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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 6/24/11

Are Customers Better Off From Airline De-Regulation?

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   6 comments
Message Bill Hare

Ronald Reagan's famous line delivered at the close of his one and only debate with President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election was "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

While it was Reagan's presidential predecessor Carter who de-regulated the airline industry, this was a page taken from the playbook of the suave former actor with the well-modulated voice. Reagan declared that it was time to "get the government off people's backs" and let it be known that this was a major goal of his administration. Neither friend nor foe would deny that this goal was steadily accomplished.

Carter did no more than get the motor running with airline de-regulation. Reagan, operating in a manner that brought broad smiles to the face of his economic guru Milton Friedman, believed that all we needed to make America the "city on the hill" of his dreams was to remove the dreaded shackles of big government and let the free market take over.

Friedman, a controversial Nobel Prize winner in economics who had been an adviser to the presidential regime of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, was the economic world's most ebullient advocate of privatization, extending all the way to police and fire protection.

The thought about privatization and the invocation of economic freedom delivered by Reagan in his declaration about getting the government off of the backs of American citizens merged with that of asking people if they were better off than they had been previously, this time applied to airline regulation, surfaced for me May 26 as I explored Denver International Airport prior to boarding a Frontier Airlines flight for Seattle.

As I ate in a crowded restaurant the group seated at the next table anxiously wondered whether their flight would be departing on schedule. "I wonder if we'll ever get to Chicago tonight," the oldest member of the group said, looking and sounding fatigued. He was with a married couple in their thirties.

After I finished eating I joined a crowded contingent of passengers awaiting the opportunity to board planes. I recalled what it was like in those days long ago before airline de-regulation and its proclaimed benefits to consumers. Late this afternoon I observed a large contingent of customers waiting to board flights with expressions embodying shell-shocked fatigue.

A frustrated passenger sitting next to me explained his situation in a tired voice in a cell phone call to someone presumably at his intended destination: "They delayed the flight an hour and forty minutes. If it takes off then, I won't be in London until tomorrow somewhere around 3:30."

I focused my attention on a tired looking group hoping to finally fly home to Atlanta. One man, who was passing the time whiling away on his laptop, told his traveling companions: "Wouldn't it be nice to be here real early in the morning and you could have fun sliding down an escalator with nobody around?"

A member of the group suddenly materialized, husband and father of a young girl that the laptop user also sought to amuse to relieve her boredom, explained that their Atlanta flight was supposed to finally board. In search of an empathic soul, he looked at me and grinned. I did not disappoint. I fully empathized with a smile and fully supporting laugh when he looked my way and grinned as he delivered the corporate platitude he heard about the intent to fly on schedule and properly service customers.

Moments later the group departed. As I watched them walk away I hoped that they would finally be accommodated. I wondered how long they had been waiting for the opportunity.

As for waiting, I had done a good deal of it myself. In the desire to convenience themselves, Frontier Airlines' flight from San Jose, Costa Rica had a scheduled 6 a.m. departure. That flight took off on time. The reason was obvious. You get the plane off early to start a long flight day. The bad news arises at the next stop, where passengers are jockeyed around to convenience tight-fisted airlines seeking to get the most out of their flights, specifically as many as possible and hopefully packed to capacity.

While passengers can be greatly inconvenienced on the one hand with long delays, with regulations no longer an impediment, airlines no longer have the restrictions that were previously in place preventing scheduling flights too close together.

For years I never missed a connecting flight. Now it has become a regular occurrence since airlines have a strong measure of control, with the objective being as many flights to as many destinations per day with the planes full.

My long wait during an entire afternoon had now extended to early evening. Finally I recognized why this delay had occurred. Another flight finally arrived at what was to be my departing gate. Passengers moved through, meaning that we would hopefully finally board. I had awakened at 3:15 a.m. for the first flight and my next one to Seattle was supposed to leave at 7:30 p.m. after a gate change and a time delay.

A large throng sat in the gate area beyond which the plane was scheduled to leave for Seattle. This was the type of situation that called for a crew to be available to direct the boarding process. Instead one person emerged, a slender, white-haired, bespectacled man with the expression of the person who had drawn the short straw for an unenviable chore, which might be an accurate summation of what occurred.

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Began in the journalism field in hometown of Los Angeles. Started as Sports Editor and Movie Writer at Inglewood Daily News chain after working in sportswriting of high school events at the Los Angeles Examiner.

Received a bachelor's in (more...)
 
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