It's a fact that low cost airlines grow the market.FICU wrote:A "needed" service? Give your head a shake man... another Boeing's worth of seats in a market already over saturated with seats. The 50 seat Jazz RJ isn't needed... the First Air and Canadian North combi's served the market just fine and that's when Yellowknife was booming. Yellowknife is suffering at this time if you weren't aware.Ali G wrote:
Westjet has established a price that keeps it profitable and supplies a needed service. So, you should be happy they have satisfied your conditions on entering the market.
Your arguments are dated. You should have been in the industry before May15, 1986 when "Freedom to Move", the airline deregulation paper was released by the government. Every airline had to submit justification for price increases. All northern airlines loudly protested allowing competition on the delicate northern routes. The arguments were that the existing service reflected northern needs and that additional competition would erode and make existing service no longer viable. The fact of the matter was B737's were earning between $7,000-12,000 an hour for airlplane fully allocated costing $3500 an hour. Airfares were in the range of $1200 because of the "high cost". It's a well known fact that the northern operations of PWA and Nordair supported the southern operations and made both of those airlines the only consistantly profitable airlines in Canada, next to Wardair, of course.
FICU...I appreciate your protectionist interests. I do. I understand them very well. You are being forced out of your comfort zone. The cat has been let out of the bag and hopefully it won't be as bad as anticipated. If your customers walk across the ramp, you'll either have to scream loudly that a hot meal, wine and a pretty check in counter is what they really really need and want. Or, you're going to have to be smart and play this one agressively and be the better player and get with it.
Never lose sight of the fact that:
1. The customer is always right.
2. The customer always seeks good value on their terms, not yours.
If you understand your customers well and are meeting their needs and demands, you have nothing to worry about.