Chart: The Most Fuel-Efficient Airlines
Decatur Metro | August 25, 2010
Source: Wall Street Journal
Source: Wall Street Journal
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Delta probably made most of its efficiency gains by charging for checked bags!
Every airline on this list except Southwest charges for checked baggage. Debasing Delta is like local pastime. I can only assume you’re also a Pepsi drinker.
But Delta does tend to have the most and highest fees. This past summer, the unaccompanied child fee was $200 round trip per child on top of the airfare, not to mention the inconvenience of the long lines at the unaccompanied child and gate pass counters. Since they were accompanied by me to the gate and picked up by their grandparents at the gate, all I could see that Delta did was have the pilot say hello to them. If I’d only thought ahead, I should have packed them in their suitcases which would have only cost $50 per child per round trip. Seriously, I didn’t do my homework and paid for the airfare before checking the unaccompanied child fee. Then I was stuck. But it clearly would have been cheaper to have driven them to Florida, although four 9-hour trips just for a week of grandparent-grandchild bonding would not have been fun for me.
Not so fast, Karass. According to this handy-dandy chart, http://www.kayak.com/airline-fees, Every fee that Delta imposes is totally in line with every major airline.
Furthermore, the unaccompanied minor charge covers more than a hello from the pilot. On trips where it’s a single stop, the charge may seem unnecessary. But what if your child has multiple flights? Would you want your 9-year-old left to his/her own devices in an airport like Hartsfield or O’Hare? Unaccompanied minors are escorted from their arrival gate to their departure gate in such instances. And that’s a $100 well spent for me.
I don’t disagree for trips with connections where they actually have to find the child half-way through the trip, take them somewhere, and then hand them off to someone. But I think single non-stop flights ought to be no more than $25 unless they are going to do something like sit the child next to a flight attendant, give them a special dessert, make sure they have games or books to entertain them, let them go up in the cockpit, make sure they use the bathroom after drinking their complementary beverage, or SOMETHING. None of that happened. I’m sure some pilots or flight attendants choose to do more but nothing other than delivery of the child to a pre-arranged guardian is covered in the price. Since airlines are breaking down all pieces of their service into billable units, they ought to charge their unaccompanied child fee by the amount of service actually to be given. Of course, with my luck, they’ll price the most basic unit of service–delivering the child to the right person–at $200 and then charge $400 if there’s a flight change.
The lesson to me is that some of the airline service fees are disproportionately high compared to the airfare so one must take them into consideration. They are a deterrent to family travel since every charge is multiplied by three, four, five or whatever the family size is. And roundtrip unaccompanied minor fees can be higher than the roundtrip airfare!
You could probably save a lot by sending them unaccompanied on the bus!
Looked at that site: Air Tran’s fees are cheaper by $10/bag and $31/unaccompanied child = $82 roundtrip per child. I picked Delta because its airfare was only slightly higher and Delta’s schedule was more convenient But not over $100/child convenient. Live and learn.
I understand your frustration. I do. Hidden fees do add up in a frustrating way. But I also understand that airlines are only charging fees out of desperation to make a profit. Before 9/11, last minute business travel pumped wads of cash into airline coffers. And that made flying cheaper for non-business travelers. Big biz don’t fly like that anymore. So, airlines struggle to create a profitable business model. And charging a fee for wee ones, even on one-leg trips, is one way to do that.
I also tire of the Delta bashing. Imagine Atlanta with Delta. It’s not a perfect airline but i’d hate to see this town without the dollars Delta puts into worthy causes.
Since they were accompanied by me to the gate and picked up by their grandparents at the gate, all I could see that Delta did was have the pilot say hello to them.
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No, Delta also assumed the very substantial risk of taking the children into their effective control. If something happens to the children, most parents are going to sue Delta for a huge amount of money.
It would be cheaper for all concerned if they would just not lose the minors in the first place! I don’t get the sense that they are any more careful with unaccompanied minors than when they charged nothing for the service or $25. They may be covering their liability but they are also pricing themselves out of getting the unaccompanied minor business. If we all drive our kids long distances for unaccompanied visits to camps, relatives, friends, instead of using the airlines because we perceive that we are paying for a non-service, then the airlines won’t need the liability coverage at all. I’ll be curious how the business model works out. We’re certainly cutting our airline travel way down. The combination of higher cost due to the billable units per family member and decreased convenience, e.g. due to airport security, bag charges, and unchecked baggage limits, has made air travel much, much less attractive for us. Travel to distant destinations is great, but nearer, driveable destinations can be pretty darn fun too.
It would be cheaper for all concerned if they would just not lose the minors in the first place!
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That’s true of course, but it is also like saying to UPS that it wouln’t have so many lawsuits if its drivers just never got into accidents. Far easier said than done. If DL takes 10,000 unaccompanies minors per year and loses just one, its potential liability is still enormous.
I assume you or a family member work for Delta. That’s great, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us are irrational for disliking checked bag and similar fees…
Irrational is failing to realize every major airline charges nearly identical fees. Hence, your frustration is with airlines, not Delta.
I get it: you heart Delta… LOL…
Well, you can choose to fly another airline that doesn’t charge the fees you don’t like. Are there any? I think that gets to the heart of writerchad’s point.
I wouldn’t say criticizing Delta is irrational — certainly DL is not perfect — but people are way to hard on the airlines. Even with the additional fees, Delta will fly you and your stuff across the country, or even across the Atlantic, for a few hundred bucks. That is a pretty amazing value, if you ask me. Had you lived in the pre-jet engine era — i.e., virtually all of human history — you would not have been able to make those trips at all, at any price., without endueing an arduous, months-long journey over land or sea. Now we complain that we can’t stow an overstuffed bag for less than $50.
You could make the same argument about the USPS.
Sure, it’s not perfect but 200 years ago…
Aha, just googled this:
http://www.ajc.com/business/judge-feds-probing-delta-584721.html
BUSTED! Well… who knows… presumption of innocence and all that.
Indeed you could. But one difference is that the USPS is a government-run entity with service that pales in comparison to that of private companies offering competing services, like UPS and Fed Ex.
Exactly why I used it as my example. If your argument could just as easily be used to defend USPS, lord knows what else that same logic could defend!
Ah. Touche.
What can I mail with FedEx for 44¢?
You can’t mail anything for 44 cents with the post office, either. They’re tapping the treasury — i.e., your tax dollars — to cover the approximately $3.5 billion they lose every quarter. At least with Fed Ex, the listed price is all you pay. USPS is charging you one thing at the counter but robbing you blind behind your back.
But the stock market’s going to go up forever, so we’re OK right?
Well, the Post Office seemed to be doing fine financially for 300 years until W was President. I mean some people might say they’re losing money now because they’re mandated to provide a very high level of service for a very low price to a market that is disappearing, but that wouldn’t fit either of our pre-constructed, ideological positions.
Sorry, don’t mean to thread-jack, but I find the often used Post Office to private business comparisons wholly misleading.
It would be interesting to see how passenger rail compares to those figures.
GOOD’s chart of this shows Amtrak at 54 mpg per seat. http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1008/fuel-efficient-airlines/flat.html
Why? Would you choose passenger rail over an airplane if traveling to the midwest or west coast? Even taking Amtrak from Atlanta to DC takes what, 12-14 hours?
Today, one doesn’t choose rail over air for the speed. You choose it for the journey.
High Speed Rail technology, proven and in use today, will allow it to be a viable alternative for distances of 400 mile or less. Consider door-to-door time, but just departure and arrival times. Washington to New York is a good example – over 60% of all long distance travel in that corridor is by rail. Europe has also shown that, when rail alternatives are available, they will be utilized. 60% of travel between Barcelona and Madrid, for instance, is by rail.
Would you take a train to Charlotte if the door-to-door journey took 3 hours? I know I would.
No, I’d probably make the 5 hour drive. But I might take the rail sometimes.
I’ve used Acela to go from DC to NYC — it’s great. But my point is that this is a huge country, and traveling around it by rail is, to a very large extent, not feasible. Almost no one is going to take rail from Atlanta to LA, from DC to San Francisco, etc. The airlines are pretty indispensible for those trips. But again, in the northeast corridor at least, I agree that rail is a very good alternative in many cases.
Oh, also: building a high speed rail from Atl to Charlotte will cost a lot of money that we do not have. So there’s that, too.
I’m not saying rail is practical for those long trips. What I am saying is that rail is a viable, efficient alternative for the proper trips and usage in Europe, Japan, and now China, shows that. As for money, we didn’t blink at spending $5B for the 5th runway and new terminal at Hartsfield. BTW, the 5th runway was originally conceived as a runway for commuter flights – exactly the kind that rail can do just as quickly as more efficiently.
I don’t think we disagree. Did a 5th runway and new terminal really cost $5 BILLION? That is insane.
One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of people on short commuter flights are connecting in Atlanta. The short flight is not their whole trip so obviously rail would not be a viable alternative for those people.
Another huge barrier to rail that I see is that once you arrive in most cities (excluding the northeast, Chicago, and other places I don’t know about) a car is a basic necessity. So it’s a heck of a lot easier to drive 3-4 hours to Charlotte than to get to the train station, take the train, and then figure out how to get around Charlotte without a car.
So, one person traveling on a full flight is more efficient than one person driving to his/her destination by him/herself? But, the dreaded long-distance car trip is more efficient for a large family if traveling in a fuel-efficient car?
If I’m reading the figures correctly, it sounds like a car is more efficient, even if it’s not a Prius,
If I go to Kansas City with my family of four, I’m beating Delta even if my car gets a bit more than 15 mpg. Of course, I’ve also got to factor in additional time, meals on the road, and wear and tear on the car. A car is always CHEAPER for my family.
In the interest of comparing apples with apples, the automobile figures should be multiplied by the number of seats so as to compare a full car with a full aircraft. e.g., that would put the Prius at 50MPG X 5 seats = 250MPG
Read the fine print and make this comparison honest
the Suburban actually gets 126 seat miles to the gallon
the Prius gets 200
sorry Flaka I missed your post