Monday, August 01, 2005

Economic Nonsense: An update

The good news is that someone else has spotted the economic nonsense about which I posted earlier.

The bad news is that he has missed the point.
"... who choose the risk of flying with cut-price operators liable to sudden collapse ..."


Errmmm....

So if it is only low-cost operators who are liable to sudden collapse, what happened to SwissAir? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
What about United Airlines?
Or Alitalia?
Or Air Lib, France's second biggest airline?
Or TWA?


Having worked for Ferranti at exactly the time that the Guerin fraud surfaced, I can testify that "sudden collapse" is not limited to an identifiable subset of any given industry sector.

That said, some industry sectors are dodgier than others and none more so than dodgy tour operators. I suggest that they are a greater threat to the travelling public (and an easier threat to manage - who, for instance, would rescue me when I have bought a ticket from Hong Kong to Manila on a Thai registered airline and paid using a VISA card issued by a bank in the UK?) than the scheduled commercial airline sector. Indeed, having been at the wrong end of Tour Operator bankrupcy, three weeks before Lady P-G and I set off on our honeymoon, one can see why the bond system already exists for tour operators...




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