Escorts are not financially viable. The escort is better off trading himself rather than getting paid less to escort someone else. It has always been this way. Also, 5ks have far too low of TTK so escorts are useless for them. Which will (hopefully) be fixed by the transport rework. The best "escort" currently is a scout that flies in front of the trader, tells the trader when he finds a pirate, and the trader either has to pick to go around (Which is very hard to do now with these awful chokepoints everywhere and 80 systems being deleted) or they just log off. Which is not fun gameplay. So there's that.
