News and notes from around the interweb:
- flyDubai is introducing flat beds in business class on 737s. You’d think they’d be the first to have done that but no. Virgin Australia has promised this for next year as well.
Credit: flyDubai - The economics of tokens (HT: Marginal Revolution) Implications for understanding miles. Remember that American CEO Doug Parker thinks he wants his miles to be like bitcoin but that’s only because he doesn’t understand bitcoin, their issuer cannot simply devalue them and anyone can spend them anywhere that chooses to take them, the issuer doesn’t control whom can use them.
- The Economist notices moves by Air France KLM and British Airways to make their loyalty programs revenue-based not loyalty based.
- Wyoming is considering a tourism tax to promote tourism. I think they skipped econ 101. When you tax something you get less of it…
- I heard last week that Iraq is pushing for the U.S. to remove its NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) forbidding overflights of the country, so that they can generate overflight fees, to make privatizing their air traffic control organization more lucrative, in order to afford higher wages for air traffic controllers promised as a means of ending their ATC strike.
- Boeing sold 40 787-10s to Emirates to open the Dubai air show with a list value over $15 billion. Tell us again Delta how Emirates is bad for US jobs and we need protectionism?
- TSA is promoting video of their staffer running off with a bag after a lithium ion battery had exploded outside of security on Friday, causing the terminal to be evacuated and TSA even requiring flights which had pushed back to be offloaded in order to re-screen passengers. Despite passengers all already having been screened, and those screenings having little reliability.
“When you tax something you get less of it…” is not an Econ 101 concept. It’s not even an accurate concept. Taxing an activity may have a depressant effect on that activity, but it may also boost the activity if the revenues are reinvested and produce a positive return. That’s certainly Wyoming’s intent here. Whether or not they pull it off remains to be seen, but it’s lazy to look at the levy without considering how the revenue is spent as well.
And yet, Delta buys Airbus and Bombardier…
@Ben L this isn’t a detailed discussion, ceteris paribus it’s absolutely accurate Econ 101, it’s hypothetically imaginable that there’s very low hanging fruit where a small amount of revenue could be spent to generate huge tourism dollars. That doesn’t happen often in the real world.
Gary,
Check out this review, what do you think (about the review :)?
https://www.facebook.com/oleksandr.cheban/posts/10210518826382215
Andrew
My comment on the product is here:
http://viewfromthewing.com/2017/11/12/emirates-just-revealed-new-first-class-suites-theyll-flying-weeks/
Gary, sure, holding all other factors equal, a tax increase on tourism will decrease total tourism. But spending that tax revenue on marketing (as the article states) and expecting a positive return on investment isn’t a stretch, it’s the foundation of the entire marketing industry. Marketing for products is paid for by revenue generated by the sale of that product, which increases the cost of the product, just like this proposed tax. If marketing didn’t work it wouldn’t exist.