Letters to the Editor
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U.S. airlines are just one part of a broken transportation system
The United States has a uniquely flawed transportation system. A larger proportion of trips are made by private car than just about anywhere else in the world, so the market for public transportation (including air trips) is relatively small. Within the public transportation sector, travel is about as inconvenient as a wealthy industrialized nation can manage. There is little integration between buses, planes, and trains. Outside the Northeast Corridor and a few other areas, there are practically no trains (and certainly none you can rely on). Even getting to the airport from the city is harder in the U.S. than just about anywhere else.
With little train service and poor connections, airports are overburdened with short-haul flights. Not only are these wasteful of passengers' time, they are also wasteful of fuel: the burden of takeoff and landing makes up a disproportionately large part of the total trip. And so many short-haul flights cause airport congestion, which means more airport improvement fees to pay for huge airport expansion schemes to mitigate the congestion.
I wonder what the CASM would be for a well-maintained modern train service over distances under 500 miles, such as Amtrak's Northeast Corridor (but without the dilapidated infrastructure). If airlines had the option of purchasing train seats to bring passengers into their hubs (instead of flying short distances), the way many European carriers do, they might be able to lower costs substantially. Even better, the travel experience could become less painful if carefully integrated air and rail services reduced total travel time and airport congestion. Who knows, maybe even some drivers would switch to the air/rail combination if it were faster and more pleasant.
The current fight-to-the-death climate makes such a proposal pretty utopian. A plan like this requires coordination and leadership, as well as substantial public and private investment for long-term benefits. None of that is very plausible right now. But it may be necessary to preserve the mobility that Americans have come to take for granted.
[Here in Canada the financial state of the airlines may not be so catastrophic, but the transportation system in general has most of the same problems.]