I got into a discussion of this with a bunch of folks from Germany. They said that the kinds of things that were happening would never happen in Europe.
I explained to him this is because they've cut every single redundancy out of the system, which means that everything has to work perfectly or things get screwed up. You've got them focusing on cost savings because nobody has the balls to tell the American public you have to pay more than $200 for a flight from DC to San Fran.
He said in Europe, we charge what needs to charged and people either pay or don't go.
And I said, well, that's something you can do there, but it doesn't work here. For some reason, the American public thinks it's entitled to $200 one way fares across the country.
And just like that, on cue, someone piped up, $200 each way is outrageous and stormed off in a huff, muttering something about some people having too much money.
I laughed and said, you see what I mean? That guy can't take Greyhound for $200 each way and he's saying it's outrageous.