What Flying Would be Like in a Free Society
Taking a flight is a hassle nowadays, but it wasn't always, and it doesn't have to be.
Taking a flight is a hassle nowadays. When you finally get to the airport hours ahead of your flight, usually several miles out of town, you have baggage check, security lines, overpriced food, and a lot of waiting around on uncomfortable seats (if you can find one) to look forward to.
It wasn't always like that. Decades ago, flying was simple, comfortable, and enjoyable, and it was on track to get faster and more convenient. But it didn't. Government regulations and taxes deterred airlines and plane builders from embracing new ideas, disincentivizing innovation and leaving us saddled with 60-year-old designs. Overzealous security—necessitated by the government's failure to do its job and destroy those who would threaten our lives and liberty—combined with needless customs checks, turned airports into soulless public detention centers.
What might flying be like today if none of this had happened? What follows is a description of a journey from Chicago to London, but in another world—one in which the governments of both Britain and America stayed out of economics and industry, didn’t build any roads or airports, didn’t inflate away the value of money, and instead confined themselves to their one proper function: the protection of individual rights.
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You wake up at 8am. It’s a bit later than you planned, but still plenty of time to make the 9am shuttle flight from downtown. It’s only a five minute air-cab ride from your house to the Northern Airways terminal. Besides, if you miss it, there’s another an hour later, and you have a flexible ticket.
You make it to the downtown terminal at 8:50. An agent checks your ticket to London and takes your bags without question. Through the window behind her, you see your first ride of the day: a 70-seater vertical-take-off jet with “Northern Shuttle” written on its side. You thank the agent and walk through the door onto the tarmac, almost unaware of the security scanner you walked through at the same time.
A Northern Airways attendant welcomes you onto the jump-jet with a smile and offers you a drink. You take it and find your seat. A few more people board behind you, then it’s time to leave. The engines spool up and rotate, pointing their nozzles at the ground, sending dust and leaves scattering across the ground. A moment later, you’re lifting into the air, turning as you rise past the windows of office buildings. In less than a minute, you’re above the city, the lake glistening in the distance. The engines tilt back and you start flying away.
The shuttle takes you to Northern’s Rock Island Airport, one of five large airports around Chicago—each one owned and operated by a different major airline. You’re there in ten minutes, dropping onto the tarmac, right next to your next ride. It’s the most beautiful machine you’ve ever seen; a sleek arrowhead of an aircraft with backswept triangular wings. Its nose is a point so sharp you can’t quite see where it ends. On the side, written in italics, are the words “NORTHERN SUPERSONIC.”
Once the jump-jet’s engines have spooled down, the cabin crew invites you to walk across to the other plane. You climb inside. The ambience is warm and welcoming, and the seats are as comfortable and spacious as couches. You’ve barely finished sitting down when an attendant brings you a snack and another drink. On the screen in front of you is an advertisement showing how this plane's engines are the fastest, cleanest, and quietest of any in service.
Thirty minutes ago you were walking off the street into the downtown terminal, and now you’re on the plane that’ll take you to London. At 9:30, the engines begin to rev up, and the plane turns on the spot to face out to the runway. No need for a safety demonstration—they sent you that when you booked the trip, and you take your safety seriously.
It’s about 30 seconds over to the runway. There are no queues—Northern owns the airport and it or its partners operate all the flights, so there’s no jostling with other airlines and the airport is just the size it needs to be. You’ve flown plenty of times before, but this is your first supersonic trip, so you’re not quite expecting the sheer power of the acceleration. You’re pinned to your seat as the plane shoots down the runway. The take-off is smooth, and you can still see your speed increasing as the ground drops away.
One turn puts you on course for London. Meal service comes about thirty minutes in, just as you’re passing over Quebec. You chose your meal ahead of time, from one of the many partner restaurant menus Northern offers.
You bring down the privacy screen between you and the seat next to you and put a movie on. It’s two hours long. By the time it’s finished, you’ll be descending into London.
At noon Chicago time, you’re descending over Ireland. Minutes later, you’re lined up to land at Northern’s London Stansted Airport. The landing is smooth, the braking gentle.
You step off the plane at 5:40 UK time—four hours after you left home. Three Northern Shuttle jump jets wait to take passengers into central London, Cambridge, and Birmingham. Other passengers head into the terminal for air-taxis or high-speed trains to other towns and cities.
You land at the central London terminal at 6pm. As you walk off the tarmac and into the building, you pass a barely noticeable camera hooked up to a computer system. It identifies you as an American citizen with no criminal history and confirms that you’re free to enter Britain for as long as you like, and do whatever work you please. Just don’t expect anything for free.
The first thing you do in the terminal is pick up a drink, a few snacks, and a power adaptor. It all comes to 34 pence—about fifty cents. The whole day’s travel only cost you $35. You hail an air-cab and tell it to take you to your hotel.
•••
If the world presented here seems fanciful, that’s only because we’re so used to the myriad consequences of government interference in our lives. A world where travel is so unrestricted that there’s a market for an hourly Chicago-London flight—where the value of money is stable enough and the law is simple enough that companies can invest in and develop the technologies depicted here, the knowledge for which exists today—is so far removed from the world we now occupy that it sounds like science fiction. It isn’t. It’s the world we could have, right now, if government had kept to its proper role.
Can we get this world back? Yes—but not the way we’re going currently. We’re facing a future of more regulations, including environmentalist restrictions on travel and technological innovation. We’re facing a future of more inflation, driven by ever-growing government spending. We’re facing a future of more government control of our movements and our lives.
If we want to save the future, the time to change course is now.