Over half of the flights I’ve made in the last six months have experienced at least one hour of delays.
When a government inflicts upon a particular industry
- grotesque fuel taxes;
- a direct ticket tax (to a much greater extent than seen in 95% of other industries);
- security protocols which range from the irritating to the utterly despicable–which have caught approximately 0 terrorists;
- an avalanche of safety requirements/regulations, be they the 10 minutes of drivel that nobody listens to before takeoff (as if a seat belt will save your life if the plane crashes), or the wire bundling that is apparently grounding hundreds of AA aircraft;
and combine that with very high capital costs, you will get an industry strangled into permanent dysfunction.
The systemic crisis gripping the airline industry was apparently precipitated by a federal inspection of wiring in the wheel wells of AA’s aircraft. It’s absurd that an airline should have to ground an entire fleet because it’s so afraid of a bad inspection.
I almost wonder if AA is using this as an excuse to ground a particularly inefficient type of aircraft, so that it doesn’t have to fly them.
Air fares are going up. Somehow, however, I doubt airline fares are included in “core” inflation.
