Way wrong. Airlines are, by and large, not profitable at all, even counting in the various forms of subsidies they receive. By some estimates airlines as a whole have lost money since their inception. Even by the most optimistic estimates the industry has done poorly. I'd rather give my retirement funds to M.C. Hammer to manage than put it in airline stock.<p>Greyhound's last two decades have been very rocky, and they've been forced to stop service to many places in the last decade. Cruise lines hardly count as mass transit. They're just slowly-moving casinos. Nobody ever thinks "I need to get from Point A to Point B. Should I take a plane, or a Carnival cruise?"<p>Privately-owned transportation companies might actually be doing much worse than government-owned ones, at least in the USA, in the last decade. I'd love to see the actual numbers there.