Why is flying so cheap compared to any other mode of public transportation?

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Doesn’t need a plane a lot more human and nonhuman resources to transport a person than a train or bus?

In: Economics

11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Flying is *not* cheap compared to other modes of public transportation. It’s often ten times as expensive as a bus ride of the same distance. Compare a plane ticket from LA to San Francisco with a bus ticket for the same trip. I just googled a flight for this Friday, the cheapest I could find was almost $300. I googled a bus trip for the same thing, I found one for $19.99.

You are correct that flying needs a lot more resources than a bus, that’s why it is in fact much more expensive. It’s a whole lot *faster* though, which means if you’re considering the price *per hour* of travel as opposed to *per mile*, flying can be cheaper. A direct flight from the west coast of the US to the east coast takes only 5 hours in a plane, and it would take several days in a train or bus, even a theoretical non-stop trip, and no train or bus goes that far non-stop, they would make several stops including overnight to sleep. A trip that long might take up to a week.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One factor is speed. You can fly thousands of miles in a few hours needing just a seat for that long and maybe a meal or two. Going the same distance by bus, train or car takes much longer so you need more space, maybe including accommodation, showers, and many meals.

Anonymous 0 Comments

More efficient, and they can typically fit more passengers. Plane tickets are pretty expensive though but as you said it is relatively cheap based on the distance you go and the time it takes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The structure of the industry leads to this.

1) A lot of the infrastructure for flying is partially funded by governments. The airlines don’t bear the cost of this.

2) Airlines are a form of industry with very high capital costs but relatively low marginal cost. Once the airline has committed their expenses, it makes sense for them to fill every seat. In the worst case (for them) this leads to marginal cost pricing.

3) State subsidies or state owned airlines. A lot of airlines are also state run – which is disadvantageous to fully private firms. These state owned firms usually have a quasi monopoly on domestic routes (which absorbs operational costs) This works as a form of subsidy for the flight routes that they actually have to compete with. Since the competition is higher than it might otherwise be, it leads to lower pricing.

4) Seasonality of demand. This means that airlines generally have a lot of spare capacity in aggregate when in off-season. Coupled with (2) and (3) this means prices will be lower.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Well you assume it is, planes would be a pretty expensive way to travel if you only needed to go a few kilometres. So its only viable for longer distances.

And it works there because its just so much faster and only relies on infrastructure at either end. A plane in two hours can make a trip that would take a day or two of continuous bus driving, thats wages you dont have to pay and you dont have to build and maintain the sky like you do road or rails.

However planes are really only good for time-sensitive and light cargo, which people are. The second your cargo gets too heavy or you don’t care about it arriving quickly, trains, trucks and boats become way more viable options.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s a matter of scale. If you can get 200ish people together, even an expensive mode of transport becomes affordable. Take a trip from like San Diego to San Francisco. Taking your own car would be like $150 in gas. That’s the cost. The cost of taking a bus with 50 people on it is going to cost less than $50/per person, though they charge you more in order to make a profit. An airplane might have 200 people. So even if it costs 4x as much per mile than the bus does, it breaks even.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The question implies that air travel is indeed cheaper than any other public transportation.
But this is not accurate.
Flight tickets are prone to competition and volitality in demand. Two things that usually do not relate to other forms of public transportation.

Another thing that you should keep in mind is that not all tickets on a plane are sold for the same price (even in the same class). The cheaper tickets (or fare classes) are usually sold months before the flight, and last moment tickets are sold at higher prices due to demand (people have to get on the flight).

Another thing to consider is that the marginal cost of adding the last passenger to a flight is extremely low and consists of the amount of excess fuel that this passenger causes the plane to spend (which is a funny number).

All in all flight tickets are not necessarily cheaper, but they are a part of a much more complex pricing system.

Anonymous 0 Comments

What mode of transportation is flying cheaper than? I’m genuinely curious, because besides “private helicopter” or “limo” I can’t imagine a more expensive way to travel.

Anonymous 0 Comments

every answer involving economics or scale is wrong. flying appears cheap because governments throw stupid amounts of money at it. in reality it’s extremely wasteful, both of money and resources

Anonymous 0 Comments

No, airplanes are not as resource intensive as trains or buses. For one, a plane moves 10 times faster than a bus and 5 times faster than a train. You have to pay the operators and service people 10-20% as much as a result. In addition, planes travel through the air, which has no maintenance cost. Roads and rails require significant maintenance, which is paid for with user fees that are passed on to travelers, and gigantic costs to install.

That’s the cost hole in Green New Deal suggestions that air travel be replaced with train travel. All those tracks are going to have to be built on land somebody owns. Buying that land and building that track capacity to replace air with trains in a country the size of the US will take more money than the government can collect in taxes, even if it didn’t do anything else.