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Yeah that’s a bit of a hot take. The structural cost of flying has fallen by 50% in the last 30 years, in real terms. Flying used to be a luxury, now it’s widely affordable and we have the deregulation and the emergence of low-cost carriers to thank.
And the more people that fly (historically, 2x every 15–20 years), the more the aviation industry is able to spread its huge fixed costs onto more ticketed seats, which means the unit cost per seat (CASK) goes down.
So already the premise that flying is getting “so expensive” is misguided. There’s been a bit of a hike in airfares lately, but that’s not due to the FAA, it’s due to the fact that the OEMs cannot deliver enough aircraft to meet the demand (the order backlog at Airbus and Boeing is on the order of 11 to 12 years…). Load factors are through the roof, so basic supply and demand imbalance means airfare are up.
This is true globally, by the way. The FAA only has sovereignty over 4% of the world’s population, so it’s not like we don’t have a large control group to look at.
And frankly the additional regulations put out by the FAA are pretty light. Some (related to international flights) are required by ICAO under the Chicago Convention, to which the US is a party, so the FAA and every other CAA in the world just complies. Others are just airworthiness directives that address mechanical and safety concerns for specific aircraft, so they’re needed (imagine not grounding an aircraft for a known problem and an accident happens — that would convince more people to drive!). 0 reply
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