Its really wild to me that
A) no entrepreneur has thought to be a "'charter flight for leagues'" company that does occasional flights the other way to make money" company.
B) That no league has just been like, "Eff it, let's have our own airline."
It’s really wild to me that you could just assume the economic viability of such an endeavor.
Sorry I should add to this instead of just a short quip. But if you take a look at the airline business in general, they run razor thin margins to stay profitable (with other moral and immoral cost cutting activities). The speed at which airlines lose money when they can’t have their planes all in the air flying is stunning. Deregulation has led to an environment in which the cost of flying is relatively cheap (even with the inflation of today, flying is much cheaper in real terms than it was in the 70s), but reliability and the overall experience is far less pleasant.
Teams that have their own planes don’t do it because it saves any money. Far from it. It’s because it is a luxury. A charter company solely focusing on the unpredictable nature of business in terms of sports teams would never be able to offer a more economical option than the airlines or a regular charter company.