Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Passengers wanting increasingly unrealistically cheap flights is one cause of the lowering of pilot standards and training...
While I agree with you in general, I think this statement is at best debatable. The rise of the "lo-co"s, and the attempt to compete with them on price, didn't really take effect until well after the trend was noticeable. As PJ2 refers to, a far more plausible correlation can be drawn with the transition within airline management away from those who were "airline" people through and through towards a more generalised "MBA" style of management, which did not take into account the unique aspects of the sector.
Flying in a plane is often cheaper than the equivalent train journey. How can that be economically possible?
Well, quite. Arguably one of the reasons France's Air Inter ran into difficulties was having to compete with the TGV.