DEREGULATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION

I’ve only taken the train in Canada and the US a few times. Each time I’ve been struck by how — on what are considered some of the worst transportation systems in the developed world with terribly slow, outdated, and limited service with no luxuries available — taking the train is so preferable to flying. If there wasn’t such a stark contrast in the travel times, speed, and routes I don’t know why anyone would fly. One mode is relaxed and civilized and the other just abounds with points of urgency, friction, and turbulence. I don’t think you need to take many train trips to feel like there should be a real push to revisit, as best we can, something approximating the train travel scenario on this continent a century ago, with but expanded destinations and modernized engines and cars. But, alas, I concede we probably need another two billion people on this continent to have the population density to justify such things. I get it.

Still, anyone older than about 40 and who flew in the '80s or '90s and has done so in recent decades has likely noticed how unpleasant plane travel has become. There’s a lot to be unhappy about. Maybe you’ve noticed the wacky post-9/11 security barriers (when we used to greet and see off our friends and family from the gate), the increasingly involved screening song-n-dance (that still lets through folks with multiple 12-inch steel blades on their person, even after a full-body scan, while confiscating your nail file or clippers), and related biometrics collections (“What, body scan, retina scan and finger prints? Sure, why not? Can I pee in a cup, too?”); the twice daily terminal tantrums (with yahoos in their pajamas starting screaming matches or punching and kicking people, throwing chairs, taking hammers to screens, or otherwise destroying whole kiosks and departure gates because they missed their flight); or maybe you just don't like the total absence of customer service and in-flight options or the ever-shrinking legroom.

Though I wasn’t around to see it, I regularly hear of flying’s Golden Age. I’m told the status quo from the 1930s through to the late 1970s, back when the US government strictly controlled commercial aviation, saw every passenger dressed in business attire at least, with upper or lower decks home to piano lounges and servings of lobster and caviar and with half the passengers smoking cigars or cigarettes at the bar with their gin martinis, and when each seat was spaced to accommodate an average-sized body. Though I’ve seen the pictures I still can’t really imagine it.

You see, at that time air travel was deemed a public utility. As such, in the US the Civil Aeronautics Board ran the show, operating effectively as a cartel by strictly dictating prices, airline routes, and who could fly between which cities, as well as controlling what airlines could operate. Within this context the only thing the airline companies could do to entice customers was to offer a more luxurious experience than their competition. So that they did.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

For a taste of the situation you can find stories about how in the 1940s, with air travel still in its infancy, the average coast-to-coast flight (probably via Pan Am) would have been about $4,500 USD ($6,400 CAD) per person in today’s dollars. But because jet engines were still rare that flight would have also taken more than 15 hours and included probably a dozen stops along the way. By the 1950s airplanes had improved and, for a similar cost, you could now take a non-stop flight on a Boeing Stratocruiser to Hawaii and find yourself playing cards in the lounge with your congenial companions while enjoying a four-course buffet. (That's nicer and far more communal than any First-Class situation today, where folks drop $20,000 CAD for a weird booth or cramped private room...) And within a decade or so, with business and luxury air travel becoming a little more common, here in Canada you could cross the continent, Vancouver to Toronto, for about half the cost of the 1940's and early '50s, at around $3,000 in 2026 money.

By the late 1970s the situation was set to change rapidly and dramatically. With stagnant passenger numbers, what everyone had come to know air travel to be had become widely viewed as detrimental to the industry and transportation generally. Folks sought to unleash free-market competition for the first time into air travel. The plan was to deregulate the industry in order to boost passenger volumes, drive down rates, and thus democratize by opening up flying to the unwashed masses.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Alfred Kahn, an economics professor at Cornell University, to be chair of the Civil Aeronautics Board and the following year signed the Airline Deregulation Act into law with broad support. This immediately lifted restrictions on fares and access to routes, meaning airlines could fly where they wanted and charge whatever the market would bear.

The effect appears to have been as intended. As fares dropped 20-30% all around North America, airports were suddenly encountering crowding issues and airplanes were consistently at capacity. The EU noticed the competitive and economic benefits and was soon deregulating as well. New low-cost carriers popped up all over. Within a generation the cost of flights between major population centers around the globe had dropped to half or even a tenth of what they were. Today those same round-trip flights in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, (LAX to JFK, SFO to HNL, or YVR to YYZ — but minus all the stops and in less than half the time) can be found for around $300-$700 USD or $425-$995 CAD.

Simultaneous with the collapse in cost to consumers since deregulation, aircraft safety has dramatically improved with a fraction of the crashes and fatalities of just recently. Astonishingly, things are getting twice as safe each decade. 2010 saw more than twice the air fatality rate of 2020, and 2010 was half the rate of 2000. 1990? About twice the fatal airliner accidents globally as 2000. That staggering improvement has been won through improvements in technology and engineering. Things like improved situational awareness and navigation with electronic terrain avoidance and wind sheer detection systems, collision avoidance and flight envelope protection systems, navigation aids and improved weather forecasting, as well as advanced jet engines have made planes remarkably safer over time. Strict requirements on maintenance, reporting, training, and operations have also helped significantly. And the very nature of international air travel means those higher standards in one place quickly extends beyond the nation or region in which they are implemented as airports and aviation administrations are free to ban airlines who don't meet their operating requirements. In his way, EU safety standards, for example, have resulted in elevating global airline safety baselines for places on the other side of the globe, such as Indonesia or Pakistan, who would like to land planes into Geneva, Paris, or Madrid. All of this means passengers are almost 40 times safer to fly today than during the period prior to deregulation.

So then, knowing all this and with so much visible, well-documented, and undisputed evidence, my question is: how does this make you feel about deregulation, generally?