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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

The range question was addressed by 1960.

Costs fell markedly from 1930 -- 1970. Far less so since.

It's popular to point to how much airline ticket prices have fallen since dregulation (under Democratic president Carter) in 1979, without also noting that 1979 was a local price peak driven by the Iranian oil embargo of the same year.

Safety has increased, of course. That's largely been a continuous function from the first days of flight ... with a curious exception in the first decade of the 2000s, where passenger deaths/mile fell markedly. (Also in Gordon's book.)

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There's also quite a bit more people who travel by airplane today than in the 1930s. This adds complexity in trafficking, which works to slow things down, rather than speed things up. The fact that overall trip times are marginally faster, despite added traffic volume & complexity, largely explains things here.

But despite this, I mostly agree with the broader premise.

Gordon notes that air passenger miles are effectively an inverse relation to costs. Lower costs -> more passengers.

Total passenger miles have been largely flat since 2000. Total departures actually fell during the aughts, along with jet fuel consumption. Some of that's due to more efficient flight booking (appropriately sized aircraft, higher seat utilisation), though a large share is decreased seat pitch, which is to say, far less comfortable travel.

In case anyone is curious what "largely flat since 2000" looks like:

https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/670/90/sites/default/fi... https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/16947.jpeg

Your first plot is of global, not US airline traffic.

Global incomes have risen, most notably in China.

I may have misread a chart or mis-remembered statistics. The Statista chart does show that the post-2000 trend in air travel is well below the 1990s trendline. Actual miles travelled would have been above 1 trillion had the former continued.

The more notable chart of Gordon's does indeed show price per passenger mile, not total miles (p. 401, Rise and Fall).

It's also often useful to think of travel not as miles but as time. Given an average train speed of about 30 mph, and aircraft of about 450 mph, the time per person per travel mode is nearly identical: 1.3 vs. 1.6 billion hours.

People take trains. They don't take them as far as they do aircraft.

Auto travel works out to about 12 billion hours, again assuming 30 mph average speed. That's about 10 minutes per person per day.

US Department of Labour seems to maintain statistics on modes of travel. Departments of Transportation and Energy may as well.

I've yet to find a good presentation of long-term trends.

> Safety has increased, of course.

Come to think of it, security too. Hijackings weren't unusual news items in the 1970s; now, it's hard to remember the last one. And that partly explains the slower airport experience today (which is really due to nobody investing in the resources to speed it up).

> It's popular to point to how much airline ticket prices have fallen since dregulation (under Democratic president Carter) in 1979, without also noting that 1979 was a local price peak driven by the Iranian oil embargo of the same year.

A lot of those narratives are similar if one takes even a cursory look at the facts. As an aside (and IIRC), per the autobiography of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, who was not a Democrat (and was a follower of Ayn Rand) and served in various roles under many presidents including Carter, deregulation began under Carter.

You're largely right.

Early air travel externalised numerous costs, and those have been internalised.

"Big Sky" air traffic policy was proved nonviable over the Grand Canyon (1956) and Park Slope (1960).

Bombings and hijackings of the 1960s and 1970s lead to increased departure-gate screenings. Those increased further after 2001.

Noise complaints lead to use of quieter high-bypass turbofan engines (with their own MAX failure modes).

Increased fuel costs in the 1970s also prompted higher-efficiency engines (again, high-bypass turbofans serve this role), as well as curtailment or cancellation of planned commercial supersonic transports.

Gordon also discusses similar apparent retrograde trends in automobiles. Here again I see formerly externalised costs (emissions, safety, handling, noise) being internalised and included in purchase costs. Electrification is a similar trend.

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