And yet for all these millions upon millions Americans that you keep chattering about, a frightening percentage of Americans still can't find their own country (let alone any other) on a map.

Were they all asleep while travelling?

Also remember that a passport is not the primary for of identification in the US. In my wife's home country, they have 2 passports, domestic and one for international travel, and these are their primary id's as opposed to the US where almost everyone has a driver's license and that is the primary ID.

I think the millions travelled w/o passport- 2 posts above - is a reference to US Troops going overseas on deployment ...

A few points....

Most US carriers have a lot of legacy costs and aircraft. Some of their foreign competition is state-owned or state-aided. It can be harder to compete with carriers that don't have the same need to be self-sufficient.

The US carriers are catering to their customers. Americans want cheap transportation for the most part and that is ok. I know what I'm about to say will offend some people, and we have our share of disagreeable travellers as well, but we tend to be a little less fussy about air travel.

That is correct.

The complaint about the percentage of American passport holders is related to the claim that Americans are not well traveled. That is simply not true. Millions of Americans have traveled the world without a passport, and many millions more have traveled around the world with a passport.

5% is a ridiculous and made-up number. Nearly 110 million Americans hold passports.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbe...old-passports/

And certainly the holding of a passport is not an indicator of how much air travel Americans perform. Combining flights on all carriers, I have traveled easily 1.25 million miles just domestically. Obviously citizens of smaller nations or nations where most of the population and economic activity exists in a small stretch on one coast can't perform that feat.

Two notes:

1. State-owned carriers have a bad history of financially struggling and underperforming with service and product levels. Most carriers -- including all the major US ones -- in alliances are state-aided in some substantial form or another. State-owned or state-aided apparently neither guarantee long-term success nor good service/product levels.

2. When it comes to travel to another continent beyond one's home continent, the proportion of US-born citizens of the US who have flown to another continent is lower than it is for most other OECD countries' citizens. So in that regard US citizens are a less-well-traveled group of persons. A big part of that has to do with how much vacation people get from work.

Can you provide those numbers since you seem to have them? Make sure it is apples to apples (so if only counting US born citizens of the US, then only count UK born citizens of the UK in your comparable numbers). I suspect there are plenty of Eurasian residents who have never left Eurasia, but have lacked the numbers. I'm dying to see what you know. Thanks in advance!

I remember reading things, from multiple sources, that quite clearly evidenced that which I posted above. You are free to provide numbers to try to disprove what was stated.

If you want to believe that a higher proportion of US citizens have been to a foreign continent, believe as you wish. Now back to thinking: compared to most OECD countries and their citizens, the US's nature of wealth and income distribution, work vacation schedules and lots of domestic alternatives haven't led to a very high proportion of US citizens to visit a foreign continent.

I understand that nationalistic egos seem to get bruised by mention of some differences in outcomes, but I just don't understand why people become so defensive about being less well-traveled in some ways. Not everyone and everywhere has equal opportunities and equal outcomes. :rolleyes:

I am more well-traveled than my parents and grandparents were, but that's neither an insult to them nor an assertion of me being better than someone else. It's just the nature of different opportunities and different outcomes.

+1

I have brought up one of the points you mention 'defensively' when I've been abroad and been asked by 'foreigners' why US citizens don't travel more (particularly to certain parts of Asia, Africa, South American). I point out that it is often a combination of time and distance. Many Americans get two weeks annual holiday. That is a very short amount of time to go to, for example, Nepal, Mongolia, Chile (Patagonia), much of Africa. It also often means using an entire year's holiday allotment at once, leaving no time for children, weddings, random days off.

There is already an increasing trend of people preferring to fly European or Asian carriers, rather than North-American carriers. Includes me.

Reason being, the difference in service provided, even in Y, compared to those where you have to buy the headphones or water. Some airlines are even providing a decent Y experience, such as EK, EY, QR, etc.

Rest of the world is catching up in terms of winning more business by being more superior in customer service. The North-American mentalities, stayed stagnant and always begins with "is this really part of the job, am i required to do this, or how can i get by by doing the bare minimums"?

People are more informed now than before so now people try to get on the flight with better services, specially on longhaul flights between continents.
The types of aircraft, the ease of flight connection without airside visas, etc.

With outsourcing and teleconferencing now widely happening, People are traveling less now. Bigger bills, more taxes, less vacations, little salaries, etc are involved.

Wait a minute. I want to wrap my head around this. You make a claim, you can't cite your sources and back it up, and I - who has never seen this supposedly existing study - have the burden of proof to prove it doesn't exist? I don't care that much. I just wanted you to come out and say that you don't actually have anything to back up those claims. That's happened. I'm not saying that more US citizens have traveled to another continent - but the difference may not be significant. Again, if you "find" those numbers, I'd love to see them.

Edited to add: To be clear, I'm not being sarcastic when I say I'd love to see them. I really would be appreciative if I could view the contents of that study. I did look for it and couldn't find anything like it. The contents would be quite educational.

Why does it matter how many [absolute number] or what percentage of Americans are 'well-travelled'?

What does it matter if citizens or residents of other countries are 'better travelled' than Americans?

It doesn't, except to the point of refuting the incorrect numbers that people put out there.

I call BS on this. Within reason, the vast majority of the flying population will fly whatever is cheaper. The U.S. carriers are giving us exactly what we want—the lowest possible fares. The unions do degrade their competitiveness somewhat but such is life in the U.S.

EK, EY, QR?

They would wouldn't stand a chance if they became U.S.-centric.