Lauren T Barbin Blog

Understanding cheap airline tickets

Despite being “airlines”, most of an airlines’ expenses occur on the GROUND. Think about it…all the executives, reservations agents, ticket and boarding agents, baggage handlers, re-fuelers, hangars, mechanics, airport facilities, etc. are on the ground. The pilots are generally highly paid (the flight attendents not so much), but all the payroll of pilots and flight attendents is miniscule compared to all those other costs which happen on the ground. Once a plane is airborne, it really doesn’t cost that much at all (relatively) to fly from point A to point B. This is why a flight from Los Angeles to New York only cost a tiny bit more to perate than a flight from Los Angeles to Denver. The main force in finding cheap airline tickets is in understanding that competition, not actual costs of operation, are what determines whether a flight between 2 cities will be cheap or not.