Airlines Are Now Perceived As “Public” Brands, So We Expect Little

Americans have come to expect squat from the Postal Service, Amtrak, Congress, utilities and nearly anything run by the government except the U.S. military and Cash for Clunkers.

Maybe that’s why we have come to expect so little from airlines these days: Now they’re essentially public brands.

They’ve been hemmed in by layer upon layer of new regulations for travel safety, protection from terrorism, smoking, shearing, noise abatement and other things too numerous to mention. And airlines have become squeezed by fuel costs, latent financial liabilities for frequent-flyer tickets, industry-wide consolidation and the devastation of revenues by the Great Recession.Continue reading...