After a terrible, dreadful 2022 for airline travel, passengers should expect things to get even worse this year. So says the CEO of United Airlines:
The year 2022 was one of the most stress-inducing for consumer air travelers in recent memory. A surge in travel demand after airlines slashed resources during the pandemic caught carriers flat footed. Unable to adequately staff flights, they nevertheless continued to sell record-breaking numbers of tickets, resulting in more than one in five flights being delayed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics — the highest rate of delays since 2014.
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Airlines will soon be hobbled by a lack of adequate staffing, something United’s Kirby alluded to. On a more distant horizon are modernization and market reform efforts that analysts fear might be stymied by political obstacles.
Labor shortages?
Maybe firing people who refused to get vaccinated was not such a good idea, especially when the unvaccinated pose no threat to anyone else.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to force airline personnel to wear those useless masks for hours and hours on end. Who wants to work under those conditions?
The airlines’ problems are a labor shortage, regulations (like retiring pilots too young at 65), outdated technology, and lousy infrastructure.
The airline business is, at least to me, the canary in the coal mine of how competent the federal government is running things. A lack of demand and customers sure isn’t a problem. More people want to fly than ever. Name another business that can’t keep up with demand, that is unable to get richer and richer through dynamic expansion to meet a growing market?
Airlines are too beholden to the government. That’s the problem. They are regulated within an inch of their life. When bureaucracies and politics strangle you, you can’t make the necessary moves fast enough when the market shifts.
For decades, this was no problem. For decades and decades, airline travel has been safe, convenient, reasonably priced, and reliable.
Why? Because until recently, the government was focused on what a government should be focused on: the basics of governance.
But now everything’s changed. Now airline travel is an unreliable nightmare.
Why?
Because the federal government is no longer focused on the basics. Today, it’s focused on utopian nonsense like appeasing the transsexual loons, arming Ukraine, and apologizing for colonialism and slavery.
The reason I consider air travel to be the canary in the coal mine is that in order for air travel to flow smoothly, to work in a way that’s so efficient we take no notice of it, a countless number of moving pieces have to tick in perfect precision.
You’re talking about thousands of daily flights, personnel issues, weather issues… If the government takes its eye off the ball, the first canary that will hit the bottom of that cage is air travel.
Where does all the money our government takes in go? Why do our airports look third-world? Why are there not enough hubs? Why can’t we create enough expansion so the metal detector lines don’t look like the lines at Space Mountain? Why is technology so outdated? Why is the labor pool not large enough?
None of this should be happening in a country as wealthy and dynamic as ours.
Before the war in Ukraine is over, they will probably have a gold-plated airport paid for by American taxpayers while we’re still shuffling through Dystopian Airlines with no shoes.
My days of flying are over. Have only flown twice over the last decade. My wife and I bought a little camper. We’ve been all over the country since. It’s wonderful. No lines. No bureaucrats feeling up my wife. We can take the dogs, sleep in our own bed, eat our own food… It’s cheaper, and you see and experience things beyond a generic airport and generic airplanes staffed by surly stewardesses who get angry when you call them stewardesses.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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