Archive for June, 2012
Considering air safety and cheap air tickets
So here’s a question for everyone who pays taxes. Working under the control of the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has the job of overseeing the safety of the skies. This means regulating both the airlines and the air traffic control system that tells the pilots where to fly once they get off the ground. You would always hope the government would spend the money to recruit the experts to get the job done. Except the Office of Special Counsel has just accused the FAA of consistently ignoring the reports of safety violations made by whistleblowers. No matter what you may think of the morality of those employees who go behind the backs of their employers, the Special Counsel has reported a significant number of instances where the FAA refused to act on the reports even though subsequent investigations showed serious safety problems. Further, many of the rule changes intended to respond to proven safety problems have proved unworkable, but there has been no effort made to modify them.
It’s significant that, among all government departments, the FAA has the highest number of whistleblower complaints. This reflects the importance of safety and the outrage of employees when they see no action taken to resolve those issues. So would you forego cheap air tickets. The fact that more needs to be spent on maintaining their fleet of planes by airlines makes this an interesting question.
We need more air traffic controllers and better equipment. The deficit and GOP refusals to increase taxes means the FAA will not get any new money. So should there be a surcharge on tickets? No more cheap air tickets but enough money to make the airplanes safer and to pay for more controllers. That actually sounds like quite a good deal. Everyone should accept the need to pay for increased safety. If the tax payers cannot be asked to pay, then the burden must fall on those who use the service. Those who choose to fly should pay to make their flights safer in the same way that the duty that is currently paid on gas prices helps to cover the costs of improving the roads that we use.
Buying air tickets is more beneficial on certain week days
When doing Economics 101, the law of supply and demand is one of the first things you master. At its simplest level, it says that if demand is low and supply plentiful, prices will fall. But if demand is high, prices start to rise, accelerating should there be a shortage of supply. So, for example, the current recession means there’s high unemployment. This excess in the supply of labor means pay falls. In the case of airline tickets, there’s a finite supply of tickets. Unless airlines buy or rent new airplanes, the number of available seats stays the same. The only variable is the number of passengers willing to fly. The most recent surveys show the ticket prices are highest coming into and over the weekend. This is the time when sales are slowest and, not surprisingly, the few buyers refuse to pay the higher prices. So, come Monday, airlines discount their prices. Other airlines watch to see how deep the early discounts are and then decide whether to match them on Tuesday morning. Most of the “sale” prices expire come Thursday, so Friday sees the full seat prices restored until the discounts kick in again the following Monday. Not surprisingly, the people who monitor sales see the highest volumes on Monday and Tuesday when the supply of seats at low prices is plentiful.
You are allowed to find this behavior bizarre. If airlines were even halfway rational, they would arrive at an average price based on a week’s sales and offer that price 24/7. Except, of course, no one expects large corporations to act rationally. This therefore leaves you with a simple choice. If you want to buy cheap air tickets, you wait for the prices to be discounted on a Monday and then watch to see how the competition pitches its prices. Monday night through Tuesday morning probably offers the lowest prices although, on some less popular routes, you may still find cheap air tickets on Wednesday. Once you understand the cycle, you buy when you know ticket prices will be at their lowest.
The academically inclined an getting them quotes for car insurance
When you compare us to the rest of the world, the international rankings show us performing badly. European and Asian countries have more postgraduates and graduates and, perhaps more importantly, produce a better trained workforce with math skills and considerable engineering experience. We struggle to build on the Head Start Program to keep the teaching at our schools and colleges on the highest possible level. The result is a slide in the work we can do and, with fewer jobs, we cannot have a better life.
Coming to you as an individual, this means you should always continue studying to improve your knowledge and expand the work you can do. As a teen, you should aim for the best possible grade point average (GPA). Just going through the high school experience is no longer enough. There’s such competition for fewer jobs, you will struggle to find anything that pays a good wage. To get yourself better paid jobs you can get a bachelors degree to give yourself an edge, as long as you have a good GPA and SAT score.
Car insurance quotes for postgraduates
As a byproduct, the insurance industry has discovered people with a high GPA and both a degree and postgraduate qualification are less likely to be involved in a traffic accident. It seems people who are responsible when planning their education and future careers, are also responsible when they drive. This means the people who do best in educational terms not only get the best jobs, they also get cheap car insurance. It’s a kind of reward for those who do well for themselves, and protect themselves and their families when they drive. For those that don’t do well in their academics this may not appear to be very fair, although it is what it is, just like all the different factors that are used to set the car insurance quotes. Whether it is more or less fair that the factors used in a credit score is anyone’s guess.