> Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them.

I don't get it. Why should they have been turned into utilities? Just because the current iteration loses money?

Please be aware that airline pricing is endogenous. That means, it's not set from the outside, but a reaction to market conditions and feeds back into market conditions. Eg airlines might be on the edge of profitability at time X, but when at time Y fuel prices drop a bit (or rise a bit) that doesn't mean that airline will suddenly all make lots of money (or all go bankrupt): the pricing of their product will adjust.

That doesn't only go for fuel prices, but also for loyalty programme revenue. If such revenue is available and competition is fierce, then prices will go down until airline can just about stay afloat after taking that extra revenue into account.

> Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

> Flights don't make money

Member-owned co-ops don't need to make money. Structuring an airline as a member-owned co-op is not a fundamentally-stupid idea.

Why does any of this imply they should become a regulated utility? This seems like a textbook case of the free market pushing prices down to cost. Having alternative revenue streams pushed that minimal price down; but even without that, there is no reason to think the market would have done anything other than push prices to the lowest level possible in that environment as well.

And then you have RyanAir in Europe with no credit card or loyalty program offerings. They did have a loyalty subscription program, but it cost more than it generated.

Best not to generalize.

They make a lot of money from loyalty programs and credit cards, but the legacy airlines do make money on flying alone. The margin they make on that is razor thin, but they do make money from the core product.

Spirit was designed to be ultra low cost, which attracts flyers that are much more price sensitive. Higher Jet A costs means higher ticket prices, which means lost customers, which means lost revenue. Pulling a JetBlue and adding higher tier product offerings to attract the business travelers that _actually_ makes money for airlines would've required an overhaul of their entire business, which they couldn't afford to do.

I agree that Spirit will be chopped up by whoever buys them. It happened to Braniff, PanAm, and a whole bunch of other airlines that weren't thrown a lifeline.

(JetBlue tried to acquire Spirit to prevent this outcome, but the acquisition didn't pass antitrust. Everyone knew that that acquisiton failing was a death sentence to Spirit, but it was what it was.)

Or they could actually charge ticket prices that cover the cost of doing business and stop treating their passengers like a it's a time-share sales pitch the whole way.

Airlines were heavily regulated in the US and essentially operated as government contractors until 1978 [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Aeronautics_Board

> "Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments."

If that's the case then how RyanAir survived and is thriving?

Both Southwest, but also Ryanair are profitable. Totally possible to make money off flights.

But you have to follow the same model: use cheaper airports, a single modern aircraft type to simplify operations, high turnaround speed, charge a lot for extras.

Ryanair moves the most passengers of any airline in the world and doesn't have any cobranded credit cards or loyalty program.

If we let the free market do its work, there'd be no airlines. Jet fuel is heavily subsidized, the State injects massive amounts of money into airports and plane manufacturers, etc.

Honestly, with the looming climate crisis, we should probably just let them fail one by one and let alternatives (who can actually be profitable) take off.

There's a reason its in Europe: the regulations are different there.

> I agree that Spirit will be chopped up by whoever buys them. It happened to Braniff, PanAm, and a whole bunch of other airlines that weren't thrown a lifeline.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the company is worth more to the market and society when sold as pieces, so be it.

Southwest used to do this, but then somehow got a CEO that burnt it all down instead of raising ticket prices by $20-30.

Before them Alaska Air was similar, and is now similarly bad.

Having the customers actually own the airline seems like a reasonable approach. The trick is kicking all the assholes off the board, so they can’t fire leadership for treating customers decently while turning a sustainable profit.

They do, it’s just barely enough to cover the cost of doing business and volatility.

Was it cheaper or more expensive for the public to fly on them during that time or after deregulation?

It isn't the case. It's a simplistic gloss on a complex finance outcome.

Some flights make money.

Some flights lose money.

Some finance structures make money while looking like losses to acrue tax benefits for other activities.

Sometimes the money is being made by holding companies not operating companies. Sometimes the assets are worth more as spares than operating.

All companies are complex. I do not think "flights don't make money" is true for all airlines, all flights.

Because people take "airline X makes $50k profit, and makes $55k off of the credit card, so therefore it makes all money from credit cards" which is true from a certain accounting point of view, and also entirely false, in that it's all accounting tricks and the credit card would be worthless without an airline.

Because it's nonsense. It's from some YouTube video that went viral a few years ago.

Because their social media strategy is fire

>Delta Air Lines earned $8.2 billion from American Express in 2025, surpassing ticket sales revenue.

Just to be clear, that isn't what the article says. It says more than what "most" airlines generate in ticket sales. Not Delta, or any major US carrier. As interesting as that sounds, it couldn't logically make sense and it only represents about 15% of Delta's revenue. It's not even a straightforward revenue stream, it works for profitability because they are able to book most of the revenue immediately and able to mark down the future expense because of how loyalty rewards are obligated.

This isn't really a bad thing. Any company that monetizes credit cards can only do so because of their real, core product. They aren't really just banks like people claim. If they didn't fly people places reliably the whole thing collapses.

It's really just a surprising morph of their economic model in the post regulation era.

> I primarily use my favorite's airlines credit card because it gives me perks such as priority seating, and free checked bags.

That's a reason to have an airline credit card, it's not a reason to use it (other than for purchasing that airline's tickets)

This loyalty program is the business is oversold imo, done to death by every content creator. It's the data, the data blah blah

The $8.2billion from American express pays basically is buying tickets and ticket extra, it buys them some points, lets ignore multiples for now, it buys them 8.2billion points, which they give to customers which then buys tickets.

If Spirit accepts USDC instead it wouldn't be that much different.

>I shop at walmart compared to whole foods and other "better" chains for similar reasons. "great value" as walmart's motto goes, it isn't about the price, it's about the value you get for what you pay for. Spirit was the "great value" airline.

Yeah it's not a secret that you can get by in life on the cheap if you have cheap, trashy tastes.

Agreed. I make decent money as a software engineer but I've probably flow 50+ times with Spirit. Like you said, they are predictable and reliable. What I appreciated about their staff is that they were extremely friendly but also capable of putting entitled people in their place. Oftentimes on AA and United, assholes got their way but on Spirit, they squashed it fast.

The only people surprised by Spirit were people who don't read warning labels and then you should only be surprised once. Heck, I paid 3$ for coffee on spirit but they would gladly bring refills and were proactive about almost like a restaurant. On AA and United, you usually had to go up and ask.

On top of that, you could get the big front seat (tm) which wasn't first class but pretty good about 150$ if you waited until your flight to bid. I got it a bunch and it came with free snacks and drinks and it was much cheaper than buying business

I'm gonna miss it.

American Airlines has actually had terrible customer ratings for some time (and I agree, they can be awful).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/american-airlines-worst-...

But without a sense of urgency the marks might stop to think first.

Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!"

Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"

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.

Airlines basically were a regulated utility until they were unregulated to the point where normal people can barely fit in a seat and there’s basically no amenities anymore. It used to be kind of nice to fly. That’s laughable now.

They can't do this most of the time because for most of the year on most routes, supply outstrips demand (i.e., many/most flights on most airlines fly at least a little bit empty, often significantly empty – overall load factors are about 80-85%). They have to charge fares that customers will be willing to pay, even if that means losing money on a given flight. They can only charge profitable fares on the routes and times of year when demand surges (peak routes, holiday periods, major events). They have to keep their network capacity high enough to satisfy the peak demand, but for most of the year and most of the network, demand is lower, so they have to settle for break-even or loss-minimization. (For the record, I co-founded a flight search startup that became a fare optimization platform.)

Sounds like a good way to lose all your customers to the other airlines that charge less.

Consumers only look at bottom line. There is basically two markets with airlines, higher end market with credit cards and premium seating; lower end where consumer solely looks at ticket price.

Yeah and it was an absurdly expensive activity limited to rich people

As I understand it, everything about the industry was better back then too.

Case in point: Old Perry Mason shows where characters regularly drive to the airport, pay for a ticket and get on a plane. Flying was actually faster than driving back then, even when measured by time between deciding to leave and arriving at destination!

(Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more. Whatever. Figure in the price for camping in the airport for 4-5 hours, and then tell me the current system is cheaper!)

Not to mention that loyalty programs and credit card bonuses don't exist in Europe.

It’s not enough to “make a profit”.

Southwest has 30B in assets and makes $441M in profit. Like most airlines it’s a miracle of modern economics and should practically be considered a charity or a nonprofit. You would make more in treasuries or corporate bonds.

> It is a stupid game that I am forced to play

You are not forced to play it. That is a just story you tell yourself. You can make a different choice.

> I am pretty certain that the credit card fees (that is passed on to the merchant) does not come close to the value that I gain for my credit card loyalty.

Generally it's the interchange fees that fund reward programs (charged between banks), not the merchant fee.

https://stripe.com/au/resources/more/interchange-fees-101-wh...

Spirit seemed to enjoy making their customers hate them. everyone who liked Spirit had to explain themselves (like you did) because their reputation was awful. It was a trainwreck of a brand.

> With Spirit I could plan around exactly how bad my experience would be reliably

Talk about damning with faint praise

I pledged $1,000. I have been daydreaming about a customer-owned airline for years now, just about every time I walk through an airport. This might not have much chance of succeeding in its purchase of Spirit’s assets, but I’d love to watch things unfold if it did.

> These sorts of initiatives forget the toil of actually operating a business.

For most businesses the size of Spirit Airlines, the owners typically do not operate the business. They pay people to do that. I don’t operate REI, even though I’m one of its many owners.

I'm not sure that's even noble as by buying you would be a shareholder...

Co-ops don't exist at all, right?

“The only thing missing is ownership that answers to the people — not to shareholders.”

Like, all people in the world?

Customers? Employees?

What does this mean?

EDIT: It’s shareholders, but each person has one vote regardless of share count.

Or the thing where they have a bombastic display of numbers, rehashing either emphatically trivial information, or information presented elsewhere, as if they’re the most important figures in the universe. e.g.

> *0* hedge fund owners. Zero

or including the date Spirit collapsed (despite already mentioning it earlier on the page!). Why not also include “*6* letters in ‘Spirit’” while you’re at it?

assuming it's an llm site, the implication here is some action needs to be taken before private equity buys it for scraps (inferred from the homepage copy)

whether it's an llm, a template or bespoke made from bytecode doesn't really matter does it?

Sounds good if you live on the East Coast.

Even with Japanese level high speed rail NYC to LA still takes much much longer than flying.

You need to buy land. Disrupt wildlife, and various ecosystems.

The government should of bailed out Spirit instead. They served a public good.

Allowing lower to middle income people to travel helps everyone.

Why do people want to generate jobs? I'd rather generate a jobless utopia where we all do art.

It's almost always better to create a new airline ex-nihilo as you get brand new planes, which are better than older ones.

It seems to be an Instagram user: https://www.instagram.com/spiritair2.0/ and his own account is https://www.instagram.com/hitherehunter/

LLMs make time-sensitive frauds easier and faster to stand up to take money from idiots.

I'm surprised they don't also include a team page with a bunch of ChatGPT-generated photographs of fresh-faced fake people to really sell it.

> charged between banks

It generally depends on the contract the merchant has with payment provider:

- some have relatively high merchant fees to cover for interchange fees

- others (generally called IC+) have the merchant pay the IC fee plus some other (generally much smaller) fee to the payment provider

In both cases it's the merchant that ends up paying them. It's not a concidence that in Europe (where there are caps to IC fees) the fees that merchants pay are generally lower.

As an European who's lived in the US, Spirit was actually just as "good" as Ryanair. Sure, you can hate on both of them, but they're cheap and moce you from place to place. I can endure any discomfort for 3h if it meant I could save 100 or 150 bucks flying from NYC to Miami/FLL in high season.

I had much worse experiences with Frontier and promised myself never to fly them again. On one occasion we had to wait for 2h on the plane on tarmac after landing at MacArthur airport because... the airport staff was not responding to pilots' calls. Somehow they didn't know the plane was landing. It was 1 AM or so and while it might not have been Frontier's fault, to not be able to sort it out for 2 hours was telling. Had other issues, too, this one was most ridiculous.

They did things differently compared to other airlines, so it does warrant an explanation. People pay for the cheapest flight, and expect things like free bag checkin. Other airlines will charge everyone more, even if you had no bags and provide free bag checkin. I've had flights where I only had a small backpack and nothing more, I don't want to the "priced in" fee assuming everyone will check a bag. Spirit gave you exactly what you paid for, which is how it should be. No marketing mind games to trick you into thinking you're getting some luxury service. Even in first class most domestic airlines provide a subpar experience, might as well be for a good value like Spirit did. International flights are different though, and the bar is much higher there due to length of flights.

The reason people hated spirit was the same reason they flew spirit, it was cheap.

loved Spirit and flew with them 8 different round trips from BWI to many destinations. So cheap (clothes in bookbag) and never had an issue. They will be missed!

the "temu" of airlines if you will

wait a minute... what if?

My friends used to joke that it was like flying in a tin can, or that the wheels would fall off mid-flight. The jokes were endless.

I liked Spirit, though, great cost savings, and I didn't mind the minor inconveniences that came with it.

Aside from being known for being a cheap airline, the brand itself was pretty solid... I think it had everything working to its advantage. The bright yellow exteriors of the planes, a catchy name. I think people knew exactly what Spirit was and what they offered, which is the sign of a good brand.

with other airlines my experience would also be bad, just unreliably. you're getting cramped sits and bad service on united and AA as well.

Thank you. There's a lot of criticism and skepticism here, and it's nice to see an optimistic comment.

I've no idea if the proponents of this plan are reputable, but the concept reminds me of the early years of WestJet, when they made a big fuss about being employee owned and had (back then) a markedly better customer experience. For US residents reading this, I'm told they were a bit like Southwest Airlines.

Even if the naysayers are correct and the probability of this panning out is low, you'll never hit the pitches you don't swing at, right?

wow, it's almost like you will become... a shareholder?

co-op: one member, one vote. members elect leadership with standard term limits. emphasis on services, price and patron returns. dividend according to use not capital investment. members have direct engagement in financials. public companies: votes scale with shares. large institutional investors and other large share holders have most say in leadership. emphasis on "shareholder value" (eg extractive value). dividends according to shares. shareholders have only limited visibility into finances. they're very different, concluding otherwise is misguided

Few people know this, but Desjardins, a Canadian financial service cooperative, is hugely popular in the province of Quebec (and also Ontario), and has close to CAD $400 billions in total assets.

This really doesn't feel like a Co-op to me.

It sounds more like a credit union. (first $5 goes to your ownership share / vote, and the rest of your money goes to your account).

I dont know of any with such high capex

This is a really interesting thing, both from an ownership structure perspective and from a "there is nuance in the details" perspective. I did a bit of a deep dive into this a few years ago when there was a local refinery strike. The refinery is a co-op and is also part of a larger co-op system.

I'll lay out the specifics here from what I learned. I'm not convinced either way, yet, that it could work for an airline.

So here's the ownership structure:

- Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC) - produces fuel

- Federated Co-operatives (FCL) - owns the refinery, also owns food and agriculture distribution warehouses, negotiates bulk pricing

- 200-ish independent regional Co-ops jointly own FCL

The CRC is highly profitable. FCL is profitable. The independent regional co-ops are not, on their own, all individually profitable. Some of these exist in small rural centres, some of them exist in larger cities. The urban ones are generally profitable, the smaller ones not so much. The rural ones, though, are largely the lifebloods of their communities; it's not unusual for the Co-op Grocery Store and Co-op Gas Station to be the only sources of food and fuel for miles and miles. While these do sometimes run at a loss, they make up for it with their annual Patronage cheques from FCL: when the CRC makes a profit and when FCL makes a profit (from the CRC and from their distribution network), those profits get returned back to the member co-ops on a pro rata basis: buy more from FCL, get more at the end of the year.

At the far tail end, each of these independent co-ops is a member-owned co-op. At the end of the year I end up getting a patronage cheque based on how much fuel, food, and building supplies I bought that year. It's not large, but getting a $100 cheque in the mail is always nice :).

In this situation, though, it all works because the not-so-profitable pieces own both their upstream wholesalers and a crazy-profitable refinery. (The refinery sells to other customers outside of FCL as well).

One of the other critical pieces that the strike/lockout/overall "labour dispute" really made clear to everyone: the independent Co-ops, FCL, and the upstream CRC are all member-owned co-ops, not worker-owned co-ops.

---

So let's look at how an airline co-op might be structured. The first parallel that I could see would be flipping the regional airline model on its head; currently the big players like Delta and United run a bunch of their smaller routes through regionals (SkyWest, Republic, etc). If a bunch of them got together, they could in theory jointly one one of the majors. The wrinkle there, as others have pointed out, the majors aren't profitable as airlines, but rather through their credit cards and loyalty programs. Alternative, then? Do a bunch of regionals get together and buy a bank? Let the bank be profitable, let the major airline handle traffic between the regional hubs?

I know quite a bit less about worker-owned co-ops, but generally speaking aviation is incredibly capital intensive. Starting a worker-owned co-op airline is probably not possible. A single, say, 737 Max 8 costs $121M. That capital's gotta come from somewhere.

Templates need to be filled. Breaking template rules requires actual thinking.

You know the answer. An LLM wrote it.

I agree, but I started noticing the em-dash usage spike.

Because today the options are "jobs exist" or "people starve in the street".

Check out the etymology of “utopia”

All loyalty programs are stupid. People waste their time on 1-2% savings. It is insane.

The only bad experience I ever had on Spirit was from their garbage passengers, never had a problem with the airline itself, flew them probably 20 times. But then again anecdotal evidence is also garbage, so who knows, maybe we were just lucky. Or maybe a vocal minority made it sound worse than it was.

aren't there plenty of state owned airlines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_airli...

Yes. Reminds me of the “anarchists” that don’t realise that they just want to recreate the government but with their people in charge.

I wouldn't say they are common.

MEC was the only co-op I have ever been part of. I'm pretty sure they stopped being a co-op and sold it to private equity.

IMHO this should have been written “to the customers and employees”. To me, those are the people who compose a business enterprise.

Trains have been proven to be able to go at least 375mph [0]. That would make NYC->SF take 6.9 hours to travel the 4162 km. The current average flight time from NYC to SF is 6.7 hours.

So, it's at least technically possible.

China is doing R&D on a partial-vacuum train (basically Musk's hyperloop thing) with a target of 1,243 mph[1]. That's probably a pipe dream, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

> The government should of [sic] bailed out Spirit instead.

I'd be okay with this if all the taxpayers were granted equal shares that their collective money could have purchased at an imputed no-bailout price.

0: L0 Series SCMaglev

1: T-Flight train

This is almost exactly the opposite of what most new airlines do. The fastest, cheapest way to get a good plane is to buy an old plane from an existing airline (preferably one going out of business, so you get a deal) and renovate it a little.

I like the EU model. The regulators set a "bare minimum" set of requirements. They have much better minimums that North America, and the fares are (still) cheaper per kilometer travelled. Also, I love the penalty system when flights are late.

Okay, but the process of underwriting an airline now somehow involves operating a successful credit card company. Which, you know, are not typically successful based upon operating excellence but upon rapaciousness of interest rates and merchant fees.

I'm not sure it's great to have important infrastructure operated this way. Other than regulation do you see a way out?

> 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.

> 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.

If a service cannot be provided for a cost below what someone will pay, the service should not be provided as providing that service is a lose-lose situation.

Now you have to option to pay as much as you used to (inflation adjusted) for a ticket, and get first class service with all the leg room you want.

And most families only had a single car prior to 1980.

What's your point?

Did airlines get cheaper due to deregulation or because technology and engineering made operating them cheaper?

This isn't true. European airlines do have loyalty programs with "miles".

Air France, British Airways, Finnair, Turkish Airlines, just to name a few, all have miles programs.

They just aren't tied to credit cards because the EU caps interchange fees to 0.3%, so there simply isn't enough money to have a meaningful credit card point system.

Wow… at 1.5% annual return wouldn’t they be better off just renting those assets (aircraft) to other airlines?!

Their last earnings report says about 17B in non-cash assets with about 848M in profit based on those assets (assuming that the quarterly profit x 4 is a reasonable assumption). So where are your numbers from?

Corporate bonds won't take you to Disneyland.

That's one free round trip international flight per year in a lot of cases. Plus sometimes other benefits like theft insurance, warranty extension, phone insurance, etc.

You're subsidizing everyone else if you're not trying to get the best loyalty program.

Or the big airlines were paying for all that disparaging marketing on the down low. I wouldnt be surprised.

Some of them want to create a monarchy with them in charge... Remember to be on the lookout for that trend too.

For the Americans in the audience: MEC ~ Canadian REI.

See perhaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_co-operative

Vanguard is "kind of" like a co-op, in that it is owned by its mutual funds which are owned by its customers.

Fidelity is still better in some metrics, however.

But the customers and employees don’t actually put up the money for the enterprise.

If you assume there is an airplane — great, run the airline for the customers and employees. But the cost of the airplane can’t be handwaved away.

> The current average flight time from NYC to SF is 6.7 hours.

What's your source for this? I take this flight a lot and I find it hard to believe it's more than 5.5-5.75 on average. Looking at the last few weeks for one of them[0] supports my experience.

Maybe your number has TSA/airport time included.

[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ua1777

Ryanair is the best performing budget airline in Europe and they only buy new planes, because it's way cheaper to run them. Less time on land for maintenance = less wasted money.

Not that this isn’t a scam, but they’re currently asking for pledges to contribute, not cash.

The comments here seem to suggest that the loyalty program funded with credit card margins are to blame for the difference.

It suggests we'd be better of eliminating the absurdly high hidden taxes paid to the credit card companies, that in turn act to gamify the business. In the end they raise the cost of doing business, for virtually no benefit at all. It's a monopoly extracting as much wealth they can get away with.

The question at the heart of this: How can "the shining light on a hill" be so stupid? It's digging its own demise.

No doubt there is evil in the corporate world. I do think there is something in that documentary that changed my mind about a few things. It might not be representative o today since we’re talking 1970s UK but thought provoking anyway.

I'm not sure why you're downvoted. You're definitely right that it's extremely rare behavior.

A more fair assessment would be: company runs a utility => they need to be a regulated utility!

The core part of air travel doesn’t really feel any different to a bus or metro or train. Off the tarmac then yes it absolutely feels like a Verizon store, as does some of the in-flight service, but there’s always been this weird feeling as a traveler that every carrier is basically the same thing but with different decals on it. Airline alliances are surely the ultimate example of this.

Meanwhile, first class today is not very much more than coach cost in the regulated era.

Try flying Delta. It isn’t the cheapest option, but you really do get better service.

If you want to feel special, do Aeromexico first class. The checked bags are waiting for you before you can even walk there on a domestic flight.

Spirit was cheap. And if you’re poor, you need cheap. If you aren’t, buy better service and don’t complain that it’s just Greyhound on a plane.

Even with your uncharitable framing I agree with both quotes.

Company, always: "We need government subsidy". Then hell yes to regulating what they do.

Company is valuable to us as a society in a fundamental way but is fucking us up in all sorts of unique ways: They might need to be a regulated utility.

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 .

Was that Flightfox? If so, I loved using it, helped me save so much money but also time :)

It sounds like there’s a problem with having too many flights that are barely full and hence unprofitable. AFAIK the federal gov spends significant money subsidising many “small airport” routes even if they’re barely used.

Yup, and this is exacerbated by how services like Google Flights work. There's little visibility into any kind of "quality" metric, but prices are always front and center. So why would you optimize based on anything else?

A huge number of businesses survive on whales, it's becoming really apparent. I'm kinda surprised how common it is.

I wonder if this will be the next "market" to exploit if ad revenue ever dies down too much, or if it's one that's always been there, and I've simply never been a part of.

"Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more"

Tickets used to cost 4-8x what they cost now, depending on route. It wasn't a couple percent extra. A lot of what made flying seem like such a glamorous activity was that everyone but the upper classes was excluded.

An economy class round trip from the US to Japan in the 1970s with Pan-Am was $8,900 in 2026 dollars. About $15,000 if you flew first class.

It would be prohibitively expensive for poor people to fly. I understand why you wouldn’t care about that, but some people are poor and still need to fly if you can believe it.

Not in the USA. Also, the state’s interests often aren’t super well-aligned with the customers’ interests. Too many conflicts of interest for my taste.

I’ve never seen that work. There is a fundamental tension between those groups. Hence, member-owned co-ops and employee-owned co-ops.

Good luck trying to get any planes with the current backlog. Unless you enjoy flying in the 737 Max.

Sounds like someone is selling securities without a license tbh.

I think the ultimate example is the fact that most routes are run by other companies than the branded carrier; capacity providers like Endeavour and SkyWest just borrow the name and livery of the major carrier they're operating for that day.

Hopefully we can regulate them like California electricity and let one airline be active per airport and let them charge more than triple national rates.

The EAS Program (Essential Air Services) is the US Government program which subsidizes routes to small communities of you're curious.

If the lowest prices cause insolvency for the company, then let your competitors go bankrupt to win in the long run?

this is a direct result of the shrinking middle class and the greater concentration of wealth. this is the canary in the coal mine

And for comparison, today you can do an economy round-trip flight with Delta Air Lines for roughly $1.6k (SEA-HND). A Delta One flight is roughly $8.5k. That's the apples-to-apples comparison.

Deregulation also allowed international carriers to sell to us too. An ANA round-trip on economy class is a couple hundred dollars cheaper. Their business class is similarly cheaper than Delta One.

Air travel is so much cheaper than it was back then that it is affordable for most people to take one international trip a year if they really want to. Even to exotic places in Asia or Southern Europe.

How did poor people who needed to fly fly when flying was expensive?

Have you ever flown spirit or any of the other ultra low cost carriers?

It very much is a different experience than flying a legacy domestic mainline carrier. I’m not alone amongst people i know who will happily fly the cheap seats on United/Delta/AA but won’t even look at a ticket from Spirit or Frontier even at a significant discount.

Compare it to a flag carrier like Singapore air and it is a shockingly different product.

All that’s an aside: we know what regulated airlines look like since we already tried it, much more expensive, with airlines competing not on price but on amenities.

Am I the only one who really doesn't care what kind of service I get on a plane? I don't drink alcohol, so I don't care about that. I bring my own water bottle, so I'm good on that. The little bags of pretzels are nice, but if they stood at the front and launched them out of a t-shirt cannon, I'd be good with that.

As long as the required crew of flight attendants doesn't assault me, I've never really got off a plane thinking anything at all about the service. Just "where do I need to go next" or "I'm glad to be home".

Can you educate the rest of us by explaining your reasoning?

Spirit wasn't asking for a government subsidy to get saved from bakruptcy. They were asking to be allowed to get merged with JetBlue (which could've saved them from bankruptcy) and got denied by the government. Those two things aren't the same.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

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.

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.

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

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 :)

Evidence? Isn't the state the expression of the people's will? That's the theory of democracy, isn't it?

Also, any evidence or reason to believe that an extraction-based capitalist model is more aligned with customer interests (where the customer is the thing value is extracted from, and where corporate leadership salaries are directly tied to how much they can grift from the customers) than a government where the incentive is to get the maximum number of happy fliers to vote for you?

> I’ve never seen that work. There is a fundamental tension between those groups. Hence, member-owned co-ops and employee-owned co-ops.

Focusing strictly on shareholders (value) has been en vogue since the 1970s:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

Before that the general thinking was along the lines of:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory

Somehow companies managed to survive and grow before the 1970s.

> Important Legal Notice: This is a non-binding pledge of intent. No money is collected at this stage. All references to profit-sharing, dividends, voting rights, and ownership are proposed concepts only — not confirmed arrangements. Nothing on this site constitutes a securities offering, investment contract, or financial instrument of any kind. The final cooperative structure must be reviewed and approved by qualified securities and aviation counsel. Participation does not guarantee ownership, financial return, or membership in any final entity. This is a movement, not an investment product.

From skimming, I see at least 5 places where this is reiterated on the page.

You state an opinion, but not why for that opinion. I’m mostly stuck with Alaska or a small handful being a couple hours north of Seattle and driving to/dealing with SeaTac is not fun. In the caliber you said you wouldn’t travel includes aliegent.

I’ve not flown them and stick to Alaska and the local puddle jumpers to get off the island.

My company travel tool won't even let me book Spirit without it being flagged to HR.

It's good that you don't care, and that you can self selected into getting the cheapest fare possible. The market works.

The extremes of capitalism have a negative impact on people’s lives.

The first scenario it harms us by under-serving and scammy practices, the second scenario it’s over-extractive and funneling money from the many to the few.

This is vibe coded as fuck and anyone can submit a pledge, so no

Many people, myself included, will gladly be 'hurt' on a 2-3 hour flight, if that means we can save some noticeable amount of money on the fare.

I know it’s frowned upon many circles, but regulation can work and do good.

There is plenty of crap legislation and regulation about, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

I think you're saying that there are businesses that rely on cheap air transportation that are very valuable, but at the same time couldn't afford higher air fees.

But that's a contradiction. If they are valuable, their customers would pay more for their services - that's the definition of valuable. And if their customers would pay more, they could afford higher air fees.

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.

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.

I can give you an example based on two failed national airlines I experienced for years: Italy's Alitalia and Hungary's Malév.

Customers hated them. They were top examples of when public management fails. They were expensive for the customers and costed the tax payers billions to be kept alive, and basically everyone rejoiced when they were let go (Alitalia being reborn as ITA Airways and effectively operated by Lufthansa, Malev just disappeared).

The problem with state run enterprises is that the accountability to voters is very removed. You elect parliament and government which chooses some administrator at random times which chooses some managers etc..

It's not impossible to do well (many state run companies are fine!) but it's hardly a guarantee.

> Focusing strictly on shareholders (value) has been en vogue since the 1970s

It's been in vogue, in circles, since the 17th century. We're not talking about for-profit structures here.

I’ve flown Spirit and Frontier several times, and Southwest many times (I know they’re not quite in the same category, especially after their recent changes). I genuinely don’t know what you’re referring to regarding the experience being wildly different. Other than a few quirks about what they do and don’t charge for and how they board and assign seats, I feel like there’s almost no meaningful difference between these and legacy carriers like United and American. I honestly don’t even feel like the prices are consistently that different.

Singapore Air is majority government owned and is closer to having “utility” airlines than not.

When your flights are delayed/resechduled there is a world of difference. "Get in line" vs "you are already rebooked". (my Air Canada experince.)

Breaking down complex topics into binary black and white doesnt have to be wrong. The more important part is, how much wealth they extracted and how exactly. Was it market dominance with a superior product or amoral cost externalization.

The angle of treating transportation as regulated utility shifts the business focus away from profit onto providing services, which sometimes can cost more than your income. Similarly, would you close schools, because they didnt make enough money? Airlines are highly subsidized anyway, treating them as regulated utilities falls short of taking public ownership as public institutions, where services just cost money/subsidies.

Not op but I also agree with the framing assuming you add “and they provide a vital service” to both. If a vital service is being used to extract profits it should be regulated so that equal access to the vital service can be provided. If a vital service is being provided but cannot make money it should be regulated so that it can be sustained since it is vital.

Now what is vital? Is Spirit vital? That’s the hard to define part.

Companies like John-Deere should be able to survive without abusing their downstream customers. Many farmers are importing tractors from China because they're cheap and not hostile to repair like JD is. Some people might call it a "smart business model" to sell interdependent services, but in the long-term it's suicide.

Whether or not you solve this through regulation, that's up to you.

My understanding is that the Spirit/JetBlue merger was blocked by the Biden DOJ. Were they asking for that again, or was it a different thing that failed in negotiations with the feds recently?

Yeah, I'm starting wonder if this is bs. They don't have a twitter account like the pledge form indicates. The youtuber that purportedly started the campaign only has like 36k subscribers, so it's not clear where such a high level of pledges would be coming from and the rpc endpoint response vs page count is pretty suspicious.

That doesn't mean we should subsidise it.

Basically yes.

If they are so much better, why do they need subsidies?

“citizens”, “customers” and “politicians” are three different groups. The government might want to use the airline as tax revenue, artificially increasing prices on customers to support non-customers.

Or the government may want to give their airline unfair advantages, which would decrease real competition and create a brittle industry. Or the government might want to strangle their own company, in order to declare that it is “bad and dumb” in order to manufacture popular support to privatize the public company.

> Isn't the state the expression of the people's will?

Just recently HN discussed the „ban anonymity on the internet“ initiatives of various governments and who was behind it because nobody wants that. Certainly not the citizens.

“Horrible” and “low cost” are contradictory for many consumers

Conversely, Air India was majority government owned, did a pretty bad job of it, and is now privately owned.

Yes, Singapore Airline is government owned, but I don't see how it's a utility?

Fair enough, I've been in those situations where the service on the ground side of the gate matters.

Utilities and transportation should be public services, and they are in many places. Sometimes it works well, other times it works less well… usually because the capitalists lobby it into neglect and then say “see it’s not working / losing money let the private sector take over”.

The negotiations that were occuring directly prior to Spirit's shutdown were not merger related; but a direct government bailout.

I’m responding to a claim that there’s nothing “magical” about air travel. It literally enables things otherwise impossible.

I guess at least when they are given away for free or severely underpriced to the user.

Which transportation mode gets no direct or indirect subsides?

Very limited knowledge, but Air India (a full-fat govt owned airline till recently) didn't really have any of this. Yeah it was losing money, but the customer facing aspects were mostly standard - if anything, more standardized than other private players.

One could make an argument that "Well look, it was costing the government taxpayer money!", and that's a valid point. But given how little the variation in prices are across airlines in India, it's similar to saying "The govt shouldn't do public transport if it loses money, even if society gains".

The issue is that citizens issue ambiguous wills. They don't want kids to be able to look at porn, they don't want hate speech online, they don't want to be IDed online. Politicians try to square those competing wills.

The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Ryanair will come through with their hands out minimally three times since last time I rode them (though it's been several years, is it four now?)

One other difference I can think of is that carry-ons are more rarely included in the base fare in the budget airlines than the legacy airlines, though maybe that has also gone away since the changes where bags must be included in the listed price that Southwest pushed for.

I feel like you're living in a different universe then. I will literally never fly Spirit (well, neither will anyone else) nor Frontier ever, I loath the experiences I've had on them so much.

First, as someone with relatively long thighs, I literally don't fit in their sardine can seats. But more relevant to most people, while things may be OK if everything goes perfectly and nothing is delayed or cancelled, you are completely SOL with Spirit/Frontier if something goes wrong (and "something" may just be they themselves decide to cancel an undersold flight at the last minute). It's nearly impossible to get someone to talk to, I feel like the employees know how shitty their companies are so they all have an attitude like they DGAF, and it's a mad (expensive) scramble to find alternative arrangements at the last minute.

I've never had as abysmal experiences as I've had on Frontier compared to any other airline.

> "Get in line" vs "you are already rebooked". (my Air Canada experince.)

Which of the two was the Air Canada experience?

> Similarly, would you close schools, because they didnt make enough money?

Yes, of course. We should separate school and state.

> Airlines are highly subsidized anyway, treating them as regulated utilities falls short of taking public ownership as public institutions, where services just cost money/subsidies.

How are they highly subsidized? And where? Perhaps we should fix that, instead of adding to the problem? Two wrongs don't make a right.

1. "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay for it!"

2. "We won't pay for this, but we still want to have it!"

These are of course both fair points. Why should we "pay for" things, what's that all about? We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies.

It would be nice if companies could commit suicide faster, instead of dragging it out over several decades.

I haven’t actively surveyed all the airlines, but I happened to notice recently that United charges for carry-ons.

I’m relatively tall and have a generally rough (but tolerable) time with all domestic bottom-tier seats.

I have no difficulty believing you when it comes to customer service. I’ve never had any issues requiring anything beyond the most basic customer service, so I just haven’t been exposed to differences between airlines in that regard. I also understand that a bad experience can leave an exceptionally bad impression. I suppose the only thing that might surprise me is if the higher-cost airlines don’t also have terrible service.

Yup, came here to say this. Once you're on the plane and its in the air, Spirit and Frontier are like pretty much every other domestic airline. There's slight variation in terms of whether you get a whole can of coke for free or not. If you're taller than me, the 28" of seat pitch vs say 31" on delta may make a difference, but I'm only 5'9".

I still avoided them like the plague because the legacy carriers are selling you operational performance and the ability to usually get you where you're going within a reasonable timeframe if you're delayed or canceled. Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, whoever else, do not do nearly as good a job when something goes wrong. Although they should get a lot of credit - none of them have ever had a fatal crash.

"you are already rebooked" -- they were fab.

> We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies.

Is this how you see roads? Are we entitled for wanting those to be paid for by the state? What about the police? Should we have to pay whenever a police officer stops a mugging -- or is the wage of that officer, too, supplied by pixies?

It's not contained within the company, when every company does it it's country suicide as well.

The "low cost" in Ultra-Low-Cost-Carrier refers to the operating costs to the company, not the cost they charge for goods and services. Though they usually come in tandem.

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one

I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here.

I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

From a customers' immediate point of view, this sucks for you.

But it's great they are not regulated utilities. Because either everyone would have to pay for extra legroom, even if they don't need it, or some freakishly long people would not be able to pay for the extra legroom that they need.

You'd force an entire generation of children to simply not be educated?

I think they're both actually "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay too much for it just so a CEO can make 10,000x their workers and potentially ALSO still lose money."

I can't find videos.

The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?"

They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food.

I think this is mostly unique to Ryanair (in Europe), I don't remember Wizz Air, Norwegian or EasyJet doing this. Part of Ryanair's marketing is to make the experience worse than it needs to be, so you know you're saving money.

Why do you think being regulated utilities would preclude having multiple classes of service? Airlines had first class before deregulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_(aviation)#History

Ah yes, because I am also forced to buy the same amount of electricity and water from my regulated utility regardless of need.

Welcome to feudalism, yay.

How much of the money goes to CEO vs shareholders is something they can work out between themselves.

If the airline goes bankrupt, that just means that the creditors get less than they otherwise expected. That's something to haggle out between creditors and management and shareholders.

(Or do you want to imply that if the shareholders saved money on CEO compensation, they would give the money to ordinary workers?)

Right, but what makes that viable? Something so topheavy ought to go the way of the Irish elk.

Edit: maybe a piñata is a better metaphor. :(