The Proud Bird with the Golden Tail defined air service, and was my introduction to aviation. Continental Airlines operated Boeing 707’s and 727’s in the 1960’s with topnotch quality, and growing up in the Continental family gave me an appreciation for the time savings and value of air transportation.  Connecting through Stapleton wasn’t always the most direct route, though, and was an indication of things to come. Those years, though, were the golden years, with Continental espousing the allure and luxury of air travel in its early years.

Air travel is the best way to cover long distances quickly, and when those long distances are up the Canadian coast between Seattle and Alaska, the air service becomes a lifeline. Alaska Airlines’ service wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity, but that didn’t keep Alaska from providing passengers its “Gold Coast” service in the cabin while the belly was full with equipment going north and frozen fish flying south.  Nonstop and direct service between Seattle and major Alaska communities on a daily basis meant that traveling was efficient and effective, with a minimum of misdirection and back tracking. Loading freight and bags in the belly of an Alaska 737 in the early 1980’s for a flight up to Petersburg was a lesson in efficiency and the flexibility of the human frame. It also provided the fully definition of the term “Alaskan Samsonite”.

 After deregulation, smaller regional carriers began to provide service to smaller communities across the nation. Air Midwest was one of the former, and Hobbs, New Mexico is clearly one of the latter. Flying Swearingen Metroliners, luxury and allure were not part of the program, and unless your destination was Midland/Odessa, Texas, or Albuquerque, New Mexico, your trip was going to take more airplanes to get there.  Through the 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s, this became the rule, rather than the exception: air service for all but a handful of cities has involved connecting through one of the dozen or so hub airports across the country.

After a lifetime in and around the airline industry, it was becoming clear that the business model of the airlines as well know them is flawed, and can only work in specific, extreme circumstances. For scheduled carrier service to work, there must be a demand for transportation between two points, and a big enough market or number of people to buy seats or transportation on the flights that are scheduled in that market. Airlines must provide service in a large enough catchment area to attract enough demand to support the service.

And for big cities that works. For other large markets, airlines have created the hub system, that draws customers in from various catchment areas, combines them to create other large pools of demand, and sends them out to their destination. This lowers the utility of the service, creating routings that take more time. The other method airlines use to grow demand is by lowering price. As price goes down, more demand can be accessed in a given market. This lowers revenue per seat, requiring higher load factors to be successful. Removing frequency from a market can help drive traffic to the remaining flights, given a low enough price compared to existing transportation alternatives.

The result of this business model is a system of low frequency, full flights, with circuitous routing that dilutes the time efficiency of air travel. Add to this mix airport security, and we end up with a system that is slowing down to nearly highway speeds. 

Airplanes go fast. We have an infrastructure of nearly 5,000 publicly owned and accessible airports in the United States. Scheduled air service is available at less than 400 of these. Jet aircraft fly faster than propeller aircraft. Many people must drive for hours to get to an airport with scheduled service.

The next model for air service should use as much of the existing infrastructure as possible. This will require a system of “on-demand” air transportation, flexible and usable by the portion of the traveling public that will recognize its value.