R&D for planes is massive. It takes 10-15 years to get a new model in the air. You can't, not throw that into the cost to build it. Planes are cheaper to operate because the PRASM it tightly controlled by the airlines. That is how costs are controlled and it's decided what routes are worthwhile or what carriers are efficient or not. Whether or not expansion or contraction should occur. Margins have been crammed down for years. Employees were all taken through bankruptcies and lied to by management.
Airlines are pouring millions into the operation to get back on track from a lost decade. I mean lost. As in no infrastructure investment because of 9/11 and the resulting financial recessions. Yes, airlines are making money, but people act like nothing is changing. But companies are investing in new jets, investing in employees, investing in better tech to help passengers. It's a massive, wide ranging operation. We aren't talking about Disney that upgrades it's hotels in Orlando. We're talking about companies that fly to hundreds of cities in hundreds of planes that all have to be scheduled, maintained, upgraded. Airports where the airlines are working with the local authority to make things better for passengers.
There are thousands of wheels turning, but because you may not see it, or remember what it was like before doesn't mean that they are raping passengers and piling money into big piles for execs to shower with.
My airline employees are happy for the most part. There are over 20,000 flight attendants at United. All it takes is for 1 of them to say the wrong thing and the entire operation takes a hit. Hell, all it takes is for one flight attendant, working for a completely different airline to do something wrong, and my FA's pay for it. That is an impossible standard. People are individuals, and try as you might, there will always be some person, or some situation that gets out of hand. You cannot micromanage the personalities out of people. Are there plenty of FA's that should probably move on, hell fucking yeah, but unless you want the govt to come in and allow discrimination to where the airlines can age out, or size out FA's it's not happening. I'm not even talking about gate agents, or pilots. That's an organization of hundreds of thousands in one company that is expected to never have a bad day. And if they do, someone with a cell phone will be there to record it and demand millions because of it. I can't wait until I can do that to everyone else.
It's totally a sustainable business because there are survivors that have made it decades. It's going to change, for sure. They already are looking at reducing the number of pilots from 2 to 1 or 0.
Then this...
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Today's first class domestic is inferior to the 80s coach, smoke free air excluded.
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Where are those airlines now? Gone. Almost all of them. Regulation provided profitable airlines at 65% load factors. Now, with deregulation, airlines need to be nearly 92-93% load factors to maintain profitability. That is the straight change in ticket price and efficiency. Yes, deregulation made the industry more competitive, made it cheaper, made it more efficient. The result was that those airlines in the 80's thought they could survive with the same operation, but they all went away. We have now, what we have because it's what the industry will bear.
It's a massively complex, way more than meets the eye operation. Every day, flight after flight, we get most places on time, and safe.
The idea that flying is comparable as an operation to trains is laughable. Trains don't worry about volume delays into the train station on the level we do, because if a train has to wait, it doesn't run out of gas and fall out of the sky. Trains don't worry about weather, in such a way that it keeps you from leaving. Trains don't lose power and make emergency landings. No shit, someone once asked me if we fly on cables in the sky. That's how the public views flying. Like it's some kind of magic show where we make up a lot of shit, but only they know the real truth.
Like EF up above who totally knows all the lies about emergency equipment and how it wasn't a real emergency because they didn't do what he thought they should. I mean, what am I supposed to say? He totally knows.
Reasonable accommodations.
I'll admit that the flying experience from check in to boarding is fucking stress ridden and bullshit. It's crowded, busy, loud, you can't ever seem to do it right. You need a the right identification....hey KY resident, yeah, your drivers license won't work anymore because your governor is a jackass who vetoed the bill that was going to resolve this, so now, you're going to need your birth certificate or a passport. This starts next year. Most of that isn't the fault of the airline, it's the result of the FAA, and TSA and learning from what people will do and still want to do to airplanes. I pretty much despise the TSA. I talk as little as possible to them, I say thank you, but when I'm a passenger it almost always seems like I'm about ready to get into a fight with them because they act like jackasses.
The domestic operation and the international operation work almost like 2 different airlines. Each international 777 flight costs us 1 million dollars to operate. How many of those per day, every day. It's crazy. I read through this and it's over-generalization after over-generalization as if those things would remedy all the problems. Take things as part of the bigger puzzle. A gate agent in LA isn't going to be the same as a gate agent in BUF no matter how you train them. You can't turn them all into robots. Not yet anyway.
Airlines have changed the American experience. You don't have to fly on them. I much prefer to drive where I can, but they play a vital part to our economy and to our way of life.