Dragonfly Partner Rob Hadick: 55% of American Adults Fly Zero Times a Year
Rob Hadick, a general partner at Dragonfly, stated that nearly every time he tells someone that 55% of American adults fly zero times a year, they need to double-check the data before accepting it. This post references a demo from OpenAI's developer account, with the tagline "Now... wireless networks are better."
He did not include a table in the post. The closest industry survey to the 55% figure is an annual survey commissioned by Airlines for America and conducted by Ipsos. A round of screening from January 5 to 19, 2026, surveyed 3,847 American adults aged 18 and older, with 3,380 completing the questionnaire. According to the historical data released by the association, the proportion of people who flew in the past year in 2025 was 45%, corresponding to about 55% who did not fly in the past year.
The same table breaks down "ever flown" and "flown in the past year." In 2025, the proportion of those who have ever flown was 87%, and 65% had flown in the past five years. The proportion for the past year was 54% in 2015, 45% in 2019, 22% in 2020, 37% in 2021, 38% in 2022, 43% in 2023, 46% in 2024, and 45% in 2025. In 1977, this figure was 25%.
Gallup's earlier adult survey provided similar figures. In December 2015, the proportion of adults with zero trips in the past 12 months was 55%, with an average of 2.1 trips per adult. In a measurement from December 1 to 16, 2021, the proportion of zero trips rose to 62%, with only 38% having flown at least once, and the average number of trips dropped to 1.4. The proportion of employed adults who flew dropped from 54% in 2015 to 41% in 2021.
Hadick's position is as a general partner at Dragonfly, with a public resume indicating prior roles at GoldenTree and Goldman, and an investment list including Polymarket, Rain, Mesh, and others. The post has approximately 4,646 likes, 117 replies, and 194,000 views. He did not specify which year or survey the 55% figure comes from, nor did he distinguish between "zero flights in a year" and "never flown in a lifetime."
This is a public verification of travel demand distribution, not an airline financial report or fare adjustment. The actual contributors to ticket sales are the 45% who flew in the past year, with frequent travelers contributing higher frequencies; 55% of adults did not enter the cabin that year. Capital is concentrated in frequent travelers, ticket agents, and automated travel solutions, rather than the entire adult population. Beneficiaries are airlines and travel software designed for high-frequency travelers and loyalty programs; those under pressure are consumer-grade demonstrations treating airport wireless networks and automated ticketing as everyday scenarios.
The association's survey used a probability sample from Ipsos KnowledgePanel, asking whether respondents had flown in the past year, not the average number of flights. Therefore, the median can be zero, while total passenger volume is still supported by a small number of frequent travelers.
Source: Public Information
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Rob Hadick's background is in credit and crypto liquidity, not airlines. His public resume includes Goldman, GoldenTree, and now Dragonfly general partner, with investments in projects like Polymarket, Rain, Mesh, and Hidden Road, which focus on trading, payments, and institutional access. His past public actions include making predictions at the beginning of the year and reviewing them at the end, where he marked several crypto and public company judgments as errors in his 2025 review. This time, he connected an airline survey figure to OpenAI's dots demo to disrupt the premise that "everyone is flying, so everyone needs in-flight networks."
The capital path is not about buying airline stocks but pricing for on-chain trading and payment gateways. Dragonfly's funding direction is towards prediction markets, cards, and institutional brokerage access, with user assumptions often being high-frequency, online, and cross-regional. The airline side's funding has long been concentrated in frequent flyers and business class: after deregulation in 1978, the proportion of adults who flew in the past year rose from 25% in 1977 to 54% in 2015, but in 2025, it is still only 45%. The motivation is to correct product demonstrations using real denominators, avoiding writing business travel scenarios as universal scenarios.
A comparable structure is seen in credit card points and airline miles. Miles are accumulated by a small number of frequent travelers, yet banks sell co-branded cards to those who fly infrequently; during the ATM era, the value of bank branches shifted from serving all depositors to serving a few who needed counter services. Consumer-grade AI is currently in an expansion phase, not control: demonstrations use better wireless networks as selling points, while the denominator is 55% with zero flights in a year.
Structurally, this represents a transfer of pricing power. The pricing power of tickets and in-flight services does not lie with all adults but with the 45% who flew in the past year, and an even smaller group contributing multiple trips. The mechanism is that averages can obscure medians: in 2015, the average number of trips for all adults was 2.1, while 55% had not flown at all; total passenger volume can reach new highs, yet the typical adult still does not enter airports. Booking agents designed on a per capita basis sell a process that most people will not engage with that year.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
The average is flying, the median is grounded.
Total passenger volume hits new highs, yet the typical user still has zero trips.
Demonstrations are based on frequent flyers, while billing is based on the imagination of all adults.