Not if you travel domestic in the US. I've flown 6 times in 4 months (domestically) and every single flight is fully booked with people on standby. There were 17 people on standby for the fully-booked F seats on my flight from ORD to AUS, for example. And those seats aren't cheap.

Anyone who travelled in the early 90s will also remember we paid far more for our seats back then, before Easyjet and Ryanair changed the market. I used to travel regularly to Germany, via Lufthansa, and often paid £4xx for a seat and that was 30 years ago. We did get a full meal though in economy! Point is, since the mid-90s, people think spending over £50 each way on a short haul flight is really expensive.