Fly USA

Warning: My socialistic tendencies will be showing themselves in this post.

I am seriously concerned about the state of the airline industry in this country. I flew to Key West over the Labor Day weekend and I experienced a delay on every flight. This included four flights over two different airlines. My flight never left on time nor did it ever arrive on time. And not one delay was due to weather, every delay was due to a technical malfunction with the plane. Doesn’t that make you feel comfortable when you are boarding a plane?

I was also reading in one of the airline magazines on the plane how the industry in general has formed a coalition to try and get the government to do something about the high price of gas. Apparently, 45% of your airline fare is just to cover the gas costs. This is up from 12% in 2001. Yeah, we really need to come up with an energy strategy in this country and I don’t think the answer is drilling for oil in Alaska or off shore. How about coming up with alternatives for electricity since fossil fuels are used to produce about 70% of the electricity used in the US. But I digress, that is a completely different rant.

Back to the airline industry. I don’t know how long many of you have been traveling, but I have been flying for a long time. And I can tell you that the airline industry has changed a lot over the years. I remember a time long ago when I missed a flight on American and they gave me a voucher on United to get home. That never happens today. There are fewer flights and much higher costs. United had only two flights all day on Monday from Miami to Dulles (Dulles is their hub for those of you not familiar). Two flights to a major hub all day. And both flights were oversold. So there weren’t even enough seats to accommodate all the passengers. Do you remember when there used to be open seats on a plane? Now airlines can’t afford to operate many flights so our travel schedule is at their mercy. Airlines are being killed by gas prices and competition amongst themselves.

Well, I have a solution. Why don’t we create a national airline? Why do we need so many airlines? Let’s have a single airline for the United States – many countries do this. It may seem a little counter intuitive, but fewer airlines could actually mean more flights. Think about it. There were 2 UA direct flights to DC from Miami on Monday, there were also 3 AA direct flights and those are just the ones I checked on. Who knows how many more there were. This is because each airline has to have a minimum number of flights to a location despite the demand. If there were just one airline, then they could manage the number of flights between locations based on demand. So the 12 total flights between Miami and DC could be reduced overall, but you could get on any of them. First benefit – fewer overall flights and more travel options for consumers.

They could also run the “USAirline” as a not for profit business. This is similar to how the government runs the commissary stores in the military. The stores are designed to break even. Therefore, they do not need to mark up their food as much as your typical grocery store. So a gallon of milk in the commissary is only $2.00 and not $4.00. The airline could operate in a similar manner. Make enough money to cover the cost of doing business and return anything over that as a surplus to the people. Next benefit – flights would be cheaper.

I believe there are certain industries that the government should manage as our society has gotten to a point where these industries might crumble under the pressure of capitalism. Transportation is definitely one of the industries that would benefit from a lack of competition and a little more regulation. You see, transportation is one area where we can’t afford to just let capitalism take its course and have airlines go out of business. We need to be able to travel across the US and not by horse and buggy.

If we can’t ensure that every American has health care in this country, can we at least make sure they can fly from Miami to Dulles on a holiday weekend?

Now I am sure that many of you immediately laughed at this idea. And I am sure you can come up with 100 reasons why we the government shouldn’t run the transportation industry in the US. But remember that you scoffed at this idea the next time your tax dollars are used to bail out an airline in bankruptcy. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that the next time an airline files bankruptcy, the government should step in and take over the company. Then they could systematically drive the other airlines out of business with lower prices, taking over each airline as they go. I don’t see how that would be anti-capitalistic…the US government would just become another competing airline…and maybe then the government would really care about the oil prices.

I am sure some of you are wondering how bad my travel was this weekend. Not to worry, my travel experience was not that harrowing. I missed a connecting flight in Miami and had to spend an extra day lounging on the beach at a Marriott Resort in South Beach while drinking pomegranate mojitos. I was also forced to have a really nice dinner at a Cuban restaurant. Yeah, I got it rough.

Just a couple of notes concerning this particular rant:

I have noticed over the years that whenever someone talks of concepts such as universal health care or national transportation, there are always a couple of reactions. First you will get people who will tell you why change is impossible. Don’t just let them tell you why we can’t change, ask them what they think we should do. Should we wait for the system to collapse on itself before we act? What can we do to fix the system today? Ask them to be solutions oriented and not just accept that change is impossible. I am not suggesting that a national airline would be perfect, but shouldn’t we develop a long term strategy before we can’t afford to fly anywhere.

And I would argue that for those people who can’t afford health care, universal health care WOULD be a perfect solution. Remember that just because the issue doesn’t affect you today, doesn’t mean it won’t someday. I mean I guess those of us that can afford health care are happy with the current system. That is until we get sick and can’t afford to pay our share of the medical bills and our health care gets cancelled. Then we may feel different about this issue.

Secondly, I would implore you to not fall prey to those people who use the media to spread fear about these issues. Don’t listen to those people who only want to tell you how your life will be ruined if we change. I can guarantee you that anyone who has the money to put together one of these campaigns of fear, does not have your best interest at heart. That is unless you are the CEO of a pharmaceutical or insurance company. I guess what I am really saying is do not let them condition you to automatically dismiss these ideas with their rhetoric. Changing these systems may be hard, but doing nothing will eventually be a lot worse. Maybe we can learn a lesson from the way we handled global warming. We stuck our head in the sand on that one and all we got was a sunburn on our ass.

Rant over.