Being Mark Cuban would be great.

I recently read that Cuban is starting a rival company to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the current system for determining the year’s best NCAA football team. Everyone hates this system (the structure is stupid). Cuban hates this system. So, he’s doing something about it.

I’m not fortunate enough to have silly amounts of capital floating around at my convenience. All I get to do is rant about the annoying things I’m exposed to.

More often than not, I’m annoyingly exposed to airline travel. So here’s today’s idea: I’d like to start an airline and introduce a massive reconfiguration of the current pricing system.

Think about this: Isn’t it a little funny that indirect flights are cheaper than direct flights? Granted, from the simple consumer’s standpoint, an indirect flight is a lesser good (more time, stress, probability of delay, etc.) and thus should cost less. But aren’t indirect flights a lesser good from the airline’s point of view, too? You’re looking at what’s essentially two flights—two tanks of gas, two sets of pilots, two racks of salty snacks and sodas, the innumerable customer service disasters that occur when (*ahem*) one flight’s delay leads to missing the second leg—but the price of a direct flight to Chicago is priced about the same as a two-pronged flight from St. Louis to Chicago to Portland?

So, on that note: I want to start an airline that only sells direct flights. That’s it. I hope you weren’t expecting something terribly complicated. My costs are lower because all of my flights are direct. So my prices are lower, too.

And here’s how we’ll add fuel to the fire:

1. No checked luggage. Nowadays, half of the airlines take your second carry-on and throw it underneath the plane anyway. And this airline flies domestic, only. If you can’t fit all your junk in two carry-ons, too bad. Sorry. There’s always Delta. (Try to) Have fun! Lighter planes (less fuel needed), smaller planes (less cargo space needed), quicker turnaround (fewer personnel, less airport real estate needed). Costs plummet, prices plummet.
2. Flight routes leave at the same time on the hour, every time. Say, the St. Louis-Chicago flight always leaves at HH:43. I think of this as a calling card. People in the know could request “the 43 to Chicago at 8pm.” It’s also easier to remember when your flight takes off—I know my flight’s at 3-something, but 3:13 or 3:48? Do I need to head to the airport at 2:30 or 3:00?
3. Flights every other hour. Well, ideally, flights every hour. Again, I like the idea of a calling card, but also, I’d hate for anyone to have to miss a flight. And I can’t imagine it being necessary to fly from city A to B every hour—that might create congestion.
4. You can still get from St. Louis to Portland—there’s no indirect flights, you’ll simply have to buy two tickets. Two hours for a layover is tolerable (you’ve got your laptop, don’t you?), and understandable (you only paid $49 per ticket. Again, if you’re unsatisfied, there’s Delta).
5. Buying a ticket is simpler. First, by eliminating vague, cloudy pricing. This ticket is $136 today. It could be more tomorrow. It could even be less. Who knows!? C’mon, we’re better than this, now. We’re good at the internet. We’ve got Travelocity, Kayak, Bing. We’ve seen how successful Groupon is. Here’s my deal: This flight is $49 until April 4th. Then, it’s $79 until April 14th. Then, it’s $99 until departure date. Or alternatively: This flight is $49 until 50 seats are sold. Then, it’s $79 until 50 more are sold. Then, it’s $99 until all seats are gone. You could, if you were daring, even evoke a Groupon model for flights: For the next 24 hours, all flights to Miami the first week in April are 60% off. No matter what, pricing is clear and easy to follow. And by the way: Naturally, when I’m searching for a flight, my dates are a little flexible. I don’t understand why you should have to click a checkbox every time to say “yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing just a few other options that might make my trip cheaper.” This becomes the standard.
6. Buying a ticket is fun. See: Groupon model. Also, instead of presenting a bunch of dropdown menus on the landing page, put a treasure map there. Drag a green O to where you’re starting, and a red X to where you’d like to end up (and of course, watch as a black dotted line marks the trails you could take to get from A to B). Skyscanner.net does this, and while I was studying abroad in Europe, I’d drag my marker across all the different destinations I was curious about to see what was affordable in the next two months. I loved that. My airline changes the game from I need to get to Indianapolis in the middle of May for my brother’s graduation to Maybe I’ll travel next month. I wonder if there’s anywhere I haven’t been that’s affordable?
7. Of course, anything in the ticketing department—from pricing to deals to flight delays to weather updates—is linked to appropriate Twitter accounts that are specific to my airport.
8. Personally, I rarely use the affiliate links to help find hotels and rental cars for the weekend. However, I do frequently dash over to Yelp to see what I might like doing once I’ve landed. So merge Yelp to the site, and use what I’ve reviewed in the past to make suggestions for junk to do.
9. Free WiFi at the terminal around your gate. The lady at the desk can turn on an airport/hotspot/whatever, which you get the password to when you show her your ticket. Because I’m tired of these giant banners that promise me unlimited Wifi throughout the terminal, and then redirect me to a landing page that charges $9.95 for all day access as soon as I open a browser. That noise is intolerable.
10. A little red/green tab on my seat in the plane that I can flip to let the flight attendant know that I’d like a drink, I’m sleeping and don’t want a drink, or I do want a drink even though I’m sleeping so please wake me up. In fact: maybe the lady at the desk has all the cans of Coke, or has vouchers for me to go pick one up at an airport vendor. That way I don’t have to stock a cart, or carry a cart, or perhaps most importantly, hire an extra flight attendant who I only really need to help shuffle the cart down the aisle without running over people’s feet. But I could see airports getting annoyed by this.
11. No seatback/upright positions. Upright position never bothers me unless I’m in seatback position and the pilot requests that I go back to upright position as we’re preparing to land. Then, and only then, am I thinking man, upright position totally sucks. But maybe this is only me.
12. Anything that Herb Kelleher did in that famous Case Study (heads up: this links to the .pdf) for Southwest Airlines that I read about a thousand times in every college marketing class ever.
13. I’m on the presumption that the annoying instructional video at the beginning of every flight that teaches you step-by-step how to buckle the same seatbelt you’ve been using for the past hundred years is a requirement by some asinine bureaucratic/governmental/nonsensical organization that I’m simply not going to want to deal with. So in absolute, positive, utter spite of that, the seatbelts on my planes are all fucking complicated. And you’re not guaranteed to get the same type of seatbelt from flight to flight—so you better listen up as the stereotypically Black man, Asian woman, White guy with a grey beard, and guy with a pilot’s hat explain to you how to open all of the latches, pinch on both ends, press all the buttons in unison, turn the knobs, and tug on the loose end in precise order to ensure a snug fit.

Finally, we’ll need a name. I’m leaning towards Squareline. Primarily because I love puns. Secondarily because I think you could have a lot of fun, and do a lot of creative work with a logo set based on the contrast of squares and lines. And finally, because the name embodies the product: You’re getting a square deal.

Eat your heart out, Cuban.