This episode explores why flying has become so crappy. Modern air travel has morphed into a high-altitude endurance test, cramming us into shrinking seats and nickel-and-diming us for every basic necessity. We trace the airline’s industry’s descent from a regulated public utility to a monopoly-driven, irrational oligarchy in the wake of the 1978 Deregulation Act.
We look at the war against airline and airport workers, starting with the smashing of the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers strike. We look at exhausted air traffic controllers and pilots struggling under massive debt, grueling work hours, and poverty wages. In the course of going through several crashes, we look at how profit undermines safety, and how the outsourcing and cost-cutting of maintenance is a danger to the whole flying public. We examine how government agencies like the FAA gave a free pass to airline manufacturers like Boeing in pushing through shoddy engineering, like with the 737Max.
For the airline industry, the “magic of the market” means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized, with one government bailout after another. The answer to the airline cartel’s war on its workers is industrialized unions, and workers' control of safety.