Like much good (and bad) in Europe, the practice of "stitching" parts into a single whole with non-political threads was borrowed from the States. Moreover, not from the modern ones, but, terrifying to say, from the middle of the century before last. Even 70 years before that, the 13 colonies united into a Union that was hard to call even a confederation – so weak were the ties between the founding states, so different were their, in modern terms, socio-political models. (Despite the undeniable presence of a common precursor – the British model – outside influences by the time of the American Revolution had begun to play their role.
Somewhere the self-government of Scotland had an effect, somewhere Ireland's, somewhere the Scandinavian monarchies, and the South was under the indisputable influence of French and partly Spanish ideas.) Moving from Vermont to Massachusetts differed little from moving from one country to another. Today's European Union is far more integrated than the USA of that time.
By the middle of the 19th century, the States were experiencing the first boom in railway construction, and it was the advent of railways with their previously unimaginable speed of travel that made the States a single country. A particularly striking period (or rather, a bloody blot) was placed during the Civil War, when the denser railway network in the North became one of the decisive factors in the Unionists' victory. They could move troops to the combat zone faster and maneuver within it (incidentally giving rise to another modern phenomenon – the Civil War was the first war of the modern type, with a front line and chains of stationary fortifications along it).
The "unionization" of the States took place shortly after the Civil War, when the trans-American highway – from the Atlantic to the Pacific – ceased to be a curiosity. The completion of the process was marked by a symbolic grammatical detail: before the Great Highway, USA in English was plural, but became singular.
In Europe, however, neither railways, nor a network of highways, nor the reduction of borders to (rather pitiful) symbols led to a result similar to the American one. The differences between countries were still far greater than the differences between states, and states never fought each other (even the Civil War was a conflict between two mutually alternative unions of states).
However, the arrival in the Old World of another American idea – ultra-cheap airlines – played (or at least began to play), it seems, the same role as railways in the USA 150 years ago. The concept itself – "an airplane should carry, not feed, water, and/or pamper" – seems like the invention of the wheel, but its implementation into the reality of life in the 1980s in the States became both a revelation and a revolution. The first to practice "skeleton" (that is, no) service was Southwest Airlines, which very quickly became the leader in the cheap market segment in the States and pulled down the prices of other airlines.
In Europe, the dominance of huge, unwieldy, semi- or fully state-owned "flag carriers" on the tail continued. The crisis of the mid-90s nearly sent a good half of the "old" European airlines into a tailspin – and would have, if not for massive (and not entirely legal under EU competition rules) infusions of public money into them. That is why until recently there was a situation in the sky capable of enraging any cost-conscious traveler: a 500-kilometer flight, say, Helsinki–Stockholm on a European airline cost the same as a connecting flight Stockholm–Boston on an American one.
The first to spy out (and steal – you can't nail an idea to the floor) the idea of "budget airlines" from the Americans were the Anglo-Saxons – the British and the Irish. The first European "cheap" airlines were registered there in the mid-1990s and immediately gave rise to a mass of speculation about dumping, conspiracies, hidden subsidies, and so on. The secret of the brew, however, is simple. It would be more accurate to call it the "principle of teaspoons." It was invented again by Americans, although (here it is, a grimace of paradox!) not by "cheap" Southwest, but by quite "expensive" Delta. Now this principle has entered half of management textbooks – and rightly so.
At the same time, in the early 90s, Delta made a decision about the second teaspoon. Before that, one spoon was for stirring free sugar in free coffee, the second for eating a free cake at the final stage of a free meal. (The concept of "free" is very conditional here – the cost was honestly included, and is included, of course, in the ticket price.) An unknown genius at Delta suggested to the management – let these passengers somehow make do with one spoon. After all, it's not someone else's, it's their own. Tea, they won't turn up their noses...
The extermination of the spoon, which at first seemed like schizophrenia, became a commercial revolution. A simple calculation: on board an airplane, say, 350 mugs (that is, you and us). Each is entitled to a spoon. Each weighs, say, 25 grams. Total – almost 9 kilograms of spoons, which are carried over a distance of several thousand kilometers, burning several dozen dollars' worth of fuel for this.
Upon arrival, by the way, they also need to be washed (a few dozen more dollars for detergent, dishwasher depreciation, electricity, and so on). That's already, say, a hundred dollars per flight. Let's count further: two flights a day – two hundred "greenbacks." And the airline, say, has 400 aircraft making two flights daily. $80 thousand a day. And there are 365 days in a year. Total 30 million in savings that can be subtracted from the ticket price – by giving up the second spoon...
If this principle is applied to the full, then the incredibly low prices of “budget” airlines cease to look like a mystery. If passengers are not fed, then there is no need to carry rations, and if you don’t carry rations, you can free up space. And if you free up space, you can seat 3-4 more clients on the plane, and if you seat 4 more, then you can move the other seats 10 centimeters closer, right up to the permitted safety limit, and free up space for another dozen people, and all this can be written off from the ticket price...
In general, last year cheap airlines carried 80 million passengers across Europe. That is an increase of nearly double – the year before there were “only” 47 million. The explosive growth will continue, according to estimates by the British The Economist, at least until 2010, when up to 40-50% of all European air travel will be carried out by “budget carriers” (against the current 22%). At the same time, cheapness has long ceased to be a monopoly of the Anglo-Saxons – and Eastern European countries, with their low labor costs, unexpectedly began to break into the lead.
Another feature of “budget carriers” is that they fly from and to cheap – that is, provincial – airports. This is economically understandable, but the psychological factor has so far been given little consideration. Europeans are learning that in France, besides Paris, there is Carcassonne, in Sweden besides Stockholm and Malmö – Västerås, in the UK, besides London – Glasgow and Cardiff. The province gets to know the province, knocking capitals off their pedestals. A purely American phenomenon – who can remember what the capitals of which states are?
The influence of the unifying power of “budget carriers” is also felt outside the EU. Although non-EU countries categorically do not want to let cheap airlines in, they cannot completely stop communication with their European neighbors. A month after cheap EasyJet began flying to Estonian Tallinn, several St. Petersburg and Pskov travel agencies immediately arranged charter buses that arrive not even in Tallinn, but at the airport – right in time for check-in. The hours spent on the bus are easily compensated by the cheapness of the tickets – the trip turns out to be twice, if not three times cheaper. (The visa problem remains, but travel agencies take it upon themselves as well.)
Quite recently, sitting in a café in the center of Riga (they say buses from Pskov and Minsk will soon start running here), I overheard a conversation between a young couple deciding where best to escape from their parents for two days – to nearby Jurmala or to southern Poland. Poland won: the total cost of plane tickets and cheap Polish provincial hotels turned out to be lower than the cost of a taxi to Jurmala and the expensive hotel there...
So, if Brussels bureaucrats ever decide to add to their pantheon of euro-god integrators (Brussels already has objects bearing the names of the EU founding fathers), they may well place a nickel-silver spoon on the square in front of the European Commission.