The US airline industry is massively subsidized. Every country heavily subsidizes air travel.

The federal government spends $2BN/year on Amtrak and people lose their damn minds.

Meanwhile, at the FAA, nearly $12BN/year...and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...

Airlines seem to be a bad business in the long run.

I recall a figure from MIT's microeconomics textbook (Pindyck et al.) where they showed the aggregate profits of all industry since its inception were negative.

In EU, subsidies to airlines are an indirect subsidy to the tourism industry.

In the US I think airlines are really in the business of selling air miles and credit cards.

How does that subsidy look per trip, though?

Amtrack moves just shy of 17 million passengers in a year. Airlines in the US do that in 8 days. That's works out to roughly 45x as many passengers, with only what, 6x the subsidies?

I think if you don't look at raw passenger figures, but instead at passenger-miles, it becomes even more lopsided in favor of airlines.

American rail is apparently heavily biased towards moving freight. This may even be a good thing, but it'll throw out the numbers if you compare train to car or plane and don't include it.

> and that doesn't account for all the local and state funds used to subsidize airports. Or Department of Transportation spending...

probably this counts for at least a few billions

How does that translate to carbon foot print per dollar.

Most Amtrak trains are diesel powered.