Heliian wrote:Get you collective heads out of your collective arses. Any aviation company's majour costs are fuel, up to 2/3rds of their cost, so I don't see your logic.
It's not my fault you bought a trailer in fort mac for 500g's, a little planning and foresight next time maybe.
My daily fuel costs have dropped 40% and I spend that extra cash back into the economy and save some for the future too. I don't feel bad for the patch, they had their party and now the hangover....until the next party.
Oil prices have a direct impact on the value of the Canadian dollar, and it's dropped so low that it's becoming prohibitively expensive to fly to the US, or to any country that pegs its currency to the USD, or any country that hasn't had the same drop in value for its currency. That's going to have a direct impact on how many people can afford to buy plane tickets; it's about 30% more expensive to travel to the US than when the dollar was at par, and saving a few bucks on gas doesn't make up for that. I'm saving about $10 a month on gas, and if I had a gas-guzzler and drove more I might be saving $20, so the impact for the average consumer (you know, the ones who buy plane tickets) is minimal. Airlines might be saving some money on fuel, but if fewer people are flying then it doesn't really benefit them. Not only that, but purchases of new aircraft are paid for in USD, as are many other things, such as vacation packages, which directly impact the bottom line of airlines. Sure, exporters might sell a bit more, but they're still competing with cheaper products from Asia and Mexico, and it's going to take a long time for manufacturers to find customers and ramp up production. In the meantime, the federal government is receiving less tax revenue, and less in terms of transfer payments from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland, which means less money for all Canadians. That's less for health, infrastructure, defence, transportation safety, etc, which means that everyone is impacted. But that's all good, because you're saving 20 cents per litre on gas, and only greedy rig pigs will be impacted by this.
