What Do You Call Successful Deregulation Of U.S. Air Fares? A Good Start…

Robert W. Poole, a founder of the libertarian reason magazine and its director of transportation issues, comes full circle after nearly 50 years and again writes about airline deregulation. The U.S. government’s Civil Aeronautics Board used to set prices and restrict entry into the industry, on the chronic assumption that, without regulation, airlines would be eager to kill their customers, undaunted by the threat of lawsuits and boycotts, and unconcerned about their reputations.

The take-aways here:

• Repeal of the Civil Aeronautics Board was achieved by Democrats, notably Teddy Kennedy. He was no deregulator, and his death became an extra impetus for hyper-regulation of health insurance.
• The text of the repeal was inserted in an unrelated bill by a Republican who did not want the bill to pass. The pro-business Republicans never honestly try to close a regulatory agency; this month’s Trump “victories” do not end harmful regulation but merely provide an escape valve for mid-size banks and for terminally ill patients. The Secretary of Energy, who as a Presidential candidate vowed to eliminate the agency he now heads, has merely shifted it from favoring solar and wind (because they are “sustainable”) to oil and gas (because you can store them up against natural disasters, or something). Picking between these values should be the job of the individual citizen and Rick Perry should know it.
• The predictions of the effects of CAB repeal were all exactly wrong. No epidemic of plane crashes or airlines skimping on safety to pad executive salaries. No long-term shrinkage of airline employment. It was not all smooth sailing; many airlines went bankrupt, some by overexpanding and some by being unable to adapt to stiffer competition.

One of the predictions at the time was that prices would skyrocket without government oversight — the same fallacy that was thrown around between Ronald Reagan’s election and Inauguration Day, when one of his first acts was to end the era of gasoline price control. Science got it ass-backwards again. Regarding airfares, Poole entitles his article, If You Can Afford a Plane Ticket, Thank Deregulation.

The bureaucracy has been removed for 40 years from the price of air fares, but the supply is still limited. Air traffic control in the U.S. is still a federal bureaucracy, although the U.K. and Canada use private corporations with no disastrous results. There are some decisions that could be made in the cockpit rather than with a system of centralized prior restraint; moreover, greater use of computers could fit planes closer together than the current standard.

The supply of airports and landing gates will probably continue to be controlled by local, parochial politics. But Poole suggests, instead of the current state where Air Traffic Control serves joy-riders and jumbo jets on a first-come, first-served basis, a free market for the price of takeoff and landing slots. He says the U.S. has allowed congestion pricing since 2008, but government-run airports have not adopted it. Private pilots are well-organized and know their hobby depends on special rights from Washington.

There is much more that begs to be deregulated, notably medical care and insurance. The easier obstacle is the “science” that predicts catastrophe by starting with false choices, and the stale rhetoric that the freedom to let diverse things happen could only be favored from a macabre desire that the worst of all those things should happen. It is wrong every time. The more intractable obstacle is putting our faith in the supposed party of deregulation and expecting results this time.