Price Comparison

While reading this article on Virgin America's attempts to get launched despite the competition trying to prevent them from even entering the domestic airline industry, I was struck by a couple numbers they threw out.

Namely, that Virgin America has $177 million in startup capital, more than the $133 million JetBlue started off with. Consider that Superman Returns is widely considered to have cost about $250 million to produce, plus another $100 million to market... I think Pirates 2 came in at a similar cost.

So for roughly half the price of two hours of cinematic entertainment, you could start up a well-funded domeastic airline that could compete with Continental and American.

I'm sure there's other fun things within the realm of $350 million you could do as well... buy a small country... fund public education in large chunks of the U.S. The virgin one was just what happened to pop up first.

Bald Kevin Spacey... or Warner Bros Airlines.