1978 US Airline Fleet Data

[SC Maintenance]

Actually, you couldn’t be more wrong.

This was 1978. US Airways did not yet exist.

In 1978, the airlines were still under regulation, until deregulation was signed in late October of that year.

Very little competition.

All of the fares were still set by the civil aeronautics board, and all the airlines made a nice comfortable profit without having to worry about competition.

Airlines competed to get government approval for contracts, cities got served, and an airline ticket cost about as much as a new car.

You are looking back and fantasizing about something that did not exist at that time.

In 1968 my dad flew 250,000 miles on United Airlines.

The regular seats were spacious. The food was served on actual china and the cutlery was stainless steel. The flight attendant would carve a roast, and everybody would get a slice as they came down the aisle with a proper meal.

Flight attendants were young, and slender, and they had to weigh in for each flight. They were well paid, attentive, and flying was glamorous.

My dad often booked the smoking section to enjoy a cigar after a nice dinner.

The average fare was around $3,000.

His 1968 Ford Country Squire was $2,800.

Deregulation changed all that. With all sorts of entrance into the airline business, and barriers to exit, the industry lost more money in the 30 years following deregulation, than it had made in its entire history prior to that.

And all the things that people complain about today, are the result of an industry that is deregulated, and seeking to make a profit. Don’t like smaller seats? well, the airline that offers bigger seats has to charge more money and they don’t get the traffic. Don’t like the food? Well, food cost money?

You can still book an experience like my father’s 1968 flights on carriers like Emirates - but don’t be surprised if your ticket hits $100,000 or more.

The truth about air travel, that no one wants to admit, is that the flying Public got exactly what they demanded. They wanted cheap and they got it.

If you want a nice experience, charter an airplane, or book a private suite on Emirates

Deregulation started in 1978 which is why I assume the author chose to create his infographic based on that year. So while the civil aeronautics board did still exist it was clearly the beginning of its end.

But nice try trying to gaslight us with 1968 pricing and blaming the current issues on the public. Funny how US companies that must compete on a global scale like big tech, investment banks and oil tech literally have no global equals but coddled industries like US airlines seem to constantly struggle.

 

[Astro14]

Deregulation started in 1978 which is why I assume the author chose to create his infographic based on that year. So while the civil aeronautics board did still exist it was clearly the beginning of its end.

But nice try trying to gaslight us with 1968 pricing and blaming the current issues on the public. Funny how US companies that must compete on a global scale like big tech, investment banks and oil tech literally have no global equals but coddled industries like US airlines seem to constantly struggle.

No gaslighting - those were actual prices - and representative of airline fares under regulation.

An era that you stated:

Lots missing. US Airways. Northwest. Back when we actually had competition / free market in the airline business.

Which is simply not true.

It is true that current airlines have evolved under public pressure for lower cost - deregulation was intended to lower cost, but there were many unintended consequences, and the barriers to exit (not entry, all sorts of airlines were started) created huge inequities in the industry. Many of the problems created by deregulation have been solved by industry consolidation, and some of the weaker players today are struggling, while some are doing very well.

Airlines are hardly "coddled" in the US. They are a cash cow for Congress and the US budget, with the average federal taxes on a ticket nearing 20% of the total price. You wouldn't accept a 20% sales tax on your new truck, but it's OK for that tax rate on ticket sales? And that is "coddling"?

Finally - many US airlines do compete on a global scale - and you think a company, like Delta, that had profits over 9% last year, is struggling? Every year, for the past several years, some airlines, like Delta, and United, have improved every single metric for customer satisfaction, on-time performance, and reliability - but that performance improvement, along with financial performance, is what you consider "struggling"?

So, in your view, highly regulated companies under the Civil Aeronautics Board were a free market?

And global companies like Delta that are performing well, taking care of customers, and are highly profitable are "struggling"?

There is only one person engaging in gaslighting in this thread, and it sure isn't me.

 

[KE7JFF]

In my conversations with old timer retired pilots over the years, one thing that always came up with was regulation. The issue wasn't so much regulation of airlines, it was how the US was doing it. By the the 70s, the Civil Aeronautics Board was largely outdated in its processes and in my mind just stuffy. There is several cases of the CAB starting in the late 60s taking 4-8 years to "study" a request even from established airlines to have them come back and say "well, we waited too long, try again!" Continental I think actually took the CAB to court to get a route approved.

 

[SC Maintenance]

No gaslighting - those were actual prices - and representative of airline fares under regulation.

An era that you stated:


Which is simply not true.

It is true that current airlines have evolved under public pressure for lower cost - deregulation was intended to lower cost, but there were many unintended consequences, and the barriers to exit (not entry, all sorts of airlines were started) created huge inequities in the industry. Many of the problems created by deregulation have been solved by industry consolidation, and some of the weaker players today are struggling, while some are doing very well.

Airlines are hardly "coddled" in the US. They are a cash cow for Congress and the US budget, with the average federal taxes on a ticket nearing 20% of the total price. You wouldn't accept a 20% sales tax on your new truck, but it's OK for that tax rate on ticket sales? And that is "coddling"?

Finally - many US airlines do compete on a global scale - and you think a company, like Delta, that had profits over 9% last year, is struggling? Every year, for the past several years, some airlines, like Delta, and United, have improved every single metric for customer satisfaction, on-time performance, and reliability - but that performance improvement, along with financial performance, is what you consider "struggling"?

So, in your view, highly regulated companies under the Civil Aeronautics Board were a free market?

And global companies like Delta that are performing well, taking care of customers, and are highly profitable are "struggling"?

There is only one person engaging in gaslighting in this thread, and it sure isn't me.

Except your data is way off. You claim that a ticket in 1968 was the price of a car. Except the two thousand or so world class economists at the BLS, who's job it is to track such things, say not. Here is there series. Realize this is a scale, not dollars, but according to them in 1968 there index was 24.3 and now its 271.19, so about 11X

Thats Median household income was about $7700 and is now about $83,000, so Roughly 11X

So adjusted for inflation the BLS says its the same. Feel free to take it up with them.

Except I don't care about prices or earnings - I am complaining about the crony capitalists, corporatists, and mercantilists that keep there thumb heavily on the scale to orchestrate an oligopoly of airlines. However when two almost defunct discount airlines try to merge its blocked by those same people because it would "reduce competition in the discount airline space". Laughable.


https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SETG01?output_view=data

 

[Astro14]

Except your data is way off. You claim that a ticket in 1968 was the price of a car. Except the two thousand or so world class economists at the BLS, who's job it is to track such things, say not. Here is there series. Realize this is a scale, not dollars, but according to them in 1968 there index was 24.3 and now its 271.19, so about 11X

Thats Median household income was about $7700 and is now about $83,000, so Roughly 11X

So adjusted for inflation the BLS says its the same. Feel free to take it up with them.

Except I don't care about prices or earnings - I am complaining about the crony capitalists, corporatists, and mercantilists that keep there thumb heavily on the scale to orchestrate an oligopoly of airlines. However when two almost defunct discount airlines try to merge its blocked by those same people because it would "reduce competition in the discount airline space". Laughable.


https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SETG01?output_view=data


View attachment 325610

View attachment 325611

Now you’re focused on my Dad’s numbers? The numbers are his. They are valid, and your charts don’t disprove what one individual spent on either product. The anecdotal data point was valuable to understand what air travel used to look like prior to deregulation. It was a luxury item. It was expensive. It was glamorous,

“The jet set“ were influencers before influencers were invented.

Let us go back to the misrepresentations on “competition” and “coddling” and “crony capitalism”?

The multitude of airline bankruptcies and failures is not a sign of “coddling” or “crony capitalism”. No airline has ever been deemed “too big to fail“.

The Department of Justice has often blocked airline mergers, and forced airlines to divest assets when they did approve mergers, for example, Delta and Northwest, or United and Continental.

That’s not crony capitalism, that’s consumer protectionism, with DOJ putting their thumb on the scale on the side of the consumer.

I don’t agree with the DOJ‘s most recent decision to block JetBlue and spirit, because two failing companies should be allowed to fail together, but when you look at how DOJ imposed conditions on prior airline mergers, it wasn’t to support those companies. It wasn’t “crony capitalism”.

Airlines have been allowed to fail. Pan-Am, for example, once the world’s largest. Spirit is in failure right now. If the largest most prestigious airline in the world is allowed to fail, where is the “crony capitalism“?

The barriers to exit exist with major finance companies, engine manufacturers, air frame manufacturers, and leasing companies. Part of the reason that spirit hasn’t ceased to exist almost immediately is because the leasing companies that own those aircraft don’t want 200 used airplanes hitting the market all at once.

That’s not crony capitalism, that’s just business on their part. Their balance sheet is those airplanes, and if they all hit the market at once, the price on those airplanes drops, and they will have wiped themselves out. So, leasing companies, including those that lease engines, have been providing spirit with the cash to keep them going.

The airlines that are doing well are doing so because they attract customers. Not chronic capitalism. Just business.

The airlines, they provide more reliable service have been the ones who are growing. The airlines who provide unreliable service, like JetBlue, like Spirit, and yeah, like Southwest, are the ones that have been suffering. Southwest is operating at a 1% margin in terms of profitability, and the former darling of the industry is struggling to reinvent itself. Nobody’s helping out Southwest, as they figure out that they need to do assigned seats and have bigger overhead space, and look a lot more like delta in United.

Airlines are in fact, highly regulated. That’s not coddling, that’s regulation. Your line industry is one of the most highly regulated, with rules on everything from aircraft maintenance to crew duty day, to customer rights. No other industry operates under the burden of regulations the way that Airlines do.

 

[SC Maintenance]

Now you’re focused on my Dad’s numbers? The numbers are his. They are valid, and your charts don’t disprove what one individual spent on either product. The anecdotal data point was valuable to understand what air travel used to look like prior to deregulation. It was a luxury item. It was expensive. It was glamorous,

“The jet set“ were influencers before influencers were invented.

Let us go back to the misrepresentations on “competition” and “coddling” and “crony capitalism”?

The multitude of airline bankruptcies and failures is not a sign of “coddling” or “crony capitalism”. No airline has ever been deemed “too big to fail“.

The Department of Justice has often blocked airline mergers, and forced airlines to divest assets when they did approve mergers, for example, Delta and Northwest, or United and Continental.

That’s not crony capitalism, that’s consumer protectionism, with DOJ putting their thumb on the scale on the side of the consumer.

I don’t agree with the DOJ‘s most recent decision to block JetBlue and spirit, because two failing companies should be allowed to fail together, but when you look at how DOJ imposed conditions on prior airline mergers, it wasn’t to support those companies. It wasn’t “crony capitalism”.

Airlines have been allowed to fail. Pan-Am, for example, once the world’s largest. Spirit is in failure right now. If the largest most prestigious airline in the world is allowed to fail, where is the “crony capitalism“?

The barriers to exit exist with major finance companies, engine manufacturers, air frame manufacturers, and leasing companies. Part of the reason that spirit hasn’t ceased to exist almost immediately is because the leasing companies that own those aircraft don’t want 200 used airplanes hitting the market all at once.

That’s not crony capitalism, that’s just business on their part. Their balance sheet is those airplanes, and if they all hit the market at once, the price on those airplanes drops, and they will have wiped themselves out. So, leasing companies, including those that lease engines, have been providing spirit with the cash to keep them going.

The airlines that are doing well are doing so because they attract customers. Not chronic capitalism. Just business.

The airlines, they provide more reliable service have been the ones who are growing. The airlines who provide unreliable service, like JetBlue, like Spirit, and yeah, like Southwest, are the ones that have been suffering. Southwest is operating at a 1% margin in terms of profitability, and the former darling of the industry is struggling to reinvent itself. Nobody’s helping out Southwest, as they figure out that they need to do assigned seats and have bigger overhead space, and look a lot more like delta in United.

Airlines are in fact, highly regulated. That’s not coddling, that’s regulation. Your line industry is one of the most highly regulated, with rules on everything from aircraft maintenance to crew duty day, to customer rights. No other industry operates under the burden of regulations the way that Airlines do.

Your the one that brought in pricing, and now you want to argue with the BLS. I didn't bring up pricing at all until you did. So like I said, argue with them if you wish.

Pan Am failed in literally 35 years ago. How many major airlines have been allowed to fail since? Rather the corporatists orchestrate deals for merger / acquisition / market monopolies while regulators turn a blind eye and public airports cut exclusive deals. So now we have 3. How cozy.

All companies deal with regulation. Regulation itself is neutral if its applied to all participants equally. I haven't seen any evidence that it is not. Free markets are regulated. Just like a sporting event, there are rules to follow and umpires call balls and strikes. Same for all participants. Meaningless to the market conversation.

The US air industry is the textbook definition of an oligopoly. A few players, high barriers of entry, market concentration / hub exclusion. I can download a dozen web browsers for free yet the justice department and FTC spend more time suing google than they do even looking into the airline industry.

 

[Astro14]

Hundreds of airlines have failed since deregulation. Hundreds.

Some you’ll know, some are obscure. Here’s a list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_airlines_of_the_United_States_(A–C)

Major airlines that have failed include Pan Am, TWA, Eastern Airlines, People Express, Braniff, ATA, and Aloha.

Again, lots of outright failures. Some failures that led to mergers, e.g. Northwest.

Spirit is next to fail.

And it was a “major” at one point.

Barriers to entry are low, look at Jet Blue, look at Breeze, airlines pop up all the time. And they attract customers through very low fares, because they have very low paid employees, and they get good deals on leased aircraft. But they have no assets, and in fact, municipalities, state governments, and other entities like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey or Metro Washington Airport Authority, will subsidize those new entrance to foster what they call “competition”.

Which is, in actuality, the real “crony capitalism“, and “coddling” because governments are subsidizing the new Airlines at the expense of the established ones creating unfair competition and unfair advantage for the new entrant - who’s given lower prices for everything.

That’s not a level playing field, that’s not competition, because the “coddling” then goes to these new airlines, which then fail because they can’t actually make money without all of the subsidies. So, they enter the market, they charge low fares, they take over market share, and then they collapse because the business model was never there. The oligopoly that you claim aren’t the ones benefiting from government assistance. The government assistance continues to try and undermine those carriers that have done well.

Worse, the established US Airlines that complete internationally are competing with carriers that are subsidized by their state. Countries like the UAE give billions of dollars every year in outright subsidies, cash, construction of facilities, and other financial support to their Flag carriers and it is not a level playing field internationally. US airlines, which are heavily taxed and burdened by the government, are competing with airlines that are supported by their government and given money.

It’s barriers to exit that are the problem in the industry. Zombie companies limp along, not through “coddling”, but through commercial financing that seeks to recoup payments on their leased property.

If regulation is neutral, then it certainly isn’t “coddling”.

 

[fdcg27]

There have been at least a few examples of US carriers offering service enhancements that brought them added costs but no fare premium.
Continental offered meals even in economy on domestic flights over a certain number of hours. We flew Continental in 2008 and got a half-decent meal although that was a surprise since we had booked them based on cost and schedule, so no yield premium for them.
Prior to that, we flew AA during their MRTC period. What's not to like about that? We booked these flights based upon cost and schedule, so no yield premium for the carrier.
Our most recent flight was with Allegiant, having returned 2/2/26. They offered the only nonstop service for the city pairs we were flying and they were also a couple of hundred dollars less expensive than any other choice without the unwanted delay and drama of a connection. The A320 outbound and the A319 return aircraft were clean and on time. No free mini-bag of pretzels nor half a can of Coke in a plastic cup. We figured a couple of hours without food and drink was endurable.
In contrast to other low cost carriers, Allegiant has done very well financially and operationally. Credit astute management with opportunistic purchases of aircraft for their wholly owned fleet as well as sticking to a limited route network with limited frequencies for the city pairs they serve. They do not attempt to be a network carrier, which may have been the greatest misstep of Spirit and also does not bode well for Frontier.
The airlines operate in a tough industry with high capital costs, limited margins and a dependence upon the vagaries of publicly owned and run airports along with a sometimes capricious air traffic control network.
Throw in equipment problems bringing AOG problems, like the Pratt GTF problems that have left many A320neos and A220s grounded awaiting engine parts and repairs or new engines, or the extended grounding of the 737 MAX.
Not an easy way to make bank running a business.
Meanwhile, we were shopping some summer flights and the cost of international travel remains surprisingly low.

 

[y_p_w]

There have been at least a few examples of US carriers offering service enhancements that brought them added costs but no fare premium.
Continental offered meals even in economy on domestic flights over a certain number of hours. We flew Continental in 2008 and got a half-decent meal although that was a surprise since we had booked them based on cost and schedule, so no yield premium for them.
Prior to that, we flew AA during their MRTC period. What's not to like about that? We booked these flights based upon cost and schedule, so no yield premium for the carrier.
Our most recent flight was with Allegiant, having returned 2/2/26. They offered the only nonstop service for the city pairs we were flying and they were also a couple of hundred dollars less expensive than any other choice without the unwanted delay and drama of a connection. The A320 outbound and the A319 return aircraft were clean and on time. No free mini-bag of pretzels nor half a can of Coke in a plastic cup. We figured a couple of hours without food and drink was endurable.
In contrast to other low cost carriers, Allegiant has done very well financially and operationally. Credit astute management with opportunistic purchases of aircraft for their wholly owned fleet as well as sticking to a limited route network with limited frequencies for the city pairs they serve. They do not attempt to be a network carrier, which may have been the greatest misstep of Spirit and also does not bode well for Frontier.
The airlines operate in a tough industry with high capital costs, limited margins and a dependence upon the vagaries of publicly owned and run airports along with a sometimes capricious air traffic control network.
Throw in equipment problems bringing AOG problems, like the Pratt GTF problems that have left many A320neos and A220s grounded awaiting engine parts and repairs or new engines, or the extended grounding of the 737 MAX.
Not an easy way to make bank running a business.
Meanwhile, we were shopping some summer flights and the cost of international travel remains surprisingly low.

Wasn’t PurePower supposed to save money? But I guess the best ability is availability.

 

[fdcg27]

Wasn’t PurePower supposed to save money? But I guess the best ability is availability.

The Pratt GTF engine does offer maybe 2% lower burn in service, with some reports of as much as 4%, which is pretty significant for any operator.
OTOH, reliability and durability have been ongoing problems with this engine.
This is a particular problem for the A220 program, since only this engine is offered while the takeup rate for the A320Neo has been around 25%, probably to the regret of those operators.
The 737Max offers only the CFM Leap as its engines.

 

[Variant_S]

The only long-ago airfare that I know was from 1962 when my parents flew ORD <--> LAX to visit my mom's sisters. It was their first flight and they were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. They flew coach. The tickets were $400 each, round trip.

At that time my dad was likely making around US $2K a year, so each ticket was ~20% of his annual income. I know that they saved up for a while for this.

 

[Variant_S]

At that time my dad was likely making around US $2K a year, so each ticket was ~20% of his annual income. I know that they saved up for a while for this.

EDIT: As I think about it, it was likely more like $4K a year. The tickets were still a sizeable % of annual income.