Yeah.. I hate to be the one to break it you but that is a 200 year old map we've been pushing the media to feed rubes like you here.
We have advanced a lot further than that.
Do airlines really make a profit? They seem a bit like a side liberalist project funded by the government so Americans can "FLY THE SKIES!" But it is undermined by the small government that is pushed by the republicans. They have different names in other times, but that is them now.
Have you been in an airport? It's like a chinese fucking firedrill. When folks ask me to trust things because the airline industry can fly from point a to b, I have the remember all the wonderful and genius pilots I've met, and the circumstances under which they work. Just weeks ago a bunch of airline workers said the cabins were leaking poisoning gas. They have some suit around it I believe. People aren't driven to that level of dedication without cause.
I have to remember the many times folks have taken their little golf cart bullshit to drive me to a terminal to get to the flight they couldn't organize folks to get to so they could get money.
That is the capitialism we are living in today. That is the orthodoxy that allows uneven distributions of power.
Any time any of us have been on a plane, it has been a complete shit show. You are lucky now a days if you get a bag of peanuts or they don't fuck you over some other way. I'ts like being in a sardine can. I was on a flight the other day, and they asked 20 people to volunteer to leave; I talked to the attendant did my usual schitck and found out just to have a fucking party because some stewardess got her "wings" they delayed 20 folks. I sat home on that flight on a 20 passenger less snooze fest.
On the other hand, I have been on a military plane, and I saw the space available. Just shit I don't give a fuck engineering between the two. Somehow the military made a more comfortable space than the commerce that is meant to sell to the people.
You've seen the films, where they say you can't film in an airport. Where they say the flight is delayed, then they act like the "sky law." Where they are all righteous. You know it is a shit situation, so when folks bring up that the airline industry is somehow awesome and doesn't waste fuel.
I mean really. That is almost harder to believe than our stance, and after 20 years of fighting the good fight I recognize how hard our fight is.