The business model of airlines is to shove as many people as possible into a giant tin can and deliver them from one hub to another. Despite the number of people and high cost of tickets, this alone is not enough to turn a profit, so the hubs are turned into high-priced shopping traps. When fuel prices are low enough, it is enough to keep the airships afloat. But it is a completely backward system of travel, where the actual travel becomes almost a secondary matter. It's all the fanfare and bazaar around it that drives the wasteful economics, and likewise the hate of it.

An efficient and beloved system would turn to smaller planes and point-to-point trips. Smaller planes would allow automobile-like scaling of plane manufacture and point-to-point trips would provide a reduction in fuel costs. But we will never see it, b/c as it turns out, Capitalism is not about efficiency or catering to the common customer. Rather it is about moving around as many bits of currency as fast as possible. The airline industry is one the great examples of this.