money to drive somewhere, it's time to scratch your head and start wondering what's going on, maybe a $300 ticket is one hell of a deal, like winning the lottery and not the norm. $600-$700 tickets are the norm and those cheap flights were something we can all tell our grand kids about. be glad you took advantage of them, but anybody thinking they were going to last forever was naive. Airlines are going to make a profit or they will go out of business. Maybe the government can take over the airlines and we can have Amtrack Airways! Nothing will arrive on time, you'll miss every other connection when you fly, your baggage will disappear, there will be 15 stewardesses on each flight and none of them will be qualified to use a bottle opener, planes will fall out of the sky on a regular basis, but tickets will be a flat $200. They will be $200 at least for a little while. In 10 years the same ticket will cost you $2000 and the government will be infusing their airline with 500 billion dollars in Congress appropriated tax money to keep it running.
Or it's free enterprise, and we all need to get used to paying what it really costs to fly somewhere.
But until it all gets cleaned out and the airlines go back to doing business as they should, get used to pay toilets and pay lockers for your bags, a self-service section under the plane in one cargo hold where you climb in and retreve your own bags from the belly of the plane and a cut rate section with no seats where you stand and hold onto a strap. Sad thing is if the airlines offered any of that, there would be consumers to do it as long as the ticket was $10 cheaper.
