421–430 of 628 posts
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Airlines were heavily regulated in the US and essentially operated as government contractors until 1978 [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Aeronautics_Board
Yeah and it was an absurdly expensive activity limited to rich people
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Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!" Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"
A more fair assessment would be: company runs a utility => they need to be a regulated utility! The core part of air travel doesn’t really feel any different to a bus or metro or train. Off the tarmac then yes it absolutely feels like a Verizon store, as does some of the in-flight service, but there’s always been this weird feeling as a traveler that every carrier is basically the same thing but with different decals…
Worse yet, you buy a ticket for carrier A, then discover that due to xyz partnership agreement you are actually flying on carrier B.
Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…
yeah in the US airlines are fintechs.
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Company is valuable to us as a society in a fundamental way but is fucking us up in all sorts of unique ways: They might need to be a regulated utility.
Hopefully we can regulate them like California electricity and let one airline be active per airport and let them charge more than triple national rates.
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The only bad experience I ever had on Spirit was from their garbage passengers, never had a problem with the airline itself, flew them probably 20 times. But then again anecdotal evidence is also garbage, so who knows, maybe we were just lucky. Or maybe a vocal minority made it sound worse than it was.
Or the big airlines were paying for all that disparaging marketing on the down low. I wouldnt be surprised.
The real solution should be a massive intercity bullet train program that connects major transit hubs, like the interstate highway buildout. The massive infrastructure spend would kickstart the US economy and provide thousands of jobs.
But I'm just not sure the demand would be there for longer distances unless it's so cheap that it's worth the extra time.
Like what's China to Kunmung, a 6 hour flight vs a 12 hour train, at a comparable cost?
I'm not American and I've never flown Spirit Air so can someone explain where all the loyalty to this airline is coming from? Like isn't this another big corp biting the dust?
I was doing a two hour flight monthly for business, 2 hours each way. Frontier was about half the cost of more premium airlines. The times were good and predictable. I never checked anything and maybe rarely I’d buy a snack. Now I won’t claim that it was “comfortable” but it was predictable, inexpensive and kind of efficient all of which sort of creates a ‘comfort.’ It was a flying bus and it was ok at that.
Somewhere, I think when there became competition for the ultra discount airlines, the staff culture changed and it seemed not uncommon to encounter an employee that resented the customers. Spirit had multiple reported incidents of crew filming customers and just being generally antagonistic. Basically they hire service people that generally don’t have to provide much service and it becomes ”extra work” when they do;worse they often see a price tag associated with the “extra work” and it’s not reflected in their compensation
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I agree, but I started noticing the em-dash usage spike.
i was one of the weirdos that used em dashes pre-llms but yeah it can def be an indicator
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Singapore Air is majority government owned and is closer to having “utility” airlines than not.
Yes, Singapore Airline is government owned, but I don't see how it's a utility?
Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…