Airline Regulations

AIRLINE REGULATIONS Research Paper AVSC 1220 TREVOR CARTER ID 10524707 *The skyway industry op sequencetes corresponding the veins of the United States by pumping precious cargo throughout the country. Most * mess dont realize how different the airlines were a some decades ago. The inherent industry was regulated by the g all overnment. Regulation is usu aloney considered a more(prenominal) socialistic liberal idea that is opposed by conservative capitalists.Although I personally believe in a government with a miserable limited *role* in our daily lives, I work arrest to the conclusion that the airline industry is a rare exception that take to return to regulation which would benefit the airlines and the consumers in numerous ways. In the long time of regulation the government had total control of routes, fares, gates and al almost everything needful to operate an airline. It as well as created galore(postnominal) barriers to entry which would prevent any parvenue star t up airline.All the government would strike to do is non allow them at any airports or not approve of any route application. Economists complained that regulation was inefficient so in 1978 the Airline deregulating Act was passed allowing the free market to dictate airline prices and schedules. The following cardinal classs have proved this to be a terrible mistake. in that location are a wide range of facts when looking for the change in price of a ticket today compared to the airlines under regulation. Some rank the tickets are 15* % cheaper.Others claim there is hardly a disparity because one must account for the 10% travel agent requital that is avoided with todays online booking. So there is clearly no coarse ticket price benefit due to deregulation. However in the aside tickets were fully refundable and you could change your destination without numerous penalties. Today people chuck the internet for a discounted ticket which give usually mean a few stops along t he way that may not be in the general direction of their destination. Some passengers may have to evaporate into alternative airports to receive a discount.Southwest airlines now flies into most major airports just as the legacy airlines do, however, in Southwests early days they broke into the freshly deregulated industry by basing their doing out of LUV field Dallas (not Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport) and flying to locations such as Burbank, CA. The reason for this was because it is much cheaper to operate out of these airports to avoid move overing superior prices for gates and other airport fees. Southwest also undercut the pay scales across the board. They were the first low cost carrier.By *saving all this money they would be able to provide cheaper tickets to customers and the free market was fount its control on the industry. This started the domino effect of airlines entering the market. *With a few major airlines doing most of the long squeeze flights many c ommuter airlines have started argument with 100 seat type jets. Most people go away see US Airways Express and think it is a division of US Airways however that airplane might be one of 4 or 5 airlines that fly under the US Airways paint scheme. The air is dead saturated with all of these small jets.The air traffic control dust *needs to be upgraded because of this. Instead of having 737s make two or three flights a day on a short haul trip say from Philly to Buffalo, they bequeath have these 100 seat regional jets make 5 or 6 flights a day. With fuel prices semivowel this does not seem efficient. Safety of the consumer is also being endangered. For the last year or so many small regional airlines were hiring a full-grown amount of voyages due to a shortage. The minimum flight time qualifications were dropped tear down than they have ever been before.Some new hires are getting in the cockpit with as little as 300 hours. The average airline pilot has several thousand hours. With flight training declining every year due to the high cost, commercial pilots are becoming scarcer. When you add more airplanes bandage fewer pilots are being trained it creates a huge shortage. The federal Aviation Administration pushed the mandatory retirement age to 65 adding 5 more years to a pilots career if he chooses to stay which many arent and wont, due to the terrible state of the industry and conditions they have been working in.This is just a temporary fix that might stave in off the shortage for a few years but hiring will start again and there wont be affluent pilots let alone enough experience pilots to fly all of these airplanes. down the stairs regulation when oil quadrupled in the 70s, the price was passed onto the consumer by rearing ticket prices. This is unfortunate but it is a part of the way our thriftiness works. Today with prices rising, the airlines will not raise prices and instead try to rate other companies into the ground by lowering prices. This is not healthy competition. The airline industry disconnected 25 billion dollars from 2000*-2005.During that period a*irfares dropped 10* percent while 20 airlines went bankrupt. US Airways and Northwest Airlines have upstage their obligation to their pension funds by pleading in * unsuccessful person court that they couldnt operate *without* do*ing so. This wiped out over 8,5*00 pilots retirement funds between the two of them. Over 7000 Delta pilots have also since lost their retirements. * Pilots have conceded roughly 25-35*% pay cuts along with losing their retirements in order to retain these airlines afloat and ensure the passenger gets a good deal on their ticket. Within the past few weeks Aloha Airlines joined the ranks and went out of business continuing the downward spiral of the airline industry specifically over the last 10 years. Delta and Northwest announced on April 14th a plan to merge which would create the largest airline in the population. There is also sp eculation of many more mergers and or bankruptcies to come. Mergers are a marker of these companies being better off working together than separate. That is certainly not the healthy competition the lawmakers of the 60s and 70s envision while forming this plan.Deregulation has lent instability to an industry which serves to make the world flatter. Maybe it would be in the broader interest if this industry went back to the era of regulation. Not that the system was flawless but at least with a guaranteed return on capital, airlines wouldnt be forced to cut corners and via media safety *. * There has been recent talk of law makers on Capitol hill revisiting the regulation idea due to the horrible state of the industry. Hopefully they will work quickly and save the sinking ship before its too late*. SOURCES L. Smith Jr. , Fred. Airline Deregulation. Library of economics and Liberty 25 Nov 2008 http//www. econlib. org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation. html. *Barnum, John. What Promp ted Airline Deregulation 20 geezerhood Ago? What Were the Objectives of That Deregulation and How Were They Achieved. * Find Law Library 08/15/1998 25 Nov 2008 http//library. findlaw. com/1988/Sep/1/129304. html. *Bailey, Elizabeth E. Airline Deregulation Confronting the Paradoxes. Regulation The Cato Review of job and Government* 15, no. 3. Available online at *http//www. cato. org/pubs/regulation/regv15n3/reg15n3-bailey. html*. * dit Security Administration*