I started watching this with a "flying is actually really cheap these days" comment all ready to go, but the video pre-empted me.

In my day, etc, damn kids these days don't know how good they have it* and so on....

* apart from being completely fucked over on the jobs, housing, and environment fronts.

I found truth to this video a little while ago when I priced a trip from fl to montreal. I first priced it by train as I was hoping to create a fairly cheap package. After all was said and done, the trip with a 1 night stay over in NY would have cost just under $500. For giggles I looked up flight ticket prices for the same trip, it too was just over $400 and no stay over would be needed. As much as I was kind of excited about a train ride, the flight would have saved me 36x2 hours that I could spend in montreal.

*travel

Adding video to channels (Travel) - requested by ant.

Ah man, that sucks. No one should have to spend extra time in Montreal.

I'm confused. He starts with saying that fuel is not the reason why flying costs a lot, and then he concludes with: "flying is getting cheaper because airplanes are more fuel efficient"

Didn't think it was that confusing. Back in the day, planes used way more fuel, so it was a large percentage of the ticket cost.

These days, they use much less fuel per passenger, so the cost of flying has gone down.

His whole point is that flying doesn't actually cost that much these days. In addition to increased fuel efficiency, low-cost carriers have driven prices down to the point where there's almost no margin on flights; hence, why so many airlines are struggling these days.

Perhaps it would have been better to say that fuel isn't the only reason. The Airbus A320 in this example has roughly 55% better fuel efficiency than a pre oil crisis Boeing 707, although as Jimbo's big bag'o'trivia points out, that's barely better than the 1950s era prop planes like the Douglas DC-7.

Better automation has also allowed the A320 to reduce the staffing requirements, the 707 required 3 or 4 crew to operate the aircraft, but the A320 only requires 2. The DC-7 also requires 3 crew, but only seats half the passengers (doubling the flight crew costs per passenger).

Greater competition is probably a larger factor. Talking about airline profitability and competition, Warren Buffett joked that had a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk for the Wright Brothers' first flight, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

Both things can be true.

Fuel isn't the major cost of flying but that doesn't mean reducing fuel costs doesn't turn in to savings. The same is true for any other cost factor he mentioned.

During that section at the end he was comparing the cost of air travel 40 years ago with the cost today. You're right that if air travel is going to get substantially cheaper, it won't come from fuel efficiency this time around.