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Losing even one in 10 customers would substantially reduce airlines' revenue. They don't make much money on each flight as it is; less income would likely cause them to shrink their service, flying fewer routes less frequently.
The problem wouldn't just be customers who chose not to fly. Some passengers might split trips between self-driving cars and airplanes, which would further reduce airlines' revenue. For instance, a person in Savannah, Georgia, who wants to go to London could choose to change planes in Atlanta—or take a self-driving car to the Atlanta airport, and skip the layover.
These changes could substantially change the aviation industry, with airlines ordering fewer airplanes from manufacturers, airports seeing fewer daily flights and lower revenue from parking lots, and even airport hotels hosting fewer guests. The future of driverless cars is appealing to consumers—which means the future of commercial flight is in danger.
A personal fondling session from a TSA agent named Brad, or 5 hours in your self-driving Mazda that your four-year old smeared peanut butter in?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:37AM
If I lived just a little closer to Atlanta (presently 5 hours away as compared to 30 minutes for my local airport), I'd probably drive out to Atlanta to avoid the evening returning flight change of planes. Most flights leave the East coast in the morning and return to the East coast in the evening. The morning flights tend to run like clockwork, but by late afternoon chaos has taken over and delays are common - my experience in Atlanta runs about 40% delays > 30 minutes for evening plane changes (monitors showing 17 flights leaving in a 10 minute window - yeah, like that's ever gonna happen), maybe 20% of those evening transfers result in a big delay of 2 hours or more, and 10% of the time it would have been faster to rent a car in Atlanta and drive myself 5 hours home - I have yet to experience a total failure that results in a hotel stay, though I have gotten home at 3am, and I do know plenty of people who have had the unexpected overnight stay.
So, yeah, with a self driving rental car, I'd probably opt to fly into Atlanta instead of taking a transfer jet to my local airport to sometimes save a couple of hours. Too bad the airfares won't reflect that, and I'll have to either also drive to Atlanta for the outbound, or pay for the transfer home whether I use it or not.
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