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Colombian Airline Wants To Make Passengers Stand (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes Budget airline VivaColombia is considering plans to remove all seats from its planes and make passengers stand. They hope the move will drive down fares by allowing them to squeeze more passengers into each flight, opening up air travel to working class Colombians and budget holidaymakers. The no-frills carrier announced last week that it is adding 50 new Airbus 320s to its fleet to capitalise on the country's growing tourist market. The new planes will have more seats and lower running costs with the first one going into service at the start of 2018. VivaColombia's founder and CEO William Shaw told the Miami Herald the airline was looking into vertical travel options. He said: "There are people out there right now researching whether you can fly standing up -- we're very interested in anything that makes travel less expensive." He added: "Who cares if you don't have an inflight entertainment system for a one-hour flight? Who cares that there aren't marble floors... or that you don't get free peanuts?"
Take Off and Landing sound like adventures.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Yip, third-world travel can make even our chintziest services seem good in comparison.
Many conservatives point out that even our very poorest often have it better than many in the 3rd world. But, why aim our economic system so low? Don't we want to get better over time instead of back-slide into 3rd-world-ism? Or do they find something sacred about profits?
Table-ized A.I.
But there is something sacred abour profits. Profit breeds competition, and focuses our potential into action. American capitalism built the modern world. Everything from the steel of skyscrapers to the airplane to the medical marvels we have are vastly developed and produced in capitalistic environments where the focused have the freedom and capability to do something that improves our way of life in return for the profits of their labor. What's wrong with that?
In America, you have as the French would say: "a career open to the talents". If you have the talent, you can work in the field you are most qualified for. Earning yourself the best benefit, and your goal is to provide the best value in return. Profits allow us to decide how next to invest returns, and continue growth. There has been no greater engine for the improvement in our lives that capitalistic profit-seeking; so yes, profit is sacred.
It's all about price.
Think of it this way--the last time you booked a flight, what was foremost in your mind? Was it legroom? Was it the quality of the snacks? Was it the inflight entertainment system?
Nope. It was "How much does this cost?" Price was the overriding factor. If Flight A was $40 cheaper than Flight B, you took Flight A. You bitched and moaned and complained about being stuck in like sardine, but you weren't going to pay the extra $40.
There are a lot of people who feel that way, which is why websites like Expedia have a "sort by price" and don't have a "sort by legroom."
Ladies and gentleman: American Exceptionalism on display. Meanwhile, back in reality land, the standard of living, standard of eduction, standard of health and standard of infrastructure has hit second tier in a steady downwards trajectory compared with the true first tier countries in Europe and Asia. This is self evident to anyone traveling to the EU or East Asia today, the US is second tier.
American Capitalism was good at building stuff, but you might note that the new sky-scrappers are being built in a Chinese city, not in NYC anymore. And the largest airplane is a European A380, not a Boeing Jumbo jet assembled in Everett, WA. And the best application of medical marvels happens in South Korean with socialized medicine, not America with capitalist medicine.
America needs to pull back on the dive into capitalistic oligarchies and kleptocracy and realize that people live in a society, not an economy.
Capitalism means competition. Sometimes the best way to compete is to develop a better product. Great!
But we've learned a lot of other ways to compete, and unfortunately these other methods are often more effective. We hire lobbyists to change the laws in our favor. We hoard patents so that nobody else may compete. We use teams of lawyers to overwhelm competitors with litigation. We leverage monopolies to gouge consumers. We pollute the environment because cleanup costs are socialized and we get to keep the profit. We reduce quality or safety because we can retire with big fat profit sharing bonuses long before damage to the company's image catches up with us.
None of these behaviors improve our collective standard of living, but these things happen on a daily basis because the system incentivizes them. Don't be afraid to question the system. It's not perfect.