Q3 - Travel Consultant

[ttunden]

I got this question wrong by choosing E instead of D here is my thought process. I wanted to double check and see if you guys agreed with some of the points I wanted to hammer in.

I understand the conclusion is that the airlines should focus on comfort of leisure travelers, since they make up 80% of all airlne tickets. Also since the airlines are currently focusing their efforts on comfort for business travelers the consultant is arguing that they are focusing in on the wrong area.


I chose E originally because if true the comfort ( additional space on plane ) would not be a reason for them to purchase tickets, since they only care about the price ( think jet blue ). However, when reiewing I can see how this is wrong. Since they say most, I renember reading earlier through the forums that most can also = some, so there could still be a lot of other leisure travelers who value added comfort, so this choice would not weaken the argument the most.

I also contemplated on selecting C as the right answer but since it says primary concern, it could still possibly be a close 2nd concern of leisure travelers and something that still has considerable influence in their decision from what airline to fly.

A was irrelevent to core since it is focused on leisure travelers and wouldn't weaken.

B also doesn't weaken the most. Therefore D is the right answer. I guess I originally didn't select this AC since it could be something like 52 to 48 but since it says far greater proportion, it has to be something like 80 to 20. This would weaken the argument the most since the airline wont derive much revenue from focusing on leisure travelers as they would focusing on business class travelers.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice work ttunden, but I think you could benefit from evaluating the argument before looking into the answer choices to try and weaken it.

The conclusion is the airline should focus more on the comfort of leisure travelers and less on the comfort of business travelers. Why? Because leisure travelers purchase 80% of the airfares.

So what's wrong with this line of reasoning? Is the travel industry consultant right? It depends. Do they care about making the travelers happy, is it their bottom line they're looking out for, who knows? I think its safe to say that since the advice is coming from the industry consultant, the advice should be geared at doing well as a business and should address their bottom line.

Even though 80% of tickets are sold to leisure travelers, it could be true that the profits come more from business travelers. If that's the case, maybe airlines should continue to focus more on business travelers - as suggested by answer choice (D).

Incorrect Answers
(A) tells us what business travelers consider, but doesn't tell us whether business travelers are more or less important than leisure travelers to the bottom line for airlines.
(B) indicates that some airlines will soon take the industry expert's advice, but does not indicate that it is wrong for some reason.
(C) tells us what leisure travelers consider (or not), but doesn't tell us whether leisure travelers are more or less important than business travelers to the bottom line for airlines.
(E) is irrelevant. This tells us that cost is important to leisure travelers, but again, how important are leisure travelers to the airlines? Even with discounted fairs, leisure travelers may (or may not) be important more important than business travelers to the bottom line for airlines.

[Gerald]

PT65, S4, Q3 (Weaken).

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the reasoning in the travel industry
consultant’s argument?

(A) Business travelers often make travel decisions based on whether they feel a given airline values their business.
(B) Some airlines have indicated that they will undertake alterations in seating space throughout the entire passenger area of their planes in the near future.
(C) Sleeping in comfort during long flights is not the primary concern of leisure travelers.
(D) A far greater proportion of an airline’s revenues is derived from business travelers than from leisure travelers.
(E) Most leisure travelers buy airline tickets only when fares are discounted.

(D) is correct

Weaken questions are assumption family questions where the task is to disrupt the logic supporting the author’s conclusion. Like all questions in the assumption family, we start by finding the conclusion. The conclusion here might be tough to spot at first, but we actually have a great conclusion flag word: "should." Anything that seems like a recommendation is usually a conclusion, and recommendations are often made with "should." What does the author recommend? That airlines focus on the comfort of leisure travelers rather than business passengers. Why does he make this recommendation? Because leisure travelers purchase 80% of all airline tickets. Our core looks like this:

Leisure travelers purchase 80% of all airline tickets --> Airlines should focus on comfort of leisure travelers (not business travelers)

Is this a solid recommendation? Of course not! Assumption family questions always have logic problems. Can we spot any issues here? Well, this is America, the capital of capitalism, so presumably the author’s recommendation is intended to maximize profits. Just because leisure travelers buy 80% of tickets, does that mean they’re more important than business travelers to airline profits?

And maybe the test-writer is from Sweden or something, so perhaps the recommendation is based on something other than profit maximization, but at the least our answer will have to give us a reason not to prefer leisure to business. Let’s keep this in mind as we hit the answer choices.

(A) Out of Scope. Who cares about the feelings of business travelers? Even if they took their business elsewhere, does this mean the airlines aren’t better off focusing on leisure travelers? No. Eliminate.

(B) This is kind of a premise booster. Great, some airlines can’t make up their minds and are improving seating throughout. Who cares? Our argument is about which class of passenger we should prefer (the leisure), not how we should hold hands, sing kumbaya, and all get along. Eliminate.

(C) Out of Scope. Sleeping? Who cares whether leisure travelers are concerned with comfort while sleeping, or how best to ignore that they’re in a flying missile suspended 35k ft above the earth? Does this give us any information about why we should value leisure travelers more or less than business travelers? No. Eliminate.


(E) This answer might be tempting, because it implies leisure travelers only buy cheap tickets. But the answer still doesn’t give us a reason to prefer one camp of travelers to the other. Perhaps business travelers also buy discounted seats.

That leaves (D): A far greater proportion of an airline’s revenues is derived from business travelers than from leisure travelers.

Aha! This looks a lot like our prediction. We wanted a reason to prefer business travelers to leisure, and this answer says we should prefer business travelers because they are responsible for most airline revenue. This was the capitalist route we expected our answer to take, that just because leisure travelers buy 80% of tickets doesn’t mean they account for most profits. Yay capitalism!