By NICO SCAVELLA
Tribune Staff Reporter
nscavella@tribunemedia.net
EXORBITANT plane ticket prices offered by American Airlines are the result of holiday travel traffic and not due to one of its subsidiary airline’s layoff exercises, American Airlines (AA) officials said yesterday.
An executive platinum supervisor at AA who wished to remain anonymous, denied the notion that the airline’s high ticket prices were the result of Envoy Air’s plans to lay off some employees two weeks from now.
Last week, members of the Airport Allied Workers Union (AAAWU) raised alarm about an imminent layoff exercise at Envoy that would affect nearly 50 people.
A letter from Envoy, that was sent to employees and obtained by The Tribune, stated that the company planned to start layoffs by April 15.
However, the official from AA denied that the ticket prices and the imminent layoffs were linked.
“We have no layoffs, we’re hiring like crazy,” the official said. “There’s been no layoffs at American Airlines or US Airways. We’re merging airlines; we’re going to be the biggest airline in the world, so there’s going to be no layoffs here. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. It has to do with the holidays and people buying tickets.”
A concerned traveller expressed concern over the fact that a last-minute business class return flight from Nassau to Miami was $2,839.
Additionally, the traveller claimed that on Sunday, AA were charging $1,500 for an economy return airfare to travel from Nassau to Miami.
However, by comparison, the traveller claimed that a round trip flight from Nassau to Orlando was $300.60, using the same connecting AA flights to and from Miami.
“They claim supply demand, but when they unilaterally reduce flights from 27 a day to single digits and let go of 50 staff, that sort of defeats the purpose of market forces,” the traveller said.
However, the AA official said the exorbitant and fluctuating prices were the result of holiday travel and “people buying out all of the low priced tickets.”
“That’s how it works for any airline,” she said. “When the lower prices sell out then the next lowest – and it might end up being a thousand dollars more than when they called last week and even yesterday – that causes the lower price to sell out.
“It’s Spring Break, and it’s also Easter weekend. The lower flights sold out because it’s a holiday. People book way in advance because they know the fares are going to sell out really fast, and so the lower fares sell out and they just go to the next lowest. The next lowest could be the only two seats left going at $2,000 a piece easily. You can call any airline and they’ll tell you the same exact, same thing.”
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