Deregulation

[schafjet]

I'm bored waiting for a ground school, so I want to know peoples opinions on the airline industry. Has deregulation worked? Base your answers on opinions and or facts. What do you think is in store for the airlines as a whole or as seperate airlines? Who will live and who will die? Let the debate begin, but let's not get too serious or offend anyone.

 

[mar]

I'll bite--then I'll get flamed

Here's a gross oversimplification:

Deregulation requires industry to be responsible.

Industry, over the past 20 odd years has proven themselves to be highly irresponsible.

Some industries should be regulated. Utilities, for example, must be regulated. To make that point imagine ten different natural gas companies trying to compete for your house.

They would all have different plumbing, etc. The infrastructure would be a mess and if you wanted any order at all you would probably ask some authority to regulate it.

Now apply the same logic to the airlines, their irresponsible behavior and the hub and spoke system and you'll see why deregulating the airlines was never good for the passenger and ultimately not so good for the airlines.

They need to be saved from themselves.

 

[cvsfly]

It was good for the consumer initially. The last 20 yrs saw some of the cheapest airfares. It became, IMHO, a steep spiral of consumers demanding ever cheaper airfares, the airlines trying to match them, the big airlines using their expanding fleets and economic power to drown out the smaller upstarts, relying more on the corporate flyers to make up for the revenue, cutting service ammenities to cut cost, post unreliable congested multiple departures from hub and spoke, and have service deteriorate to the point where the bread and butter corporate clients have left and are now ponying up for high dollar fractional programs. I guess you get what you pay for. The consumer has now come to expect the airlines to be as accessible as public transportation.