[cortesoft]

The question is whether we feel air travel is as essential to everyday life as busses and trains are.

In other words, do we need to make sure everyone can afford to take a flight somewhere?

Or is air travel a luxury that we can allow the market to set a price for?

Maybe flights are simply too cheap, and we should just allow airlines to fail, which will limit supply enough to bring ticket prices back up to a level that is sustainable for airlines as a business.

Of course, this means that a lot of people are going to be priced out of being able to fly places for non-essential reasons. Which, given the environmental impact, might not be a bad thing, although it will make life very different for most people.

[tracker1]

Personally, I'm inclined to drive over fly if I can get there in 8-12 hours or less. Even if it uses up close to a full day for a round trip. I absolutely abhor flying. I'm a bit tall and fat, and I've been stuck on the last row, inside seat with less room in both dimensions while the person in front of me tries to lean back literally dislocating my knee. All because they oversell flights, and your seat selection at purchase time apparently counts for jack squat when you show up at the airport to check in... you really needed to "check in" online the day before, even if you were in meetings until 9pm with no time to actually step aside to do the check-in on your phone that's just a miserable experience in itself, because nobody does accessibility testing with phones and larger text/display sizes.

[elektronika]

> The question is whether we feel air travel is as essential to everyday life as busses and trains are.

Anywhere I can get to by train in the USA I can go faster and cheaper by plane. By bus I can go "cheaper" if I ignore the value of my time and the people offering me meth at the bus-stop.