US: If the air travel experience is so awful why are airlines still reporting record passenger numbers?

For tens of millions of Americans the prospect of flying is about as exciting as a trip to the dentist. The seats are cramped. The service is, at best, barely bearable. The hassles are huge. The time demands have grown to be way out of proportion the actual distances covered. And it sure seems to cost a lot of money to fly these days. Yet more passengers - 965m - travelled more miles aboard US airlines last year than ever before. Last year so many people flew that despite a huge increase in the price of oil and rising labour costs US airlines scored their second-most profitable year ever. They combined to earn US$15.5b. That’s up 10.7% from the $14b they earned in 2016, but way short of their record $24.8b profit in 2015, when jet fuel cost a mere $1.43 a gallon on average vs. Thursday’s spot market price of $2.12. <br/>