Are Airlines Evil?

Dylan Shakespear
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

The news these days moves faster than ever. Besides the “Trump-Russia Conspiracy” or whatever you’d like to call it, most issues that were breaking news one day were forgotten the next. However, there is one issue that needs to have an epilog.

On April 10, 2017, 120 days ago, a man was dragged off of a United Airlines flight. This was just the start of an obsession over airlines that they truly didn’t deserve. Throughout the following weeks we learned that this was mostly the fault of a small part of the company. If you ask me, I don’t think that this issue was directly the fault of United Airlines Inc. The only way that United directly influenced this is by overbooking, but that’s done with every flight. Now you’re probably thinking, “Dylan! The title of this article is ‘Are Airlines Evil?’ you can’t just say the airline wasn’t in the fault and be done.” And you are probably right…

I only brought up this story because it was the defining point of the publics outlook on airlines. And in my opinion it hurt all airlines, not just United. (Even though they definitely got the worst of it.) Now let’s all read some random facts that soon will be proved not that random. Last year United Airlines made $2.2 billion. There are over 100,000 flights per day. It costs an airline about $2,300 per flight hour. Of course now I have to be crazy, but hear me out.

Let’s look at the money side of things. If you consider United to be your average airline, your average airline makes $2.2 billion per year. That seems like a lot, but that’s not too much in business terms. McDonalds makes over $4 billion per year. A normal fast food chain that isn’t as large as McDonalds makes around $1–1.5 billion per year. So your average greasy cheeseburger making fast food place is making anywhere from slightly over half to double as much as an airline. It’s crazy right? Are airlines even that profitable? The answer is it’s very hard for an airline to make a good profit. Delta, United, and other U.S. airlines all have filed for bankruptcy in the past 15 years. And you’ve probably hear the old saying, “Drastic times call for drastic measures.”

There are a lot of things that airlines will try to hide from people, or at least they just don’t want people to know. One that everyone knows now is that they overbook flights so that’s not much of a secret these days. There still are a few that most people don’t know like airlines purposefully use minimal fuel making the risk of having to do an emergency landing greater, the seats are always getting smaller, and lost luggage is almost impossible to find. (If you even manage to file that you lost your luggage before the deadline.) Along with that airlines charge extra for almost everything imaginable.

You’ve most likely heard the phrase that money is the root of all evil. If you believe that you could say airlines are evil, but with that same reasoning every company would “be evil.” It’s important to realize that airlines make a relatively low profit. You can’t really diss them for doing something they have to do to make a living. Sometimes dealing with all these conspiracies and issues is better than having no flights at all. (Or government controlled airlines which I bet most people would also hate.)

Well, now that you have these facts and my opinions tell me in the comments what you think. Are airlines truly evil. If they are why? Do you have any other facts, experiences, or ideas about it? Now is the perfect time to put down your own opinion and put this matter to rest once and for all.


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