Airline Deficits

EIN News says, "Fate of U.S. Airlines Gets More Dire by the Day. The combination of the economy and high energy prices is threatening the U.S. airline industry in a way it has not been threatened since crude traded above $100 and pushed jet fuel prices to exorbitant levels. (dailyfinance.com)".
Lets not start with the supposition that we are going to "fix" this by throwing money at it. This is a worldwide problem, and it is not necessary that we be miles ahead of other countries in availability of air transport. Look at it as a total transport marketing problem. We have trucks, railroads, and ships for freight transportation, as opposed to airfreight. Time considerations are many times over-done. We can also get along well with ground and sea passenger traffic using capital equipment already in place, with perhaps minor expansion as the market may require. We have passenger ships, many of which could be diverted from their standard tourist usage to Transocean business transport. We have Amtrak, which has been in deficit and requiring government subsidies for years, because of insufficient passenger traffic. Perhaps with reduced air transport availability or a high transport cost, Amtrak may be able to come into its own. There is also no reason why transcontinental bus services could not be reinstituted. All of these would reduce transport energy requirements compared to transport.