New money saving ideas to economize Airplane travel. Less cost to fly with less cost to run plane. Such as ..

Question

1. Need only one pilot, with advanced automation the back up can be ground control to land the plane, no need for copilot. If it works good enough maybe no need for pilot at all, all on ground controls.
2. Pilot also acts as gate agent, and cleans up plane between flights.
3. Passangers carry own luggage out to the plane and put in cargo compartment themselves (like on a bus).
4. Extra charge to use the plane's bathroom, credit card operated door?
5. No complementary drinks (put in a vending machine).
6. No flight attendant (pilot and/or ground control can watch passengers via remote tv camera).
Anyone have any other money saving ideas???

Answer 1

How about instead of HIRING air marshalls, frequent fliers are encouraged to go through air marshall training, and in return for being volunteer air marshalls, they get to fly free (or cheap, or something that makes economic sense to the airline)?

Passengers who weigh less than the average of 175 pounds get a refund of HALF of the money that is saved in airline diesel fuel compared with a 175-lb person. You can guess the converse of this, but i think that would be less popular.

Airlines start a baggage-trade system. You check in a bag at Dulles, they give you a bag at San Diego. It happens to be someone else's bag, but he/she has been matched using the computer, and your clothes fit each other and you have the same taste in underpants (boxers vs. briefs).

I'd go on, but when I open my discount airline, I'm going to need some aces up my sleeves.

Answer 2

The unions would never go for any of this, sorry. And the vending machine idea would actually cost MORE money than having a flight attendant carry around the soda cans. The reason they are so stingy with the soda is not the cost of the soda itself--- it's the cost of the FUEL they need to carry the soda from Point A to Point B. If you count the water, it costs $20 to fly a single cup of coffee from NY to Phoenix... so if you replace a 140-lb flight attendant with a 600-lb machine, your costs are going to go WAY up.