(Source: NPR Planet Money)

I was listening to this NPR podcast on the way to work and felt compelled to share with my readers.. Amazing Fact: Pretty much every major full service American airline has filed for Bankruptcy in the past two decades and one of them (U.S. Airways) actually declared bankruptcy twice in three years.  “The industry in aggregate has lost about $60 billion over the 32 years since deregulation, ” says Severin Borenstein, an economist at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkley. Meh!

This left me shaking my head in disbelief! Aren’t we the country full of smart MBA grads from top business schools like Harvard, Yale, et al. running some of these businesses? Anyways, if you got a couple of extra minutes, do check out Severin Borenstein’s detailed paper that goes into great details explaining how the airline business is not for the weakest of heart.

On a related note, Boston Globe had an interesting article back in November 2011 that is somewhat optimistic about the future of aviation. Worth a read while you are still suspended in disbelief after reading/listening to the above NPR material.