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>Cheap flights are a market failure

Could you explain this? I'm struggling to understand how something becoming very cheap can be considered an (economic) failure? Isn't that something the market optimizes for?

EDIT: Perhaps you mean expensive rail is a market failure?

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The same way as cheap gas is a market failure. Externalities are not properly paid for (or they're paid by the public rather than the parties of the transaction). To be fair, things like jet fuel being VAT free is a policy failure rather than market failure.

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