US airline deregulation

RE: US airline deregulation

I tend to think of it as natural selection.

Those airlines with weak strategies will go under. There is no moral case for government dictating which airlines will fly where, at least domestically. It’s the kind of thing you would expect in China!

There have been casualties in Europe too. You could probably construct an argument to support the notion that the likes of Sabena and Swissair, badly run companies both, were ultimately broken by deregulation. We have “5th freedom” rights in Europe, where any EU carrier can operate any route. Eg. Lufthansa could operate from Belfast to Mancester or from Porto to Amsterdam. But the reality is quite different, due to congested airports and “grandfather rights” which prevent an open market in slots.

RE: US airline deregulation

In a nutshell, deregulation allowed any airline to fly any route they wanted. Prior to this, the gov’t controlled which airlines could fly where. As far as it being good, that’s hard to say. Indeed, many great airlines did go under after the fact, like Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, Western, etc. However, I think that could have been avoided. Each case being unique. Pan Am, for example, didn’t have a strong enough domestic feeder network for all its internation flights. TWA pretty much sealed its fate when they sold their Heathrow rights to AA. Tbeir were many other factors, these just being a few. Ultimately, deregulation was a must. If I’m not mistaken, Europe underwent deregulation as well, after the U.S. did.

GD1

RE: US airline deregulation

What exactly did deregulation entail?