Originally Posted by
SealinkBF
The railways seem to get unlimited funding. Why not airlines at this time?
I agree, domestic air travel plays a part in this country's transport infrastructure whether people like it or not. There seem to be two issues though when it comes to funding, firstly any funding appears to go towards preposterous routes that even on paper don't sound like they are necessary. Personally, if you live in the middle of nowhere you have to go without certain things, air travel should certainly be one of them. Secondly and most importantly the emission figures are always damming when you compare air travel with other modes of transport, so it would be an own-goal for the government to promote air travel. I suspect that these figures are not strictly correct, as transport routes on land are congested, so assuming a land journey runs as smoothly as a flight is stupid (there is a lot of stopping and starting not to mention impacting on other users of land routes). The air travel industry does not seem to learn its lesson though, a crisis comes along and strips everything back to the essentials, only for ridiculous routes like NQY - ABZ etc to appear when things are good. The failure of the A380 is another example of how ridiculous the air industry is.