An editorial in the Winston-Salem Journal expresses relief that at least some of the incentives paid to the now-bankrupt airline Skybus will be coming back to the handful of North Carolina cities that gambled on the low-cost carrier’s questionable business model.
Although it’s nice that some money will be coming back, it’s only a small portion of the complete incentives package given to Skybus — the total amount and impact of which remains to be calculated. Instead of putting the whole deal in perspective by making it clear that these cities bet on a company and lost, the paper lauds the opportunity that these cities now have to invest this money in similar airlines.
The editorial board totally misses the point. It was because Skybus needed incentives to survive that their business was doomed to fail in a competitive market.
