Kahn remained completely convinced that deregulating the airlines was a success. When a friend complained that increased numbers of passengers on flights resulted in him sitting next to "a filthy hippie" on a plane, he replied "Since I haven't heard from the hippie, I can assume the distaste wasn't reciprocated." In 2008, the nonagenarian Kahn gave a speech to the Global Airport International Summit in Boston where he said "The industry in the last 30 years gave the public something it had not received before: high quality, space, and low cost. It catered to a variety of demands and abilities today so that we had an enormous spread of fares. It offered the people upgrades such as business class and frequent flyer miles." Admitting that he was no expert on airplanes or the fine details of the industry, Kahn once said "I can't tell one plane from the other. To me, they're all just marginal costs with wings."