What is Wrong With the 'Leaders' of Our Airline Industry?

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Wall Street Journal
Are you kidding?!

This is insane. The mergers of Continental + United and Northwest + Delta never should have been approved for antitrust/oligopoly reasons. Those mergers, along with U.S. Air + American have killed competition and have directly led to flying being the terrible experience it is today. The 'leaders' of the airlines can't manage what they have; what makes them believe they can manage a vastly bigger company?! Of course, these mergers never seem to bring the "synergy" that is promised so they end up cutting people and service. 

When you combine these "too big to care" airlines with Congress being influenced by the airline lobby to make it practically impossible to hold the airlines accountable -- no matter how egregious their behavior -- it makes our airline experience worse than many "second world" airlines. 

For our 50th wedding anniversary, we purchased first class tickets on American. Good thing we did! They forgot to cater the flight and we sat -- with the doors open and no air conditioning! -- for 2.5 hours while we waited in 96° head over the concrete tarmac. It was bad enough in First, but can you imagine being in a middle seat in the back of the plane?! They never should have boarded the flight and they would not let us get off during this major delay. 

Just Sunday, an airline (I'm not going to name them because part of this was safety) asked 50 people to "volunteer" to take another flight. I don't know the amount they offered but most of the time they start with a crummy $200 travel voucher (with restrictions on its use). Who wants to blow up their travel plans for one of those?!

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, even though I am a Reagan conservative, the situation is so bad that I believe it is time to re-regulate the industry. 


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