Some More News - SMN: What's The Deal With Airlines?

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Hi. The airlines really screwed things up over the holidays and have made flying a generally awful experience for decades. Here's why that is (spoiler alert: capitalism and deregulation) and how we could potentially make it better. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nyCo5G7cyBF4ulQHdZwipCEU_f0qXBWwbIqK4opDT8A/edit?usp=sharing  Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949 SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news  Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show!Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boy, oh boy, here's some news. It's already February of this newfangled 2023, and yet everyone is still talking about the movie Plane, starring Gerard Butler. That's despite much of the movie not actually taking place on a plane, but it just goes to show how much America has airline fever.

Fevers, of course, being a rise in body temperature that causes us to get sick and die sometimes. Also, I'm now being told that no one is talking about the movie plane after all. Still, it was a good entry point for today's video, which as you probably already know from reading the title of the video, it's about airlines. Because here's some news, gah!

The recent holidays were extremely mega special terrible for air travelers. This is of course different from other holiday years when airlines were just severely mega special terrible. And so here's some Q question. Why exactly is air travel the worst? Even before the pandemic or not during snow emergencies or during any given part of the year,

airlines are notorious for being some of the most insufferable businesses for consumers. Being on an airplane often feels like we're being held hostage by a faceless corporation with no guarantee that they will actually deliver us and our belongings to the correct destination and at the correct time. And imagine if any other business functioned that way. Imagine if you went to the movie theater and were jammed into the smallest seat possible and forced to wait an extra three hours past the showtime. And when the movie started,

it was completely different from what you came there for. The movie you came for, of course, being Plane starring Gerard Butler, the film everyone is talking about. Anyway, what happened to airlines? Why are they terrible? Does it have to do with deregulation and the ails and ills of capitalism? What is, as they say, the deal, airline-wise, with it?

Or put a better way, the deal with air travel. What is it? Kind of a spoiler about deregulation at the top of the video, sorry. Barring any twists or stunts or hootenannies, this is probably going to be a pretty straightforward, maybe even nonpartisan episode, something we can all get behind. But just because you know the destination doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride, unless you're riding on a plane, which sucks.

And speaking of sucking on things, let's talk about the most recent debacle at the end of 2022. And while, as we alluded to, all the airlines tend to lick on poopies and suckle turds, there was a clear winner for the turdiest suckler of sucking turds at the Poopy Slurping Festival. Because while winter storms piledrived

any and all travel around Christmas, only one airline stayed firmly face down on the mat. Southwest is really getting a lot of the criticism and the scrutiny right now, since it accounts for nearly three quarters of all the canceled flights yesterday. Thank you. This morning, the chaos surrounding

Southwest Airlines cancellations continues. Now the airline is struggling to recover. Southwest passengers are facing another frustrating day of cancellations and delays and, well, very few answers. The airline has canceled more than 300 flights in and out of the Bay Area so far today, and it's not just getting people to the right place that's a problem.

Lost luggage is piled up in baggage claims all across the country. Tsk, tsk. That's what you get for kicking Kevin Smith off that flight. He's like the old woman in Drag Me to Hell, don't you know? Southwest was, to put it politely, a piss-slippy donkey orgy of mishaps and fuck-em-ups. On the 28th of December,

they were responsible for over 90% of all national flight cancellations, which is pretty dang impressive, the same way chugging a jar of pickle brine is technically a feat. And they're also a good place to start as we creep into the larger and systemic problems with the airline industry. I would argue that what happened with Southwest is a microcosm of the bigger issue. So let's journey through that. But first, to get into the microcosm, we have to get real tiny. Wormbo, shrink ray!

Simple episode, sorry. Okay, so let's try it again. But first, some of Southwest's problems do stem from one unique situation that doesn't affect other airlines. They use something called a point-to-point model that allows their passengers to fly directly between smaller cities. In other words, while most airlines use major metropolitan hubs, making stopovers in big airports before advancing passengers to their smaller nearby destinations, Southwest will take you directly from one smaller airport to another smaller airport.

And while normally that's a good thing that saves a lot of time for the passengers, smaller airports aren't going to have a lot of standby crew able to step in if something goes wrong. This was the root of the logistical problems that Southwest faced. As the weather began to shut down some flights, it created a domino effect where planes were stuck in smaller metro areas

that didn't have many people to fill in crew positions. The planes were also more spread out because they didn't cycle from one hub to another. And so because everything was incredibly scattered, it took Southwest far longer to get their shit back together. Shit far apart, therefore shit going back together is hard. But that's where the problems unique to Southwest end, because there were a lot of things

the company could have been doing in the long term to mitigate at least some of this problem. For starters, if Southwest was going to rely on this trickier model, it would make sense for them to have a method to easily match crew members with various flights. But of course, that would require them to invest in their computers somewhere down the line,

which they didn't, as admitted by their own CEO in their apology video. The tools we use to recover from disruption serve us well 99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down on our already existing plans to upgrade systems for these extreme circumstances so that we never again face what's happening right now. Damn, what a gramp snack he is. This pepper-haired sex god would go on to elaborate that, quote, the process of matching up those crew members with the aircraft could not be handled by our technology,

which is a very tactful way of saying that their computer system is hot, drippy garbage. As the pilots union would go on to describe in a far less tactful way, Southwest was plagued with a terrible former CEO and chairperson who purposefully under-invested in tech upgrades in favor of, quote, maximizing shareholder return. They describe a company that has had numerous operational problems due to system-wide meltdowns that was only obvious in this most recent catastrophic event.

Because it turns out that all of Southwest's phone systems, computers, processors, all the little dildos that communicate with the airplanes and so on, well, none of that has really been updated since the fucking 1990s. That's 30 years ago,

or right around when Passenger 57 came out, otherwise known as the plane of the 90s. That's 30 years ago, or right around when Passenger 57 came out, otherwise known as the plane of the 90s. Every decade gets a plane movie, sometimes two or three or four, but there's always at least one. That's an American guarantee. Unlike knowing if your Southwest flight will actually exist once you get to the airport. By the way, that pilots union sure seems correct in their statement about shareholders, because Southwest paid out 10 billion goddamn dollars to their shareholders in the five years leading to the pandemic. Seems like they could have used that money to, you know,

fix their product and service. But as you can imagine, airlines putting quality over the quantity in their wallets is going to be a running theme in this video because it's not just Southwest and it's not just this one time. For example, this headline about Southwest and Delta's computers could have come out this week,

but this is from 2016, when there were other computer crashes for multiple airlines. United had a computer failure that caused hundreds of passengers to be stuck on the runway for hours. Around the same time, Delta canceled over 1,500 flights because a single piece of equipment failed. You'd think they would learn their lesson after that, but here's another computer breakdown from Delta in 2018.

The article noting it's the third crash for that specific airline. In this article about British Airways having a crash, great to see it's not just us Yanks in it. They outlined the problem. That problem being that no one is updating their computer systems. They just don't want to

because that would cost money, you see. And of course, since there's only like four airlines, we'll get to that. One of them going down kind of ripple effects all the others. And because of multiple mergers, again, we'll get to that. Several computer systems have had to mush together in ways for which they weren't prepared because of course they don't all have the same software. And this is just one aspect of the hell that is airline companies. It's not just computer glitches and it's not just a few delayed flights either. It's a fucking dystopia out there. Her travel nightmare started Sunday afternoon.

Her American Airlines flight to JFK was scheduled to take off around 1 PM. She says passengers sat on the plane for three hours, then were asked to deplane, board another jet, and wait out a two-hour storm before finally departing some six hours later. I was flying from LAX to Miami, Miami to Orlando. Orlando, my final destination. And for whatever reason, in Miami, after having a whole kerfuffle with no one being there to load me onto the plane and me having to wait until the plane finished boarding to actually get transferred on, they didn't put my chair on the plane, my wheelchair. They didn't put my wheelchair on the plane. So I got to Orlando and my wheelchair was not here.

This morning, a mother speaking out after she says her child was allowed to walk off an American Airlines flight alone while traveling as an unaccompanied minor. Along with that last story about an airline losing a child, here's another story about a 10-year-old whose connecting flight was canceled without the parents being informed. And here's a story about a guy who spent two days without his wheelchair when Delta just forgot to put it on his flight. A lot of wheelchair stories, actually. I guess if you are in a wheelchair,

you just shouldn't travel, which seems like a failed society sort of thing. According to the Department of Transportation, more than 800 wheelchairs were mishandled just in a single month. Here's a story of someone getting booted off the plane after boarding for having a supposed invalid ticket. How does that even happen?

Here's a couple in their 80s who ran out of heart medication because their flight was canceled twice. Here's a dude that was told that the airline misplaced his luggage and he'd have to go get it himself 4,000 miles away from where he had landed. Here's a Delta flight that was forced to make a U-turn

over the Atlantic ocean due to a fuel imbalance, whatever the ungodly fuck that means. And at this point, it should probably be noted that all the stories I just shared were just from American based airlines and just from last year. Those are all from 2022. Because flying is a goddamn funhouse of terror.

It really is. We sit on these little planes and hope that some surreal nightmare won't unfurl before us like a whale's dick popping out of a birthday cake, a pilot randomly pushing his political agenda, or a six-hour delay on the runway where everyone bakes in a metal tube,

or literally sitting in shit and no one caring about it. And if we speak up or freak out, we might get beaten and dragged off the plane, apparently. So what in the hell happened to this industry? As I've already pointed out, no other type of business is allowed to be this bad to their customers and still exist. The only thing close is like those weird BDSM haunted houses

that make you sign a waiver. And so now that we've established that these airlines are, in fact, terrible, it's time to go back and look at how we got here and how, you know, it probably has a lot to do with capitalism and deregulation. Again, spoilers. But before we do that, here are some ads.

And I hope it's for an airline. Be ironic, you wouldn't expect it, but the juxtaposition. Hello, my cuddle bear. That's you, my big, beautiful cuddle bear, you. I'm Cody, here to tell you about AG1 by Athletic Greens. It's a nutritional drink, you see. I gave AG1 a try because unlike you, a big beautiful bear scrounging for berries

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Yum. I will get my revenge against you, the big beautiful bear watching this ad. Your end will be by my hand. AG1 is keto and paleo and vegan, by the way. It's just a single scoop in a glass of water. Too easy! If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements,

Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash more news. That's athleticgreens.com slash more news. Check it out, bear. What's up? Remember me? I'm Cody. I was here before you went on that incredible journey through the land of advertisements. We're all a little older now, a little wiser. Before the break, we more or less described how airlines are festering heaps of gorilla waste. But it's now time to talk about why.

Why are airlines festering heaps of gorilla waste? I'm talking ape shit and piss, my friends. And that means it's time for our favorite ongoing game that we didn't have to make a graphic for just for this video. How did deregulation screw us? Oh yeah, baby, sock it to me. Get your home copies out and gather the awful little kids

because we have a history lesson for you. While the first passenger airline service was in 1914, stuff didn't get real until a few decades later. In 1938, Congress created the Civil Aeronautics Administration, or CA, as the first regulatory agency for airlines. A few years later, FDR would split CA into two distinct agencies, one designed to regulate air traffic control and flight safety measures, and the other for accident investigations and economic regulation of commercial airlines. That latter group would be

the Civil Aeronautics Board, or CAB. CAB did things like regulate air routes and flight frequency, anything designed to oversee the interaction between the public and the airlines. Predictably, the cab ultimately did not have the resources to keep up with the ever-growing market of air travel. But we'll get to that in a moment, because right now, and by right now, I mean from the 1950s to the 1970s, we were in the golden age of air travel. You've seen the pictures. Heck, maybe you were even alive and dawn drapering around to visit your many families. Here's a taste. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain

speaking. We are now at cruising altitude, 35,000 feet. Our flying speed is 575 miles per hour. In addition, we're benefiting from a substantial tailwind by courtesy of the jet stream. In addition, we're benefiting from a substantial tailwind by courtesy of the jet stream. Hence, our ground speed is now approximately 658 miles per hour. Indications are that our arrival at London Airport may be ahead of schedule. Hot damn! Except for all the racism and misogyny and probably a lot of other terrible things, that looks great.

Cocktail lounges, five-course meals, fucking ice sculptures and junk. Everyone all dressed up like it's a fancy sky funeral. Why isn't it like that today? The easy answer is that airlines back then were regulated under the cab, except that's not actually the easy answer. The actual answer to why airlines looked so fucking fabulous during this time was because they were extremely expensive to use. For example, in 1974, the minimum price for a ticket from New York City to LA adjusted for inflation was $1,442 minimum. That's probably why in the 1960s, only about 20% of Americans had ever flown at all.

It was a luxury item, which of course meant that it was mostly for white people. So when you see pictures of scantily clad stewardesses grinding their teeth through hours of sexual harassment to bring some bright eyed child a tray of gelatin pork bananas or whatever, and you think, wow, that could have been me. I'm here to tell you that statistically, it couldn't have been you.

Also, there were just so many skyjackings during that time because we hadn't thought to like do any security, I guess. It was not actually a good time to fly, is my point. So cut to the late 1970s and a congressional investigation would look into why commercial airlines were so gosh darn expensive. The answer they came up with, which was absolutely true, was that deregulation would increase competition

and drive down ticket prices. You see, when I said that plane tickets had a minimum price, that's because the government mandated that price, because that ensured that both the airlines got paid and the customer was treated well. By taking the government out of it, airlines could bring down their prices to better compete with each other.

And so in 1978, the Airline Deregulation Act was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by... Oh, wow. I automatically expected to see Reagan there since we're talking about deregulation that would ultimately degrade an American service. But I really can't stress that at the time, this was bipartisan. Also, it worked, and ticket prices

almost immediately plummeted after this. However, along with deregulating the airlines, this law completely dissolved the cab as well. And perhaps that was going a little bit too far, as evidenced by the pit of hell that currently surrounds the airline industry. Because along with giving them the ability to compete, deregulating the airlines also allowed them to start thinking about ways to make even more money than before. It also made them more susceptible to a recession.

And in the early 80s, both of these problems perfectly came together like the devil's Reese's cup. The union representing those who man America's air traffic control facilities called a strike. This was the culmination of seven months of negotiations between the Federal Aviation Administration and the union. They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs

and will be terminated. There he is. I was getting a little worried there for a moment. Along with affecting the airlines, Reagan's mass firing of over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers marked a very important moment for labor in this country. To quote former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, speaking directly about this event, his action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers. But more pressing to the moment, firing that many air traffic controllers really does a number on the then-inflated airline industry, especially during a recession.

And so company after company began to tank. Many airlines cut benefits and wages and forced more strikes that led to less business and so on and so forth. Layoffs and mergers became the new hotness. And ultimately we lost countless brands such as Pan Am, Laker Airways, Braniff, Eastern Airlines,

and of course, Trump Shuttle. In fairness, that last airline was never financially profitable on account of it being run by a bad businessman, but the rest of those companies could have survived. By the 90s, airlines had suffered huge losses and so only the biggest airlines had any chance of making it.

Some companies used this to their advantage. For example, American Airlines brought down their prices in key areas in order to drive smaller competitors out of business. They would then raise their prices back up once those companies called it quits. Clinton's DOJ actually sued the company for their predatory pricing in the late 90s

and lost to the airlines due to a lack of proof. In other words, we were now balls deep in deregulation's effects. The government seemed unable to stop airlines from pushing each other around. And yet we needed airlines to survive. You know, people need to fly places. That created a situation where we couldn't regulate the airlines, but also had to bail them out so they still existed. See, that DOJ American Airlines case really sums it up.

The case was ended in April of 2001. And for whatever strange reason, airline stock began to tank not long after that in late September of 2001. Not sure what's happening there. Probably has something to do with the movie Hardball coming out. And so airlines began to need bailouts from our government and we just gave them the money despite constantly having these legal issues with them. And after a long war in the mid 2000s, presumably about the movie Hardball, people were pretty goddamn tired

of the same old government hogwash. They were ready for things to, I don't know, a word for stuff not being the thing that they currently are. Who, oh who, could help us during this time? I'm Barack Obama. Why, hello! Yes, we were saved!

Change! Hope! Et cetera! We did it! Let's celebrate! Let's all fuck each other to celebrate. Wait, I'm, wait. Oh, oh wow.

Okay, so apparently it was not the movie Hardball that led to the Iraq war, but an attack on the World Trade Center. But more importantly to this video, President Barack Obama did not, it seems, help the situation with the airlines. In fact, despite speaking out against mergers, the Obama administration oversaw three major airline mergers, resulting in just four fucking companies having control over 80% of the market. This includes a merger between

American Airlines and U.S. Airways, something his DOJ originally fought against right up until it did not. The reason for this reversal sure appears to be a very comfy relationship between airline lobbyists and Democrats, specifically at the Justice Department and within the White House at the time. I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but it appears that fucking over American consumers

in exchange for bloated monopolies is a very bipartisan tradition in this country. And so with absolutely no one to help us with this ever expanding problem, the situation just got worse and worse. A ridiculously consolidated market enabled a handful of super big companies to conspire together and maximize their profits

while diminishing customer experience. This is the reason a single absolutely hellbound consultant created a brand new system of baggage fees that did not exist before the late 2000s, or why American Airlines and JetBlue were able to form an unofficial alliance in order to limit competition in the Northeast and keep their prices up.

In other words, everything we originally wanted deregulation to achieve is no longer happening because airlines have no reason to be competitive anymore. You can say some of it was out of their control because of economic turmoil and hardball, but the result is the same and they're perfectly happy just the way they are

because everything the country has done for decades has encouraged this behavior. Remember when I said Clinton's DOJ sued an airline for predatory pricing and lost because of lack of proof? Well, that's because in 1993, the Supreme Court case, Brooke Group v. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp. made it way harder for the government to prove predatory pricing. For that and a bunch of other Supreme Court decisions, it's nearly impossible for regulators to go after baggage fees or airlines

pushing out competition or conspiring together. And the airlines know this, which is why we're now seeing them unbundle most of their fares. No longer are they worried about making us pay more for extra leg room, overhead bin space, extra bags, rebooking, and just about everything that used to come with a standard ticket price?

Because who's gonna stop them? You? You're so drunk you can barely sit there. And as long as they all coordinate, they can gouge us any way they see fit. Of course, there was a brief window where it seemed like this model would no longer work. And that, of course, brings us to the era of the World Wide Web, cyberspace, the great digital

frontier. You know, bleeps and bloops. And then the free porn shows up on the computer box. Change your search without using the back button. Another way Expedia makes it easy to find the trip you're looking for. Expedia.com Change your search without hitting the back button, you say. It really is the future. So a quick bit about how airline pricing works today. In short, it's a basket of horny snakes. Horny, kinky snakes who want to fuck human beings.

Another way to describe it is as an algorithm, because that's what it actually is. And all that algorithm does is look at the current market and determine the highest possible fare that can be charged, specifically the basic economy fare. But that isn't actually going to be what you ultimately pay, because thanks to websites like Expedia and Travelocity and Kayak and Plane Sluts,

the name of the game is getting your airline on the top page of search results for affordable ticket prices. In a functioning world, that makes sense. That would just mean that airlines would have to compete in order to bring down their prices. But that's not what they're actually doing. Enter drip pricing.

Drip pricing is the practice where during the process of buying something, the price of the item slowly goes up due to various fees and add-ons that are often mandatory for that thing. In other words, an airline can say that a ticket is only $200, get to the top of those search engines, and then expand that price as you journey through their hellish checkout.

Most airlines known for lower costs are actually making most of their revenue through those extra fees. Half of Frontier Airlines revenue, for example, came from fees instead of ticket sales. And if you've flown recently, you obviously know this. fees instead of ticket sales. And if you've flown recently, you obviously know this. You click on one price, and then that price starts going up the more, big quotes, extra services you select. This is why the process of buying a ticket is designed to be complicated, and why prices and fees often fluctuate depending on the time and destination. For example, airline seats are one of the only products that get more valuable the closer they are to expiring.

That's because they use a yield management system to control pricing, which is basically the act of changing pricing based on the behavior of a consumer. If someone really needs a ticket at the last minute, they will pay more for it. That's why most flights will have between 10 and 20 different prices depending on when you try to purchase your seats. To sum it up,

the entire process is purposefully confusing and deceptive. The end goal being the airlines getting more money from you than if they made the process straightforward, honest, and or helpful. than if they made the process straightforward, honest, and or helpful. And in fact, according to one Harvard study, customers who choose the lower presenting price options very often end up paying way more than other expensive seeming options thanks to this drip pricing technique.

And while prices have absolutely reduced since the 1970s, it's worth pointing out that those calculations are likely based on starting prices listed by airlines and not the final prices after all the fees. And if you were to actually compare what you were getting in the 70s versus what you get now, you come to realize that prices

haven't actually lowered that much. Hey, why do I feel so mad right now? Oh, right, it's because of all the things I just said. Grr, I go. So that's everything up until the 2010s, a harrowing tale of deregulation and lobbying, all compounding in order to make airlines the worst fucking companies imaginable. And yet it still feels like we don't have a solution here. Surely, surely there's something. What would Reagan do, you know? Oh, right. So I guess let us think on this whilst cutting to some ads.

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And we're B. B'd right in our A's. And if you are one of them Benjamin Buttons who go backward in time or whatever, I didn't watch it. What we were talking about in your future, I guess, again, didn't see it, is that the airlines have been treated to a combination of recessions, 9s, 11, and massive deregulation. Also, that one time Denzel Washington flew the plane upside down, but I think that was just a movie

and it's weird to even bring up, so sorry for bringing it up. This situation created a bit of a monster in that there are now just four major airlines in the US and they all conspire together to do pretty much whatever they want to us, even butt stuff. It's kind of weird how they're both the victim

of this story and the villain, because it seems that there's always something that causes these airlines to touch tips with bankruptcy. And while perhaps they know that and try to preemptively cut corners, I can't help but notice that their CEOs make all of the money. In the same year, they ate shit over the holidays.

Southwest gave their CEO a giant pay raise. Seems like they might just be bad with their money. It's this combination of, whoa is me, posturing with a seemingly unspoken knowledge that they won't actually go away. It's like combination of, what was me posturing with a seemingly unspoken knowledge that they won't actually go away. It's like watching that Obi-Wan show. They can try to make us think he's in danger as if we haven't seen the originals.

Also it's bad. Both Obi-Wan and airlines are bad. Don't watch it, don't fly. And fly if you have to, but don't watch it. Because ultimately the government needs airlines. They need people to fly, to keep the country running and protect our economy. And also our time honored tradition of lovesick fools

running to the airport to tell our secret crushes, not to take that big city job after all, or to tell them don't get on that plane, it's 9-11. And so that's why no matter how bad it gets, these major airlines will always have a government bailout waiting for them. And so along with not fearing any antitrust actions, they don't even really fear losing money, at least not for the people at the top.

And honestly, that's kind of the government's fault more than the airlines. Allow me to explain. This morning, big trouble in the skies. The airline industry taking a devastating hit over coronavirus fears. Who knows? Half the people in here could be breathing it in. You don't know. Many airports across the country, ghost towns, planes littered with empty seats after travelers ground their trips. Oh, yeah. Remember coronavirus? So retro. Glad that's totally over with. And for the airlines,

it was yet another devastating impact on their business. In early 2020, passenger travel dropped 96 gosh darn percent. And so once more, the airlines got a bailout in the form of $100 billion over several administrations. Because again, this isn't political. This bailout wasn't the exclusive dealings of Mr. Covfefe McSteel's documents or Brandon Mc also steals documents. And remember, that's $100 billion in taxpayer money. And so at this point, you'd like to think that someone in the government would be asking one simple question.

What are we getting in return? Thanks to having zero regulatory power, the pandemic was one of the few recent moments in which the government actually had the upper hand on airlines, right? They were taking a nosedive and desperately needed rescue. And as anyone who has played the card game Munchkin can tell you, rescue doesn't come cheap.

The government could have, in this moment, asked for things from the airlines. And in fact, some people asked Congress to float the idea of setting emission standards or limiting bag fees, or at the very least, they could have given the bailout in the form of a loan, like at least one think tank speculated at the time. To quote the Brookings Institution, a decade of multi-billion dollar profits proves the airlines and shippers can pay back loans. Wild theory that they can pay the loans back with all their much, much money.

Glad we have think tanks on the case. But we didn't do any of that. Unlike striking union members, I guess, our government absolutely caters to large corporations. We just gave them the free money under the promise that they would use that money to pay their employees. And then what happened, you ask excitedly. Well, they still laid off all their employees, of course.

Huzzah. And in fact, used some of that bailout money as severance specifically to force people into early retirement. And so now the airlines had very few employees and Congress was asking what the fuck just happened like their Charlie Brown whiffing a football. And can you guess what happened after that? You know, when we decided that COVID was over and everyone started flying again. Delta United and American have struggled since Memorial Day, more than000 total cancellations just since Sunday morning.

Walking information picket lines at seven airports nationwide today, off-duty Delta pilots in contract talks who say they're working excessive overtime as the airline tries to fly its schedule without enough pilots. Ah, what a, ah, I'm surprised. What a surprise. Airlines suddenly didn't have enough employees to handle the influx and had to cancel a bunch of flights. Like, like they fired everyone after being given money

specifically to not fire those people. Those staffing shortages will continue well into this year, by the way. And while the airlines claimed that the money they got only covered 77% of their labor costs, they still somehow managed to give massive bonuses and cash rewards to their executives.

Thank goodness for that. And so you see how perpetually fucked this dynamic is. The airline industry is basically like a shitty roommate who keeps needing their rent covered, but also keeps buying collectible hookahs and adopting dogs. And it all kind of goes back to that initial moment with Carter and Reagan and the deregulation

and air traffic controller firings. And those brief few years where we signaled to the airlines that we were opening the door for them to put their profits over employees or customers. And again, this isn't one political party causing the problem. Unless this isn't one political party causing the problem, unless America only has one political party whose main goal is to protect capital at all costs.

Huh. But either way, in a bipartisan fashion, this is just, it's just the way we decided to do it. We've given the airlines so much power that it's nearly impossible to make any effort to regulate them at this point. Biden, despite being just so, so sleepy, did announce new rules designed to mitigate drip pricing.

It would eliminate hidden fees and basically force airlines to disclose their full ticket price upfront. He and Mr. Pete are also making it easier for people to get refunds for things like flight delays by adding strict definitions to what a delay or cancellation actually is.

Something that was apparently left up to the airlines before now, like airlines could just decide that postponing a flight several hours wasn't a delay and not refund your ticket because of it. Because holy shit, we really let them do whatever they want. So darn, darn and come. Where does that leave us?

This is normally the point of the video where we offer solutions to the problem. Most likely we'd point to some obvious policy that has been inexplicably branded as socialist and really socialist or some malarkey like that. But in this case, it's a bit more nuanced and probably requires a lot of moving pieces or several possible solutions.

For example, we could sure use better train travel in this country, not just for the environment, but perhaps as a way to actually give the airlines competition. People wouldn't have to fly from LA to San Francisco or from Chicago to New York or from Dallas to Denver when a more comfortable, affordable, and only slightly longer option exists.

And in Europe and parts of Asia, we're actually seeing airlines work to compete with these nearly equal travel options. So what's the deal there? Hey Amtrak, can you get on this or what? You might notice if you try to book a ticket on one of these trains, they are expensive. Even with high ticket prices in stations like this one, Amtrak has never made money. Amtrak doesn't own most of the 21,000 miles of tracks

it uses. Freight lines do. So passenger trains often have to pull onto sidings to wait. The result, lengthy delays. And last year, a four and a half percent decline in ridership on those longer routes. Oh, okay. Nevermind. Sorry I bothered you. I can see you're dealing with some stuff. Yeah. So train travel is kind of its own separate video, summed up by saying that it's all busted up. At first glance, Amtrak seems to have the exact problem airlines used to have, minus the luxury. It's highly regulated and in fact is a state-owned company

and the ticket prices are actually more expensive than flying. Incidentally, this is why I don't necessarily think having a state-owned airline is the answer either. Other countries do have those, but they seem to have all the same problems as any other airline because they are still expected to make a profit. That isn't to say we shouldn't try that, but ultimately we could probably achieve the same goal by simply regulating the airlines we have a bit more. Regulations push toward train travel and therefore investing in rail infrastructure and so on. Also, maybe let's stop taking money from billionaires

who want to make pointless neon car tunnels under our cities, you know? Ultimately, the solution isn't very extreme with three Xs. It's not favoring one side of a political debate, which might be why we haven't really found a solution, but there absolutely is a spectrum here in terms of how we, the consumers, are expected to feel about air travel.

As a wise old man once said, well, not wise actually, I guess, just an old man once said, he's kind of a sex creep too, an old sex creep once said, "'What's the deal with air travel?' Or something like that. I don't think he actually said that, but he has done stand up about the inconveniences

of airlines in the 1990s. But then another old different kind of sex creep decades later defended air travel by pointing out that it's a modern miracle and it used to take months to journey across the country. So which sex creep is right? I mean about air travel specifically and not the other things they did.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm bringing these sex creeps into the conversation, but they do, I guess, represent opposite philosophies on airlines specifically. Should we be happy with what we get in exchange for the ability to fly like a bird for relatively low prices? Or do we, the consumer, for the ability to fly like a bird for relatively low prices? Or do we, the consumer, deserve the ability to fly affordably without it also being a major hassle?

Similarly, do we completely deregulate the airlines or, considering all the taxpayer money we've given them, do we take them over? My dear watchers and or listeners, I'm sorry to tell you that the answer might just be... Ah, fuck! Piss! Could've used a fucking warning before you did that. See, the beautiful but tragic thing about this airline problem is that it affects everyone.

It affects your liberal cousin and conservative uncle, because airlines just don't care who you are. They will screw you either way. It's one of the few things that brings us together in this country. And the people in the government perpetuating the problem are from both political parties. And even more so, the solution also doesn't really require

you to subscribe to one side because ultimately deregulation is somehow both the problem and solution? To quote an article by Alfred Kahn, the economist who happens to be the former chairman of CAB, these problems drive home the lesson that the dismantling of comprehensive regulation should not be understood as synonymous with total government laissez-faire. The principal failures over the last 15 years have been failures on the part of government to vigorously and imaginatively fulfill responsibilities that we, in deregulating the industry, never intended to abdicate.

His name is Khan, like the guy in Star Trek. Did you notice that? I'll wait. Notice it. Okay. And what Alfred is saying in this article is basically that while deregulation of the airlines has been an overall success, it was never supposed to be a total retreat from our government. He basically points out all the same problems we have in this video and identifies that the current situation is dire, saying, the continuing re-concentration of the industry

threatens to extend that exploitation to an increasing proportion of the flying public in the future. He then concludes that, the government could actively attempt to make markets more competitive by assuming responsibilities that it has neglected. It could vigorously enforce the antitrust laws.

It could also remove barriers to competition by expanding airport capacity enough to allow new competitors to operate on routes by dissolving preferential arrangements between hub-dominating carriers and their hub airports. And above all, by allowing foreign airlines to compete for domestic traffic, either directly or by investing in American carriers.

And yeah, sure, con seems right. The ultimate answer for right now at least is that we just kinda need the government to like, like do their fucking job, you know, that's it. Just be, just fucking do your fucking goddamn motherfucking job. Just because they deregulated the airlines doesn't mean they are absolved from protecting the consumer

from anything those airlines decide to do. Just like how a plane captain's responsibility to their passengers doesn't end when the flight ends, but extends to when the plane lands on a remote island filled with dangerous militias, apparently. Seems like the pilot didn't have to personally deal with that situation, but what do I know? All right, I'm not a pilot yet.

Getting lessons. Anyway, Plane, starring Gerard Butler. Everyone's talking about it. I'm Gerard Butler in Plane. He does the voice of the plane. I'm Gerard Butler. I don't know how he talks. Get off my plane. That's Gerard Butler in The Mummy.

Thanks for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe the video and to the channel. We've got a podcast called Even More News. We have a patreon.com slash some more news. We have this show, Some More News as a podcast. If you prefer to hear my impression of Gerard Butler in The Mummy instead of see it.

And we got merch, you know, with the puppet character on stuff and we have love and admiration for all of god's creatures