While I agree with you that the airlines should do this, my argument is that the government has no competition. If they get charged a little more, so what, there is nobody there to compete with them at a lower price so they just pass on the costs. An airline on the other hand will always have competitors. If one charges more for a service, the public will simply fly with a cheaper one. When was the last time you heard of anybody buying a ticket based on the on-time performance of an airline??? It is a price run industry at this point. Cheapest price wins.
That's true but I'm talking about Delta buying lift from Mesa. When a passenger has a bad example on a Delta flight operated by Mesa who do you think they call to complain. They call Delta. Delta wants to get rid of Mesa because Mesa provided rotten customer service.
