Prime Mover of Airline Deregulation Dies

I clicked on it and it worked for me. I'm not a member either... but did stay at a holiday inn... maybe thats why
 
I'd say the end result, so far, of his actions were about a 60% success and 40% failure.

Fares are cheaper and more people are able to fly. There's no sense in having 25 people on a 727 that can hold 150. Today's flights, though sometimes too full when weather hits and cancels a few, are more efficient because they aren't all half empty.

The problematic side is, the competition that deregulation introduced led to so much growth that the infrastructure has not kept up at all in some parts of the country.

There is absolutely no excuse for routinely having several-hour wheels-up-time delays into places like EWR, JFK, SFO etc. three or four days per week all year long.
 
100% failure. Wages and quality of pilots have gone down. Most of us would not be pilots, but none of us would be starving. Access to flying was just moving the bus depot and train station passengers to be able to sit next to me in aisle seat that they paid half for what I did for my middle seat. And anything that Jimmy touched has been a failure, as much of the economic plans that dem's seem to value.
 
SFLAX said:
100% failure.
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I wouldn't necessarily say that.

Wages and quality of pilots have gone down. Most of us would not be pilots, but none of us would be starving. Access to flying was just moving the bus depot and train station passengers to be able to sit next to me in aisle seat that they paid half for what I did for my middle seat. And anything that Jimmy touched has been a failure, as much of the economic plans that dem's seem to value.
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There are some who say that B-scale wages (and worse) were inevitable.

Plus, there never would've been the rise of the regionals :)
 
SFLAX said:
100% failure. Wages and quality of pilots have gone down. Most of us would not be pilots, but none of us would be starving. Access to flying was just moving the bus depot and train station passengers to be able to sit next to me in aisle seat that they paid half for what I did for my middle seat. And anything that Jimmy touched has been a failure, as much of the economic plans that dem's seem to value.
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Hard to say on this. In my opinion the airline industry was never fully deregulated. The government still regulates everything the only difference is the perks they had (ie: set fares, bidding on routes, inhibited competition) were taken away. I think if the FAA was reduced to nothing more than a simple organization that worked with the NTSB and was responsible for setting the standards for training and licensing pilots, then free enterprise would have really taken off in this industry. Maintenance standards would be set by insurance companies, consumer standards, blah blah blah. Cost would be a lot lower without the government truly involved. There is no reason a bulb for a landing light that is identical to one you get at autozone for your car should cost what it does just because it goes on a Cessna.
 
Deregulation while making air travel cheaper has also made the experience much less desirable for both the employees and the passengers. Is that better? Is that progress? For some the answer is yes. For some the answer is no.

Cheaper is not always better.
 
R Banger said:
There is no reason a bulb for a landing light that is identical to one you get at autozone for your car should cost what it does just because it goes on a Cessna.
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I agree with some stuff you say here, but the cost of aircraft parts has a lot more to do with liability (read: the courts) than the FAA
 
SFLAX said:
100% failure. Wages and quality of pilots have gone down. Most of us would not be pilots, but none of us would be starving. Access to flying was just moving the bus depot and train station passengers to be able to sit next to me in aisle seat that they paid half for what I did for my middle seat. And anything that Jimmy touched has been a failure, as much of the economic plans that dem's seem to value.
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This.
 
You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it.

We are getting there..... Thanks Alfred... not.
 
I will always remember Kahn as the frantic guy who always had spit flying or spit in the corners of his mouth as he *lectured* those in front of him. As with most things, there are successes and failures. Piedmont certainly took off after dereg and I was a little under 4yrs from hire date to the left seat of a 737 and I waited until I could hold a decent block.

And Mike D, I think the evolution of the regionals would have occurred regardless. The need for smaller aircraft was evident with the introduction of the Banderante and the Shorts.
 
You probably need to define what "success" means in this context. If "success" means more access to airlines and flying for the general public, then nobody could ever question whether deregulation was successful - clearly it was. It unleashed entreprenuers (Freddie Laker, Frank Lorenzo) which can sometimes be good (you can probably draw some parallels between Laker and Richard Branson and Virgin) but also bad (Lorenzo/Icahn/Wolf, etc financial operators). It certainly created more airline jobs due to more airlines...but the jobs are not as good.

You just have to define "success". Surreal and SFLAX say "no" but I think they are only basing this from a standpoint of the decline of the pilot career - which would be true. I'm not sure that you can define anything though based solely on "this career used to be good, now it sucks in comparison, so the idea is a failure" because businesses and commerce don't exist for the employees, they are merely a cog in that machine.
 
Orange Anchor said:
And Mike D, I think the evolution of the regionals would have occurred regardless. The need for smaller aircraft was evident with the introduction of the Banderante and the Shorts.
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True, but would it have been done as its done now with separate companies? Or would it have been like America west, which used to operate their own mainline Dash-8s?
 
The problem is that if carriers are still playing with one hand tied behind their backs.
 
MikeD said:
True, but would it have been done as its done now with separate companies? Or would it have been like America west, which used to operate their own mainline Dash-8s?
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It would have probably been both. Remember Henson operated for Allegheny as a feeder before it became USAir and then PI bought Henson in 1983 and rebranded it.
 
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