No More Free Meals
When I started university in 1993, it cost me $15 per month to have a phone line in my residence room. Yup, only $15. And that wasn’t a special student discount or anything, it was the regular rate for everyone. Back then Telus was still known as AGT (short for Alberta Government Telephone) and like all phone companies prior to deregulation, they probable subsidized the local rates with their long distance. That’s not to say that local service cost a great deal to maintain, it’s just that AGT didn’t need to jack the local service rates as they had the long distance market locked up. Then along came deregulation, AGT became Telus, and Telus was forced to compete with other long distance carriers. Now, I pay $40 per month for a phone line into my house and long distance is on top of that. Only I don’t dial long distance all that often so there are no overall savings for me.
Last night I was looking at flights to Jamaica and noticed something new on Air Canada’s website. Once you’ve chosen your flight and you’re reviewing your flight details, it shows information about the meal service. And it seems now that, according to the Air Canada website, that “complimentary meal service is now only available on North American flights longer than 4h30m”. So while I appreciate that WestJet and other discount carriers have brought down the cost of flying, I think that those cheap flights have come at huge costs. Airlines are declaring bankruptcy left, right and centre. Governments in turn throw tax payer money into the pot to help out. Shareholders lose money as the share prices plummet. It seems to be a lose, lose, lose and more lose situation for everyone. Sure you could say the end consumer wins because of lower seat prices, but that same end user pays taxes and invests in the stock market and may have a job that is connected to the airline industry.
I don’t have the answer to the problem either, I just know that I’m not happy about having to pay for a meal on a flight. At least if I had the option of purchasing that meal when I bought the ticket, then by the time the flight came around I’d have forgotten that I had to pay extra for it. Of course, I was paying for it before too; it was just all part of the single ticket price. And I’m still not happy about paying $40 per month for a home phone line.
Wed, 08 Jun 2005 14:24 Posted in Flying
