Airline Deregulation At 40: Flying The Friendly Skies
The Patriot Post cited CEI’s Senior Fellow Marc Scribner on airline deregulation.
Despite those fears about safety and loss of service to some markets, consumers have been the big winners, as low-cost, no-frills airlines moved into the market and forced others to compete, without sacrificing safety. While there are some who complain about smaller seats and hidden fees, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Mark Scribner points out that airlines still offer many of these amenities — if consumers want to pay a little extra up front.
All this seems to be working, as more Americans than ever take to the skies. It’s hard to imagine Congress or anyone else putting the genie back in the bottle and restoring us to the days where only a couple of airlines would serve popular routes, and prices would be fixed by anonymous bureaucrats. While today’s players might not mind the opportunity for rent-seeking that re-regulation would bring, they can’t with a straight face argue that airline deregulation wasn’t a success.