Raising operating costs by servicing tiny congressionally important airports would definitely be a thing. And once you’ve added service to somewhere, you couldn’t remove a flight without backlash. To pay the maintainers more, you’d make maintenance more convoluted than it needs to be.
And people voting have a lot better stuff to do than look into airline efficiency. Even tickets costing twice as much probably won’t be a very important consideration when people are voting.
Ticket prices have caused mass protests all throughout history. They literally toppled the government in Brazil over bus ticket prices. There’s electoral pressure that you just aren’t considering.
Electoral pressure would incentivize keeping prices and costs lower; voters actually get a say in how public utilities are run.
What’s the incentive for raising operating costs? No one is profiting from it.
Raising operating costs by servicing tiny congressionally important airports would definitely be a thing. And once you’ve added service to somewhere, you couldn’t remove a flight without backlash. To pay the maintainers more, you’d make maintenance more convoluted than it needs to be.
And people voting have a lot better stuff to do than look into airline efficiency. Even tickets costing twice as much probably won’t be a very important consideration when people are voting.
Why didn’t this happen to the postal service?
Ticket prices have caused mass protests all throughout history. They literally toppled the government in Brazil over bus ticket prices. There’s electoral pressure that you just aren’t considering.