DEREGULATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION

I’ve only taken the train in Canada and the US a few times. What has stuck me each time is how, on what is considered some of the worst transportation systems in the developed world, taking the train is so preferable to flying. If there wasn't such a stark contrast in the travel times and limited routes, I don't know why anyone would fly. One mode is relaxed and civilized and the other just abounds with points of urgency and 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 golden age of train travel on this continent with expanded destinations and modernized engines and cars. But, alas, we probably need another two billion people on this continent before we could justify such things. I get it.

Still, at the very least, anyone older than about 40 and who flew in the '80s or '90s and has flown in recent decades has likely noticed how unpleasant plane travel has become. There is 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, post full-body scan, while confiscating your nail clippers), and related biometrics collections (“What, a retina scan and finger prints? Sure, why not?”); 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.

I wasn’t around to see it, but I regularly hear of flying’s Golden Age. I’m told the status quo from the 1930s through to the late 1970s, 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 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 can’t really imagine it.

The deal was that at that time air travel was deemed a public utility and so 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 who could enter the market. As such, the only thing the major airline companies could do to entice customers was to offer a more luxurious experience than the competition. So that they did.

If you go looking you can find stories about how in the 1940s 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, taken more than 15 hours, and included probably a dozen stops along the way. For not much less, by the 1950s you could take a flight on a Boeing Stratocruiser to Hawaii and find yourself playing cards in the lounge with your congenial companions or enjoy the three course buffet. And here in Canada, around that same time you could fly Vancouver to Toronto for about $3,000 in 2026 money.

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

Soon that happened. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Alfred Kahn, economics professor from 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.

As fares dropped 20-30% all around North America, airports were suddenly encountering crowding issues and airplanes were consistently at capacity and also being overbooked, too. The EU noticed the competitive and economic benefits and were 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 only five to seven hours) 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 fatalities of just recently. For instance, 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. Staggering improvement.

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?