Because the amount anyone would actually pay is substantially below cost for most routes, but it's still a service that many people depend on (either directly or by the indirect economic impact of travel). It's a genuine force multiplier that is unaffordable without being subsidized; making it a utility would just shift the subsidy from credit card points programs to the government.

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crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Because the amount anyone would actually pay is substantially below cost for most routes

This is absolutely not true. If all the airlines were prohibited from making money with anything else (miles, credit cards) then airfares would rise across the board and there would still be plenty of demand. Not as much, but still plenty.

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appreciatorBus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If airlines didn’t exist, people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years. There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode) that makes it worthy of subsidy .

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hakunin 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When something is that drastically different, it becomes different in kind. For example, if you have high network latency, you cannot jam (play live music) with friends remotely. If you have low latency, you can. Just because the difference is in a single value (I.e. net speed) doesn’t mean it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s possible. Air travel makes the kind of business, shipping, and attendance possible that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, because our collective lifetimes and risk tolerances are limited.

	▲	eru 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That doesn't mean we should subsidise it.

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striking 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Listen, I'm the type of fella who'd gladly take the Amtrak from the East Bay to Portland, 18 hours each way, and I'm telling you even I'd do so only as a novelty. If I actually had somewhere to be, spending basically an entire day on a train would be a non-starter. And that's just on the same coast! If I had to take the Amtrak back east to see my family for the holidays I would probably just not go. My travel to the other coast (not to mention back to the country where I was born, an additional ocean's worth of distance) would only be worth the trip for like a life change or a death in the family.

I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so, judging by both Amtrak ridership statistics and the cost ineffective nature of my attempts to travel on it.

	▲	appreciatorBus an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t say anything about trains or Amtrak? People and goods have travelled around the world long for thousands of years before air air travel and train travel. And people have made decisions above the trade-offs of travel to see family for thousands of years before air travel and train travel. If air travel was unavailable or unsubsidized, people would continue to make those decisions and life would go on.

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1shooner 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you oppose the federal highway system (or rail systems) as well?

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appreciatorBus an hour ago | parent [-]

Basically yes.

	▲	eru 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I guess at least when they are given away for free or severely underpriced to the user.

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devsda 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You can't think of a single situation where an airline route is infinitely better and probably the only viable option ?

Btw you don't need to completely disregard other modes of transport to appreciate bus :)

	▲	appreciatorBus an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Buses and planes are both great! Both have advantages and disadvantages, and different cost structures. I trust people to make their own decisions about trade-offs for travel that work for them and their situation. When we arbitrarily pick one and shovel free money, land or infrastructure toward it, we are putting a thumb on the scale and depriving people of the power to make their own decisions. Of course, we can argue that there are network effects or natural monopoly effects for fixed infrastructure like roads and rails, and thus there must be a public role. However policy rarely seems to remain at this reasonable position and instead quickly expands into something altogether different.
	▲	eru 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If they are so much better, why do they need subsidies?

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ajross 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> the amount anyone would actually pay is [...]

That's.... like a pretty shocking erasure of the idea of a demand curve given the forum here.

To be glib: no, that's not how it works. Increase the price and fewer people will fly, but the demand won't drop to zero. Decrease it and you make less money per ticket but the size of the market is bigger. At some point there is a local maximum, to which the market seeks.

But conditions change occasionally and the equivalent supply curve is moving rapidly because of the oil shock (i.e. it's more expensive to put planes in the air to service tickets you already sold). And things like the mess with Spirit are what happens when the market readjusts: the rest of the industry will (probably) backfill some of the lost capacity, but not all of it, and prices will (probably) rise a bit to a new equilibrium.