oh-oh

I read about the merger of JetStar Asia and Valuair over the weekend.
Corporate types are excited about it. But when that happens, passengers usually lose. Less flights and more expensive tickets.
Look at UAL for example. Each time their union bosses announce a “good thing” (such as being able to purchase “good food” on flights or having “special service” between SFO-JFK), it raises prices on travellers. The end result of this is that now if you fly on a connecting flight from SFO to the East Coast, you don’t get food unless you buy it. I’ll accept that if the fares come down to compensate, but they’ve gone up, especially to JFK. This is because the SFO-JFK run are now served by PS flights. Great for bigshot flyers who don’t have to pay for their own travel, bad for everyone else.
But back to the topic at hand. Does that mean that the brief sunshine of cheap travel in SE Asia is at an end? I rather liked my experience on JetStar Asia on my recent trip to BKK…