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Air travel is expensive. Airframe maintenance is expensive and labor intensive. Pilots are highly skilled professionals and need to be paid as such. Jet fuel is

Air travel is expensive. Airframe maintenance is expensive and labor intensive. Pilots are highly skilled professionals and need to be paid as such. Jet fuel is expensive. Handling baggage is a logistical challenge. Due to the nature of aircraft, they have low limits on passenger capacity. The government subsidizes air travel into rural areas through the Essential Air Services with about 1/6th the budget it puts into Amtrak. The US government frequently "bails out" airline companies and spends more money than they do on the yearly budget of Amtrak. This ignores the bevvy of subsidizes city governments offer airports to stay in business. Like most forms of infrastructure, American traveling preferences are driven mostly by a mixture of emotion and lobbying. Air travel doesn't make much economic sense and hasn't for years.

gumby 5y ago
Why are airfares so much cheaper in Europe and Asia than they are in the US?
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Asia often doesn't have any infrastructure in place of air travel. The US and Europe have large roadways and rail networks for transportation which means airfare is more expensive in relation. Much of Asia has no road or rail network in place that can support the capacity that air travel offers and many governments in Asia cannot fund a road or rail project of sufficient magnitude to offer a compelling alternative. In Europe jet fuel is mostly untaxed and distances in Europe are shorter so less fuel is spent moving passengers from city-to-city.
  - gumby 5y ago
    EasyJet from Dublin to Milan is so cheap, as are international flights like KL to Taiwan These are distances that aren’t feasible to drive even if they were on the same landmass. And as you say europe also has a dense road network. The fuel tax is interesting, definitely, but in my US/EU comparison price delta is often a factor of five or more.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Flights between KL and Taiwan are cheaper because labor and maintenance is cheap thanks to the much lower wages in KL and Taiwan compared to Europe and the US (so everything from maintenance to refueling is cheaper). As far as taxes are concerned, it would be interesting to do a cost breakdown of fuel to see how much of the delta comes from taxes.

gumby 5y ago

Why are airfares so much cheaper in Europe and Asia than they are in the US?

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Asia often doesn't have any infrastructure in place of air travel. The US and Europe have large roadways and rail networks for transportation which means airfare is more expensive in relation. Much of Asia has no road or rail network in place that can support the capacity that air travel offers and many governments in Asia cannot fund a road or rail project of sufficient magnitude to offer a compelling alternative. In Europe jet fuel is mostly untaxed and distances in Europe are shorter so less fuel is spent moving passengers from city-to-city.
- gumby 5y ago
  EasyJet from Dublin to Milan is so cheap, as are international flights like KL to Taiwan These are distances that aren’t feasible to drive even if they were on the same landmass. And as you say europe also has a dense road network. The fuel tax is interesting, definitely, but in my US/EU comparison price delta is often a factor of five or more.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Flights between KL and Taiwan are cheaper because labor and maintenance is cheap thanks to the much lower wages in KL and Taiwan compared to Europe and the US (so everything from maintenance to refueling is cheaper). As far as taxes are concerned, it would be interesting to do a cost breakdown of fuel to see how much of the delta comes from taxes.