25 May

A longish but very interesting read about why the airline industry can never make money. This actually links to my dislike of travel more generally, a culture that would be simply impossible without jets and jet fuel. We burn astronomical amounts of jet fuel, and like all combustion engines, more than half of the energy in the fuel is completely wasted and pollutes the air we breathe. Airlines always go bankrupt because the underlying thing we’re doing with planes is fundamentally unsustainable. The sums will never add up. Only vast government subsidy makes jet travel possible, together with drastic cuts to flight infrastructure, and wages and working conditions in the industry, with every new bankruptcy. And the flying part is really a loss-leader at budget airlines, for financial instruments like frequent flyer points.