OnTime Airline was recently forced to ground 1,100 flights and shut do

Question

OnTime Airline was recently forced to ground 1,100 flights and shut down for four days after an overload of passenger scheduling changes caused a computer to fail. This failure cost the airline carrier millions of dollars in revenue and seriously reduced its operating profit for that quarter. A competing airline has a policy wherein passengers must pay a small fee when they wish to reschedule, and this airline has never experienced such a computer failure. Therefore, OnTime's CEO has decided to implement a similar fee in order to cut down on passenger scheduling changes and decrease the likelihood of another expensive computer failure.

Which of the following, if true, would decrease the likelihood that the OnTime CEO's plan will succeed in decreasing the likelihood of an expensive computer failure?

A. All of the passengers who missed flights due to the shutdown were offered free flights at OnTime's expense.
B. This small rescheduling fee at the other airline significantly reduces the number of people making schedule changes.
C. An airline's operating profit depends on the number of successful flights operated by an airline.
D. The fee for schedule changes is likely to discourage OnTime passengers from making such changes.
E. OnTime customers already pay significantly more to travel than do customers of airlines that charge rescheduling fees.

Sarkar93 · Answer

Correct Option is E.

By POE, we can eliminate options B and D as both of them are actually strengthing the argument in favor of OnTime CEO's plan to reduce the number of passenger scheduling changes.

Option C is out of scope as this does nothing to strengthen/weaken the CEO's argument.
Same goes for Option A.

Option E correctly weakens the CEO's assumptions. 
If OnTime customers already pay significantly more to travel than do customers of airlines that charge rescheduling fees, than by imposing a scheduling change fee, the overall cost for passengers to travel on OnTime Airline will become even more costly. This fee increment will deter future passengers from booking with the Airline thus resulting in lower passenger booking and ultimately lowering its operating profit.

sushmitha2 · Answer

Isn’t the question asking to weaken the argument that imposing the fee will decrease the likelihood of an expensive computer failure? The conclusion wasn’t on profit. 
A- would make me believe less in the conclusion since the fee wouldn’t have any impact in the traffic in the computer because the airline is making the scheduling changes, not the passenger. Therefore, the likelihood of another computer failure still exists.

Moreover for E- let’s say the flight charges are more. Well that might just deter passengers from rescheduling. Not necessarily deter passengers from purchasing the flight ticket. Clearly, they already were buying flight tickets despite the price being higher. If passengers are deterred from rescheduling, that would strengthen the argument, not weaken.

Posted from my mobile device

chencchris · Answer

sushmitha2  agree with you - I find the same problem with answer E, as it does not address whatsoever whether the plan "will succeed in decreasing the likelihood of an expensive computer failure."

Answer A, while not a slam dunk, would  most  weaken out of these answer choices, as all passengers are all offered free flights and thus would suggest all of these passengers need to be rebooked that could strain the airline's computer system.

This doesn't seem like the type of question that would realistically appear on the GMAT given the ambiguity.

Gaurvee · Answer

For option E- since the passengers are already paying more for booking OnTime flights- that shws cost is not a factor for those customers. So the extra rescheduling fee might not be a deterrent strong enough to reduce rescheduling of flights. Hence, CEO's plan might not succeed.

VerbalBot · Answer

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OnTime Airline was recently forced to ground 1,100 flights and shut do

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