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I wouldn't say airline regulation was a great exercise about command economies planning and allocating resources. The whole point of regulation was to keep pri

I wouldn't say airline regulation was a great exercise about command economies planning and allocating resources. The whole point of regulation was to keep prices up so the airlines wouldn't implode like rail did. It was not meant to keep prices down. So when we got rid of airline regulation, prices went down. Some airlines did implode, but not as badly as rail did. Thankfully for airlines, it seems flying is a lot more indispensable than riding by rail.

jandrese 3y ago
Airlines had the advantage of not having to compete with a shiny new industry the way rail did with airlines. I'm sure airlines would have suffered greatly had we developed cheap rocket power transport or high speed pneumatic tubes or some other zany sci-fi transport that left the airlines looking slow and overpriced. Rail in the US died because US cities are far enough apart that flying made a noticeable difference in travel times, unlike more compact countries. There's a reason Amtrak only works well in the relatively dense northeastern seaboard of the US. That said, the airline industry is one where competition seems to be working pretty well. It's a market success story. The most efficient market is one where everybody is making close to 0 profit, and that's a good description of the airline industry in the past few decades, especially when you focus on the relatively small part of the airline industry that deals with flying planes and their passengers.
cryptonector 3y ago
> Thankfully for airlines, it seems flying is a lot more indispensable than riding by rail. More like air routes are a lot cheaper to change than rails. Nor do air routes cost millions of dollars per-mile to build. And yes, jetliners are several times faster than trains, even bullet trains, and since rail networks are orders of magnitude more expensive than airline networks... The whole thing adds up to air travel being much much much cheaper and more convenient than rail with relatively few exceptions involving high population densities.
cycomanic 3y ago
> Thankfully for airlines, it seems flying is a lot more indispensable than riding by rail. I think a big aspect of this is that railway workers were much more unionized than airline ones. So what better way to kill the unions than to kill the industry.

jandrese 3y ago

Airlines had the advantage of not having to compete with a shiny new industry the way rail did with airlines. I'm sure airlines would have suffered greatly had we developed cheap rocket power transport or high speed pneumatic tubes or some other zany sci-fi transport that left the airlines looking slow and overpriced. Rail in the US died because US cities are far enough apart that flying made a noticeable difference in travel times, unlike more compact countries. There's a reason Amtrak only works well in the relatively dense northeastern seaboard of the US. That said, the airline industry is one where competition seems to be working pretty well. It's a market success story. The most efficient market is one where everybody is making close to 0 profit, and that's a good description of the airline industry in the past few decades, especially when you focus on the relatively small part of the airline industry that deals with flying planes and their passengers.

cryptonector 3y ago

> Thankfully for airlines, it seems flying is a lot more indispensable than riding by rail. More like air routes are a lot cheaper to change than rails. Nor do air routes cost millions of dollars per-mile to build. And yes, jetliners are several times faster than trains, even bullet trains, and since rail networks are orders of magnitude more expensive than airline networks... The whole thing adds up to air travel being much much much cheaper and more convenient than rail with relatively few exceptions involving high population densities.

cycomanic 3y ago

> Thankfully for airlines, it seems flying is a lot more indispensable than riding by rail. I think a big aspect of this is that railway workers were much more unionized than airline ones. So what better way to kill the unions than to kill the industry.