OIL knock-on has hit already... + $20 bucks on airfares - well Craig, Canuck, LMAO and other assorted know-nothings???

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

HOUSTON (AP) _ The nation's two largest airlines are adding a $20 surcharge to round-trip tickets, matching a move by No. 5 Continental Airlines.

Continental on Tuesday announced it is imposing the fuel fee on travel beginning Feb. 1. On Wednesday, United Airlines, the country's biggest carrier, and No. 2 American Airlines added similar surcharges.

The surcharge of $10 one-way and $20 roundtrip applies to all domestic flights. It doesn't apply to international flights.

The charge appears on tickets and will be included in advertised fares, said Karla Villalon, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Continental.

"They're doing it without announcing it," said Terry Trippler of 1travel.com, an online seller of discount travel tickets. "The only way to know for sure is to book a trip. Is this the new wave of price increases? I hope not."

Airline officials and Wall Street analysts said the surcharge was warranted. Continental said its jet fuel costs in the fourth quarter reached $259 million, 50 percent higher than in the same period a year before.

Increased fuel costs are a direct result of the highest oil prices in nearly a decade, spawned by production cutbacks by foreign oil powers. The price of the benchmark U.S. crude oil climbed above $29 a barrel on Wednesday, reaching the highest level since the Gulf War and more than double its level of about a year ago.

"When you have a cost double on a year-over-year basis, you have to cover it," said Candace Browning, an airlines analyst with Merrill Lynch. She said, however, that the surcharge will fail if other major carriers refuse to match it.

By late Wednesday, Delta, Northwest, TWA and US Airways had not adopted the surcharge. Spokesmen at Northwest and TWA said they were studying the increase, and a US Airways spokesman declined to comment.

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Thanks to snowgirl at Downstreamers forum.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 20, 2000

Answers

Given the state of the current Oil market, this does not surprise me at all.

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), January 20, 2000.

Andy:

You're wasting your time. Despite the available evidence, they think oil is still $25/barrel. Perhaps they can't count above $25. FWIW, I hope it falls again rather than keeps rising.

-- X (X@X.com), January 20, 2000.


Oil should reasonably be in the $25 to $30 per barrel range Andy......so what if it spikes higher for a while....it's been ridiculously low for too long.....

This $80 per barrel b.s. that I hear here is what is ridiculous!

Furthermore, the whole 'paranoia' tone that resides here is even more ridiculous......

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), January 20, 2000.


Andy - sigh -

You continue to be so linear and binary. I, and others, question the validity of RC's data and you seem to infer from that that we think the price of oil can't go up.

Oil is a commodity - it's gonna move around in price. Could it have even entered your head that the current price movements could be because of non Y2K factors?

You and RC are making extraordinary claims about the oil industry. As Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof".

To accept your contentions that there are Y2K disruptions still happening with oil embeddeds AND that these disruptions are materially affecting the price of oil, one must accept that ALL of the following is happening:

1) There are embedded systems in the oil biz that are capable of failing well past the CDC (rather than right at the CDC);

2) That these systems suffer catastrophic failures - rather than cosmetic failures;

3) That the remediation teams in the oil industry somehow missed all these systems (but managed to get to the systems that would have failed right at the CDC);

4) That these systems which are purportedly failing now have no work- arounds or patches available;

5) That there are enough firms with enough of these systems failing that the aggregate production and refining of oil is materially affected.

JC

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), January 20, 2000.


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