In 1995, I fulfilled a long time dream and went to Mongolia.

And for those with short memories, or those who weren’t with us yet, travel in 1995 was different than it is now.

Especially when it was to a remote location like Mongolia. For most people, there was no internet to speak of. And making travel plans was, well, different.

What wasn’t different was that there were warnings about travel providers. Such as Aeroflot.

Aeroflot was the official airline of the Soviet Union, and it had a terrible reputation. Bad service. Bad airplanes. And a terrible safety record.

A safety record so bad that I was warned about taking the airline. It was the one that made sense. I could fly from Raleigh to New York to Moscow to Ulaanbaatar. As direct as you could do to Mongolia then. But my wife pleaded with me not to fly Aeroflot. So I didn’t. I took a flight to New York, then to Helsinki, where I had a twelve hour layover, then to Beijing where I had a 36 hour layover before I flew to Ulaanbaatar.

Fast forward 26 years, and as we mosey on out of Covid, I am thinking about travel, and I’m looking at a theoretical trip, and it occurs to me that I hope my next trip might be on Aeroflot. Because in the month of 2021, Aeroflot is now the biggest airline on earth. With one of the newest fleets. One of the best safety records. And an incredible service reputation.

So what made this happen?

Competition.

Yes, it’s that easy. And that’s one of those interesting side stories after the worldwide fall of communism. In country after country, businesses like Aeroflot that had had a state enforced monopoly had every excuse to fold up and die. Every reason to give up and let western corporations take over their markets.

But they didn’t. Instead, Aeroflot and a lot of companies like them took a deep breath, and learned to compete. And not just complete, but thrive. To become one of the world’s greatest airlines. Because that’s what competition can do. Companies, contrary to the silly ideas of Marxism, don’t compete with their customers. Instead, they compete with each other to try to provide the very best service or products. And when they do, the customer wins. Gets better service. Better products. And better lives.

So here’s to Aeroflot, and a lot of other companies and people. No one could have predicted where they would be now. Most betting men would have wagered that Aeroflot would not even exist in 2021. But they’re not only here, they’ve thrived. And because they’ve thrived, our lives, in some small ways, are better.