Chapter 1 - Scarcity

The article: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/deals/inside/2008-09-17-capacity-cuts-effects_N.htm

Five Ways Airline Capacity Cuts Will Effect You by Jessica Labrencis

Summary

This article talks about how airlines are making “capacity cuts". This means the airlines are cutting the number of flights thus fewer seats and fuller planes. It goes on informing us of all the problems this would cause. A few of these problems are less comfort due to crowded planes and the chances of booking a flight last minute are slim. A point that surprises me is how the schedules for your flight could change to accommodate the full capacity on planes. The scarcity of frequent flier tickets is problem we would face. At the end of the article the author gives us a few tips on how to face these problems. The only way is to book your flight in advance even for the frequent fliers since those award tickets will get scarcer.

Connections

The relationship between this article and the concept in Chapter 1 is scarcity. Many airlines are cutting capacity from 5% - 16% making the numbers of flights and seats decrease. This cut is due to limited amount of resources in this case, jet fuel. The price of fuel shot up since it's not available in unlimited quantity. One day this non - renewable resource would be gone. This limitation required the airlines to make a decision on how to use their jet fuel. Therefore they limit the number of flights. By cutting down the number of flights, they're also making more money. Since seats are scarce, more people are willing to pay more money for it. As the demand increases, the price of an airline ticket will also increase.

Reflection

Over the years, many companies have made the decision to limit their products. A decision that was made due to limited resources. For example, renewing a tree takes about 25 years but the number of trees used is greater than the number of trees produced. Therefore, the government set laws to limit the amount of trees that could be cut down to produce products like paper. This article triggered numerous of questions in my mind. What would happen when all the reserves around the world run out of this resource? What will cars run on? How will the people around the world deal with this ? Many people are probably wondering about the same questions and hoping to find a solution to this problem.