There’s a special place in hell for the executives of taxpayer subsidized services that turn around and gouge their customers.
My related take in this is that airports are expensive to maintain because you waste a ton of space on vendors and seating areas. If airports were just shacks next to a runway, they’d be much cheaper to run.
So you can’t really charge people for sitting/waiting (though the private clubs sort of do just that). Then you charge people for the other purpose (rent on vendors) and that pays for everything.
But you can’t tell your customers “it’s actually really expensive to build these giant buildings to just hold CIBOs and Dufry” since they won’t believe you (or worse call for smaller more efficient airports to be built with fewer services).
So you just sort of play this very bizarre merchandising game.
Flew Ryan air once to, I think it was some airport nearish to Venice, Italy. And it was pretty much a shack next to the runway. Walk down the steps off the plane into a small building, notice a conveyor belt. Walk through the next door, pick your luggage off the same conveyor belt. Walk through the next door, you're at the bus stop.
That was literally Berlin airport, before it sadly closed.
Auckland International Airport Ltd (AIAL) was floated on the (Australian) Stock Exchange in Feb-1999, making it one of the first gateway airports globally to be listed publicly. [Auckland city council has reduced its ownership] to the current 18%
Then we privatise large international airports..
Meanwhile the smaller loss-making airports stay in public ownership because no-one wants to buy them.
Part of the airport's willingness to give Ryanair a discount is the expectation of full planes with a lot of seats, so there are more people to sell to.
e.g. [1] Table 6, Warsaw Modlin airport charges Ryanair 6 PLN (€1.30) per passenger, vs the normal 40 PLN (€8.50). That's obviously significant when they sell flights for €15 or so.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317710545_Internati...
I guess a really nice, mall-like airport with amenities you don't want to use (because they're too expensive) is still slightly better than a smaller airport whose amenities you don't use (because they don't exist). At least you have an option, though it doesn't stop it from being annoying.
Sidenote, maybe LAX needs $15 sandos if it means they can afford to unshit their airport.
In Stockholm (Arlanda) there is standard McDonald's (among other chains) in the terminal.
It's the biggest-ticket way to do it, therefore it should provide the biggest bonus for some individual. Maybe even more than one individual could be intended to share the glory.
The long-time franchisee was a very well-established & respected Houston-based restaurant corp that came in a decade ago on their strength of multiple local restaurants of various cuisines which were popular, successful, and affordable for at least occasional dining for most Houstonians.
This could not hold up, recently dethroned by a nationwide airport-centric conractor with a deal crafted to compete on purely financial terms.
related:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pappas-sues-houston-over-h...
I clearly remember a Burger King in one of Moscow airports, probably DME. It is a regular Burger King serving everything one would expect, except the 1.5x prices.
who tf is wolfgang puck
Just a guy who's got three Michelin starred restaurants.
Thus far we have suppressed the urge.
The right thing to do would be more expensive airline tickets that account for the total cost of flying (including the pollution they cause) and then charging an honest price for the sandwiches.
I mean, this sandwich costs almost as much as some airline tickets.
Too bad we can't have nice trains. I mean Amtrak is okay but it doesn't even compare to the rail systems in other countries. Guess we're stuck polluting too. Thanks, Elon
Drinks are the problem, but water is not that expensive, and some airports have drinkable water for free near toilets.
And this is flying through hundreds of airports, not just major coastal ones...
This idea would work best for soups that are good to eat cold, of course, but those do exist.
Foods I've flown with:
Apples
Two sub sandwiches
100 fresh tortillas
An entire 20lb uncooked brisket
3 loaves of bread
A frozen 8lb pork roast
I'm pretty surprised they're ok with frozen stuff, but yea, never had any issues bringing entire bags full of food, raw or prepared, packaged or not.
You can’t take a big jug of water through security unless it’s frozen because the rule prohibits liquids, not solids.
For example Brussels -> Vienna for 13 euros and it runs weekly.
Ryanair allows passengers to board with 1 small item, such as a purse or laptop bag.
At the end of the day you're just arguing that there should be a carbon tax on flights
How do you know how much they should fly?
Our society uses the price system to allocate those transportation resources. The price already factors in alternatives and discourages the activity relative to its burden on society.
When it doesn't hurt society through its externalities (noise, pollution).
> The price already factors in alternatives and discourages the activity relative to its burden on society.
Not really. It doesn't kerosene isn't taxed like other fuels in many places. The pollution isn't cleaned up. Ticket prices are ridiculously low and have been widely advertised to encourage people to fly more.
It sounds like your real complaint is that the ticket should be taxed more, but I'd guess that your opinion extends to other kinds of transportation as well.
In food services in general there's this weird thing that the ultimate price on the product doesn't matter. The food-selling place will have paper-thin margins regardless. It will either be rent, or equipment and cutlery, or the need for highly trained and specialised staff, or... (and often all of those, and more, coupled together).
At least in places that last.
Not 33%.
The actual rule of thumb is one third ingredients, one third labor, and one third overhead including rent. And you hope to have a tiny sliver of profit left over, by making them a hair less than a third.
Lets say you're a moderately successful restaurant that sells 200 breakfasts at $10 each. At 2% profit that means the total profit on 200 breakfasts is just $40 for the whole morning.
You're just out to lunch and those are not the correct profit margins or realistic. You might be thinking about grocery stores whose net margins might be in that realm of 2-4%. I don't know where you got your understanding of how the pricing works but please don't run a restaurant.
Your mistake is that you have separated overhead and labour, when they're out of the same 1/3. 1/3 overhead including rent, 1/3 ingredients, 1/3 in the pocket.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sageworks/2018/01/26/restaurant...
Australia cites 4.2% https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-03/360985-R...
etc.
If you want to run a restaurant and not join the tens of thousands that close each year you can't run them the way you're saying. Doing $2000 in business and making $40 isn't sustainable. Successful restaurants don't run that way.
This is entirely overlooking the fact that you are a captive of the airport as long as the TSA screening process exists. At best, going through security is annoying and adds anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours of wait time, and at worst it is legitimately traumatizing.
Prices are high simply because people are punished for leaving on foot, and people are prohibited from bringing many goods through security.
Obviously that's not a "normal" thing to have done, but in a world with lighter security, I remember airport food being around the same level as mall food court options, so it was an interesting option for getting out of the house. I'd be curious if there's some lower-security path towards making Airports more of a common space, not that there's any chance of it happening.
It does have a massive mall attached to the public area though (Jewel).
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/34818/why-is-secu...
It is helpful in the sense that bottlenecks don't happen earlier on, but I'm not sure it's that great of an approach.
It's the transition of power that's the problem. Like, a real bad problem. Like raze half your country and set you back 50-100 years problem.
Roman dictators weren't like modern autocrats. They were officials, appointed for a limited time (usually no more than 6 months) to address some specific emergency. They weren't crooks who staged coups. And it doesn't seem to have been a desirable appointment to hold; dictators often stood down before the time-limit.
I think the GP's point was that even with "good" dictators, the problems come up when succession needs to happen, which is why "dictatorships" don't scale.
Democracy has a built-in mechanism to stop any bad thing from happening in a change of government, while ensuring that change happens often (at least in a good one).
A ruler with absolute political power.
> ...modern version, of which there are many terrible examples before power transition becomes an issue?
This actually reinforces my point. I never denied the existence of bad dictators (or even that the majority of dictators are bad, I think that's quite likely). This would make the power transition for a country that happened to get a good one significantly more dangerous.
That, and the lack of freedom, and the life you're subjected to when the dictator doesn't like you.
I ran through the airport to security, let them know what flight I was on, and then ran to the gate after walking through the metal detector fully clothed and sending my bag through x-ray. Security radioed the gate and the flight crew left the door open so I could board. I made it, took my seat and buckled in, they closed the door and the plane pushed back. Elapsed time car seat to plane seat was about 7 minutes. Every single person I interacted with was helpful and understanding.
What strikes me today is that EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT FLYING SUCKS. Airports are just part of the problem.
I know this sounds extreme but they need to deregulate and privatize every single thing about the airline industry.
Government just needs to ensure that liability flows in part to executives and board members regardless of corporate structure.
Airlines can form a consortium to operate ATC themselves and can modernize it; something the government is completely failing at.
A modern ATC would let us break away from the hub model that gives airports so much power.
And your sandwich will be cheaper at an airport closer to your destination where you didn’t have to wait an hour for security to feel you up and take naked pictures of you.
Specifically in Germany the experience seems to have only gotten worse (both with quality of service and punctuality).
Try that with a state sponsored security force.
Since the TSA is generally a federally controlled agency, you'd have to elect a majority of the House/Senate/Executive to change policy there to make it better, and literally no one will run for those offices with even a minor part of their platform being improving the TSA. Even if they had a position you liked about airport security, would you be willing to look past a difference on something like gun laws or school funding or environmental issues to vote for someone who was going to make the TSA more effective? If your answer is no, that's why people have no real hope that the government would improve the TSA.
So any government should work on improving the process if enough people are complaining and there are objective improvements to be made.
We don't have to think about which party to vote for to ensure eg. the government cares about improving lives of their citizens: they should all do that!
Do you consider "fundamental to the system" better? I don't.
However there is huge career risk to reducing regulation, easing up on "safety" rules, etc. And anyone who does that will be attacked and if possible punished if anything goes wrong.
Literally there is no incentive for bureaucracies to do better.
The following airports utilize the screening partner program: Atlantic City International Airport, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport, Dawson Community Airport, Great Falls International Airport, Glacier Park International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, Havre City-County Airport, Jackson Hole Airport, Kansas City International Airport, L. M. Clayton Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, Portsmouth International Airport, Punta Gorda Airport, Roswell International Air Center, San Francisco International Airport, Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, Sidney-Richland Municipal Airport, Sioux Falls Regional Airport, Tupelo Regional Airport, Wokal Field/Glasgow International Airport, Yellowstone Airport
If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good. When it means a limited number of suppliers chosen by an authority, it's almost always worse.
Absolutely. So let's have competition with multiple private contractors at every airport, paid by the number of passengers who choose to use a particular contractor to go through security.
That would solve every problem, as the market will optimize for maximum passenger satisfaction at security checkpoints, especially if they can get more people through faster.
What could go wrong? /s
If there is no competition possible--and there are so many other situations apart from airport security--then a publicly owned provider is better. There _are_ some things that are a natural monopoly but if there must be a monopoly then it should be a government one.
A private monopoly is the worst of all worlds.
Very quickly “no security airlines” would go out of business as no one would want to risk their life needlessly, especially if the lack of security led to an incident.
However an airline that used nonintrusive, convenient methods for security, fmight find a loyal passenger following.
I don't think so, as you seem to have misunderstood my "bright idea."
It's not airlines I was talking about. They'd have nothing to do with it. Just as they have zero to do with security checkpoint screening now. Rather, it's multiple, private replacements for TSA, each of which would serve all the airlines/gates at an airport.
What's more, even before the TSA existed, the airlines didn't do the screening. It was a private security contractor hired by the airport.
It's, as you correctly imply, all about incentives.
In my "scenario" these hypothetical "competitive private replacement" security screeners are paid by the numbers of bodies it passes through.
And so I'll ask my sarcastic question again. This time specifically to you:
What could possibly go wrong?
Edit: Clarified prose.
Privatization works only because of market incentives. When you take away some of those incentives then you have the illusion of a free market but free market controls cannot encourage good outcomes.
Not always. Often when this happens, it's just a race to the bottom.
TSA precheck in ATL takes min 5 minutes on a good day.
Setting that aside again, airlines have now even taken the liberty of telling you “boarding doors close 5 minutes before departure and won’t be reopened”.
Travel today is so shitty you can’t even fathom what it could be.
Err... 5 minutes is extremely generous. Emirates closes the gates 15 mins prior to departure; AirAsia, Qatar Airways, 20 mins; EasyJet 25 mins.
So, yes, everything sucks more now, but it's also far more affordable, and part of how it became more affordable was that the mid to late 90s brought the first wave of budget airlines like Airtran that lowered service and legroom and the like but made it cheaper.
There's a common refrain about a lot of things - air travel and the internet most of all, that amount to "this thing was better when it was a luxury service for only the rich."
And yet people keep flying. As long as the price is low enough there are enough customers who will endure the pain.
Things will change when more people stop flying.
At some point, trying to go from NYC to DC, let alone St. Louis or Atlanta, takes a pretty long time via non-plane methods. In some ways, the big innovation of plane travel is that for major cities, non-stop flights are an option, so it's hard to beat the speed of it. There's never going to be a viable non-stop train from, say, Miami to DC, but if it stops in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Greenville, Winston-Salem, and Richmond, then you've added hours to the trip time in stops/slowing down, which loses people as well who don't want to spend the whole day on a train.
There's a breakpoint around 4-5 hours where travel doesn't eat your full day, and there's only so many routes where you could get under that duration and still have enough volume of people to take it to make it worth running the route.
Except the eventual 1000 km / hour part
The massive deregulation that already happened is a very large part of why flying sucks. It's also a very large part of why it's cheap. You makes your choice and picks your poison.
And then I got me a ringside view for my quaint little fetish
I just wanna drain my little pink heart of all its malice
And kick back for the afternoon in this fluorescent palace
I was honestly expecting exactly that kind of follow up attack for years.
Also it was relatively frequent but not that serious in the late 1960’s. The first US fatality from aircraft high jacking didn’t occur until 1970.
Attacking airports has also happened multiple times including a 2002 incident in LA and even quite deadly attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre
As opposed to killing hundreds.
I'm not saying that the current TSA theater is the most efficient way to stop hijackings.
Don't be ridiculous. At every airport and terminal??
And then how many extra people standing around doing nothing when it is a quiet period??
While that's a pretty extreme statement, airport security's usefulness is definitely in question. Most other airports outside the US are significantly less strict (don't have to take off shoes, for instance), and there have been tons of youtube videos showing how you could easily slip in weapons of various sorts through airport security.
It's practically a meme about the fact that they throw out all "might-be-bomb" liquids into trashcans right next to you -- in the same receptacle.
It seems much more like security theatre, and maybe thanks to terrorist groups, but more thanks to sensationalist media + clever people who take advantage of the capitalistic system (one of the heads of the TSA just-so-happens to make the machines they use to scan your luggage, "private" business on the side that he gets paid for.)
In addition, TSA Precheck / Clear / Global Entry are all ways to pay to have less inconvenience -- but have you seen any statistics they've been able to give out about stopped terrorist attempts? Don't you think that would be a thing that would be promoted if it was happening?
In the US, even if there _is_ a tedious process, at least everything feels efficient, and appear quite standardized.
What does this actually mean?
I really feel for the TSA “agent” who has to just sit and make sure nobody goes the wrong way through the “exit only” corridor that leads out of the terminal.
Once precheck became a thing, time to go through security is almost always less than 5m.
An airplane flight is practically a high-tech bus trip. Airport security probably is useless, otherwise there'd be an analogue for public transport. And as people regularly point out, the cost-benefit of airport security is probably net-negative. I bet almost nobody would choose a high-security airport over a low security airport if they had a choice.
I have been routinely searched before boarding a ferry to Spain as a foot passenger. AFAIAA, car passengers are not routinely searched, so I don't know what the logic is there?
Even if the plane just downed itself in an ocean in an emergency; that'd be technically not so hard to pull off. Enough to deter hijackers so the mechanism wouldn't need to be used.
I think that mindset is mistaken, and explains many of the misconceptions around the dentist that was dragged of a United plane a while ago. However, that this mindset can persist shows just how amazingly successful aviation safety and security efforts have been over the past decades.
> Airport security probably is useless, otherwise there'd be an analogue for public transport.
It is much easier to kill everyone on a plane (and then some) than everyone on a bus or train, it seems to me.
Not to mention that TSA over and over again fails their undercover inspections. In some cases 95% of weapons and explosives make it through TSA without any issues! Airport security literally is theater. At best it'll result in the terrorist attack being moved from the airplane to the security queue.
This has already happened; most terrorist attacks these days occur at malls and schoolhouses.
Same memetic infection to disrupt and destroy, same domestic hysterics, same feedback cycle. So it goes until the next big meme shift for the dissatisfied comes along.
>Not to mention that TSA over and over again fails their undercover inspections.
Every (mid-2000s) attacker that managed to get through the incompetent security was defeated by the best security force available: passengers that know that allowing their plane to be hijacked or threatened by a bomb means certain death for everyone on board should they stay in their seats and permit it.
There have been a few cases where the pilot waited for the co-pilot to use the restroom, locked them out of the cockpit with the post-9/11 door, then intentionally crashed the plane.
All of these incidents were overseas. One was confirmed, and one or two more are suspected cases of pilot suicide.
When passengers have been able to intervene, they have defended their airplane 100% of the time.
When passengers have been prevented by regulatory means from defending themselves, they have failed to defend against a "trusted" figure turned attacker 100% of the time.
Sometimes the correct approach really is to do nothing.
As the other person commented: instances of pilot suicides like this occurred outside the US, not under FAA justification.
Also, why is it up to the airline to tell TSA whether I am enrolled in PreCheck or not? If it’s not on my boarding pass, I must not have PreCheck, huh? Department of Homeland Security isn’t really sure whether I have PreCheck or not.
Isn't that an improvement? You can't fly a security queue into a skyscraper or a crowded arena.
the terrorists have already won. They did more damage causing these security measures than any actual killing or bombing.
That's true, but sandwiches are not among them.
True story. My FIL tried to bring a jar of mayo through security and they made him throw it away.
OP you are allowed to bring solid foods without restriction but are still limited to 100cc for liquid/salsa/sauce even if it's sandwiched. Practically it is not strictly enforced if your sandwich looks edible, I've never had my pulled pork sandwiches analyzed.
So, technically, TSA is not being maximally strict in enforcing their rules when they allow any sandwich containing even tiny amounts of liquids like olive oil or gels like mayonnaise to enter outside the single 1 liter bag per person that also contains their shampoo and toothpaste. No, I don’t expect TSA ever to enforce this maximally strict interpretation, but that is how the rule is worded.
By contrast, some foreign airports that mention the 100ml rule make no mention of the single 1 liter (using the non-US spelling of liter) maximum enclosing container volume per passenger, let alone the requirements for the enclosing container to be a clear, zip-top, plastic bag. So this particular absurd pedantry about an absurdly worded rule that’s designed for TSA to keep you guessing on each screening about with how much leniency they choose to grace you that time does not apply to most foreign airports.
That's the theory. In practice, enforcement of the zip-top plastic bag rule is next to non-existent.
Next time consider bringing all liquid condiments in separate 100ml containers and applying them to your sandwich after security theater.
And isn’t the “waiting two hours an exaggeration”?
I flew out of MCO (Orlando) around spring break and while it was hectic, it wasn’t that bad just looking at the line. Of course I fly enough that having Clear and TSA pre-check makes sense.
I flew out of Atlanta - the busiest airport in the US for years and it didn’t take me that long to get through TSA even without PreCheck
https://www.ifly.com/hartsfield-jackson-atlanta-internationa...
https://www.ifly.com/orlando-international-airport/wait-time...
Well myself personally, I fly enough that it makes sense to have TSA PreCheck and Clear. But I wanted to find more relevant data than my anecdote - ie a few people in the Clear line and skipping to the front of TSA.
Why not sell fresh squeezed juices right as people get out of the security?
> Frozen liquid items are allowed through the checkpoint as long as they are frozen solid when presented for screening. If frozen liquid items are partially melted, slushy, or have any liquid at the bottom of the container, they must meet 3-1-1 liquids requirements.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...
Take a major hub like LAX which is already segregated by groups of airlines across subsets of terminals. How many options do you have to choose from post-security for something as simple as burgers or pizza? Let alone something like pasta or something like Indian or Chinese food.
“We have both Panda Express and McDonalds” is not a sign of competition.
A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.
The airport is actively trying to provide a varied selection of products, which inherently means competition is limited: someone complaining about the price of a turkey sandwich isn't going to get a Big Mac solely because it is a few dollars cheaper.
All of this is often made even worse because they aren't actually different vendors. Multiple stores are often owned by the same vendor, the different stores are just "exploiting various retail strategies".
Nothing is actively illegal. Everyone just independently realized they could make a shitton of money because travelers are forced to either pay their prices or starve.
I’ve been in airports where the toilets behind security have ‘courtesy’ warm water at the faucets
Meanwhile Frankfurt tells you that the tap water in the restrooms is safe to drink. Absolutely absurd that Airports where you are effectively stuck for possibly hours and are paying for that priviledge can get away with not having to provide basic neccessities.
It's basically like a professional license. The system is designed to make you waste so much of your life and money entering the market that undercutting people by any appreciable amount is the last thing you'll do once you're there.
When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything. Dystopian.
> When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything.
Time to start carrying a bit of electrical tape to put over the cameras.
If you need something to eat in an airport, there’s a bunch of snack options you can bring in. It’s not a movie theater. I’ve brought in Nuts, sandwiches, home baked bread wrapped in tinfoil. TSA just doesn’t want you bringing in the liquids. Am I going to get a warm meal with a drink on the side? No. Will I be full? Yes. Will is save $15. Yes. Will it take some planning and prep work? Yes.
A. It’s less expensive
B. It tastes 100% better
I’ve found the dine-in restaurant options at EWR to be of reasonable quality, at least pre-pandemic. The food court areas are very hit or miss, even with the price gouging.
That is enough to keep you hydrated and getting a drink while traveling.
But that's correct. The rent charged by the airport has no impact on prices inside the airport. They are high because of the captive audience.
Store revenue within the airport is determined by customer willingness to pay. Willingness to pay does not take store rent into account; it is a function of prices and alternatives. So the stores set prices at the level that maximizes revenue, and the rent charged by the airport is a fight between the stores and the airport over who gets how much of the revenue. If you limited the amount of rent the airport could charge, the first-order effect would be that prices would stay exactly the same, the airport would get less money, every store would get more money, and customers would be completely unaffected.
If you wanted to return money to the customers, you'd need to increase the level of competition between stores.
Same thing happens at stadiums, although not quite as bad as airports, but the prices - especially for the quality - are pretty ridiculous. I've only been to a few bars, but I also scoffed at the prices there as well.
The Port Authority:
"based on the average of three lowest prices for Comparable Products at the approved Comparable Concession Locations"
Per this definition from the specification, they were required to go out see what prices "comparable concession locations" charge for a turkey san, take the three lowest prices from that search, add them together, then divide by 3.
There are parts of the SVG spec that aren't this well specified.
> That's the whole point, that easy comparables don't exist, and when a journalist tries to use a FOIA request to get at the comparables, they're stonewalled.
If that were true there would have been no reason to stonewall. Just release the three prices and the names of the vendors used, and watch NYC argue endlessly over the details of "comparable" turkey san vendors.
But with the stonewalling this sounds a lot more like, "Let's just charge $14.99 and call it a day," and then forget about it-- because who in their right mind would ever do a Woodward&Bernstein on a goddamm' turkey san price at the airport?
And then Christopher Robbins over here is like, "JFK airport, fuck ya' life, that's who!"
Edit: clarifications
I think you’ll find that the list includes things like “Airport stand A”, “Airport stand B” and “Airport stand C”
It’s pretty easy for a journalist to get the RFP/extension/whatever. I’d guess that there are journalists figuring out the business now.
The same situation applies to the rest of the economy - people celebrate their house going up in value, without realising that your plumber and coffee will also go up in price, because the plumber's and the barista's rent has just gone up! Even if you never have to buy a house, rising house prices mean that every service around you becomes more expensive because they've got to pay rent.
Industry didn't just move out because western workers want too much money, they moved out because western landlords want too much money.
You have to start with the assumption that things like this are only intended for the very well-heeled to begin with, particularly in this price range where the difference between about $2 and $20 is not actually significant to the buyer.
It is well-known that most travelers are not in this catagory, and plenty of millionaires will not ever spend close to $20 at the high end for something recognized as worth $2 at the low end. Even if they could do it without any financial pain.
Sometimes that's how they got to be millionaires anyway.
Anyway, you've got to have more than enough sandwiches for every one of the real high-rollers who might be passing through that day, you would never want to have less than enough.
Plus every now and then someone else will get hungry enough to bite.
There's no intention for there to be alternative choices which are more economical.
So a lot of the sandwiches are going to go to waste.
So they need to be able to afford to make enough to waste most of them.
Which could only result in spiraling costs.
Overpriced lower-quality outcomes follow greed in a self-fulfilling way when you do the math, but when all benefit is directed only to the greedy party, it does no-one any good since they are not capable of being fulfilled.
Apply this to so many other parts of the economy, and look what we have.
More greed and more waste to go with it, and ordinary workers can't afford what they once could.
The problem is the business model - which could be considered price gauging - not the airport.
Let's start with this presumption: do they really? Are they privately held? Why? Were they built with private money or public money? Isn't the purpose of airports to facilitate access to the local economy, thus benefitting local businesses, and should thus be funded from general tax revenue?
Like so much in the US, payment is demanded for anything of remotely private benefit, even if the majority of the benefit is to the commons. Take TSA Pre-Check, or Global Entry as an example. In other countries, these programs (electronic entry) are the default for all citizens, provided for free, because they make airport operations more efficient as a whole, which means the airport can service more people, more efficiently. But in the US, it saves the individual a few minutes, so be prepared to pay a yearly fee for the privilege!
It's precisely for reasons like $15 turkey sandwiches that New York airports are to be avoided (i.e. as stopovers). Treating the traveling public as feudal serfs is practically the definition of mismanagement.
That would decouple airport mall rent prices from falling airline ticket prices.
Commercial airports in the US are owned by a local, state or regional public entity.[1] They need to be self-sustaining and break even but they don't need to be profitable in the same sense as a private business.
Further, passengers at these airports pay a significant amount of "taxes and fees" on their fares that go to support operations at these airports [2]. These include a passenger facility fee, a segment tax(one per takeoff/landing), a Sept 11th Fee for security and Federal ticket tax(pays the FAA.)
[1] https://yourmileagemayvary.net/2022/08/14/who-owns-airports/
[2] https://www.farecompare.com/news/airline-ticket-taxes-and-fe...
Not every shop out to do no buisness is money laundring. Some are also regulator laundring.
On the one hand, airports need to make money, and with people buying cheap airline tickets, airports have found a solution by turning themselves halfway into malls, and charging businesses extremely high levels of rent, which the airport justifies because it's a captive audience that can't go anywhere else. Most of the $15 sandwich is ultimately going to the airport as rent, not to the CIBO food vendor as profit.
But at the same time, there's public outcry over the absurd pricing, so the airport has to mollify lawmakers by insisting it'll come up with a policy where they won't charge more than 10% for what would be comparable in Midtown. The airport is trying to blame those greedy vendors! But this is a trick. Who could ever define that? Sure you can compare Starbucks with Starbucks... but you can't compare a CIBO sandwich because it doesn't exist outside of airports, which is by design. That's the whole point, that easy comparables don't exist, and when a journalist tries to use a FOIA request to get at the comparables, they're stonewalled.
The airport is trying to insist it's preventing jacked-up prices, when in reality it's the airport charging rent that generates those jacked-up prices in the first place, and it tries to pretend like it plays no part. Evil, but clever.