Follow this authorBina Venkataraman's opinions
FollowLittle about the experience of modern flying is acceptable. But surely, somewhere between my Stockholm syndrome and the rage other passengers misdirect toward flight attendants lies a reasonable response to the inconvenience, discomfort and occasional danger of boarding a commercial airplane.
That’s where Ganesh Sitaraman, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School and the author of “Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It,” comes in. I cornered him on a recent evening while he was visiting D.C. to ask whether he really thinks there’s a way to end our misery — one that doesn’t just involve paying higher prices.
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His answer: Ask not what more we can do to survive our flying experiences. Ask more of the country’s airlines.
The U.S. airline industry, Sitaraman points out, got more than $50 billion in government bailouts during the pandemic because it provides an essential service. But it is not being required by policymakers to deliver adequate service to the American public. At the core of its dysfunction, he argues, is that we treat flying like a luxury instead of what it is: basic, critical infrastructure for a big country in a fast-moving age.
Before the current era of deregulation, which began in the late 1970s, the federal Civil Aeronautics Board set more uniform standards for airline prices and routes, and the airlines competed on services, yielding such frivolities as piano bars and free rounds of Chivas Regal in coach. Sitaraman would not see us return to that era, in part because of the high prices. But he does think airlines should be forced to have consistent fares based on distances traveled, not based on when you book your ticket — similar to the way subway fares are consistent regardless of when you purchase them. It should cost you the same, in other words, to board a direct flight from New York to Kansas City whether you purchased your ticket for a last-minute family health emergency or whether you booked it months in advance to attend a conference.
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In a new report he co-authored with consumer advocate Bill McGee, a former Federal Aviation Administration flight operations manager, Sitaraman also advocates disallowing any one airline from dominating a hub such as Dallas, Chicago or Atlanta, with the idea that this would lead to more competition and resilience. If one airline suffers a software glitch, a whole city’s connecting flights don’t have to be canceled.
The two also argue that airlines should be required to return to the practice of honoring passengers’ tickets from other carriers’ flights when a cancellation or missed connection occurs — the priority being to get passengers where they need to go.
Airline industry leaders often defend the status quo by arguing that a free market creates the best conditions and lowest fares for passengers. But a truly competitive marketplace for air travel has not emerged since deregulation, given the high barriers to starting an airline and to achieving economies of scale. Instead, we’ve seen decades of bankruptcies and consolidation, as well as ever-shrinking options for reaching smaller U.S. cities.
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That’s why I largely agree with Sitaraman and McGee’s policy prescriptions — and their view that air travel should be treated more as a public utility. But I’m more skeptical........