zlacker

Super-low prices require razor-thin margins, which leads to cutting corners, which leads to worse safety.

>>Animal+(OP)
Statistics say otherwise. Flying was far more hazardous in the days before deregulation.

>>Camper+c2
That may well be correlation and not causation.

The industry (edit: planes in particular) is also decades more mature, as is manufacturing in general.

>>rkomor+x2
Yes, admittedly, there could still be a reason why the GP's opinion is right, even though the numbers don't back it up. It's hard to argue that deregulation made flying safer, because as you say there were a ton of other factors in play.

However, it's impossible to argue that deregulation made flying more dangerous, as the GP believes, simply because flying didn't become more dangerous. Sure, maybe we'd be even safer in the air if price deregulation hadn't happened, but that requires an impressive amount of handwaving. Overall, the tradeoff seems to have worked out incredibly well for everyone. The only people who are really in a position to object would be climate researchers.

>>Animal+(OP)
IDK, Ryanair in Europe (an epitome of low-cost airline) has both decent margins and zero crashes. They once had a birdstrike, hardly caused by their ticket cost, and wrote off the hull (no fatalities); otherwise, nothing.

A lot depends on your overall marketing. The airline can make money on a "stupid tax", e.g. people who didn't check twice the max. allowed weight of their baggage and have to pay a 100 USD/EUR fee for that single extra pound. I have seen it more than once.

People being people, you can almost rely on this happening frequently enough.