Just visit sites like easyjet and ryanair, flights are so affordable in Europe. While in North America, even short distances such as between New York & Washington is well over $100 each way.
2006-10-24 12:28:55 · 7 answers · asked by Mister M 1 in Travel ➔ Air Travel
There are a couple of reasons:
-Overhead. Many of the US airlines are carrying heavy overhead, particularly when it comes to employee pension plans, benefits, and legal fees (since they have almost all gone through bankruptcy recently and it's pretty expensive to do so on such a large scale). The European airlines don't have such a high overhead.
-Unionized labor. I'm a big supporter of unions in general but it's very true: union workers are a lot more expensive than non-union workers. Almost all airline employees including gate crews, baggage handlers, etc are unionized in the US. It costs a lot more to keep them working and it costs a lot more to provide their retirement benefits (even if the pension plan goes bankrupt, there's still other benefits paid to employees who signed on before a certain era).
-Demand. Folks in Europe are a lot more mobile than folks in the US, and they tend to travel without cars due to the high costs of gas in Europe. A weekend trip in the US is packing the family into the SUV and driving off; in Europe, it's by air, bus or train. More people flying means more fares, which means more revenue. You can sell things for a lot cheaper when you sell a lot of them.
-Short-haul routes: airlines don't make a lot of money on a mid-range flight (1000-3000 miles or so) because one plane can only make a few trips each day. Short trips mean the one plane can make 6 or 8 flights a day or more; long trips are expensive. In the US, if we are travelling 200 miles, we jump in the car. In Europe, we're getting on a plane. Goes back to demand and volume. Imagine a plane with 200 passengers. If you charge $400 for a cross-US trip, and can make one trip west and one trip east per plane per day, you sell 400 tickets for a total of $16,000. But if you are only going 200 miles, you can make 10 trips total per day. That's 2000 passengers serviced with a single plane. Even if they are only paying $100 per ticket, that's still $20,000--- or $4000 more revenue from the same plane.
2006-10-24 13:42:09 · answer #1 · answered by dcgirl 7 · 1⤊ 2⤋
Flights Within Europe
2016-10-04 22:08:40 · answer #2 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In Canada there are no longer fairly some airlines to compete. So with much less opposition, the better the airfare. the two best ones are Air Canada and Westjet. additionally the taxes are exceedingly intense there as properly. As for the U.S., it relies upon. specifically circumstances Southwest has a fare sale the place flight could be as low as $40 9 each way. additionally the fee ticket fee relies upon on how aggressive the path is. In Europe, i'm particular there are routes between cities that are exceedingly high priced as properly.
2016-10-02 22:21:11 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There's infaltion here. $1 here can buy you a snack. Over there you can buy two snacks with they're type of money.
oh and over there the euro is worth more than the dollar. So if the flight ticket is 100 euros at Europe, it costs us $200.
2006-10-24 12:31:38 · answer #4 · answered by ? 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well one big thing is they do not have the security as we do, Totally different taxes bases, income and costs in general just to name afew. Also check around flights in Us you can find deals if you look.
2006-10-24 12:35:33 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
That's a great question
2016-08-23 09:25:47 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Was curious on the answer to this as well
2016-07-27 22:58:15 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋