Who/what's causing the delays, cancellations, price hikes, baggage & poor service issues and so forth? The airlines have brought it on themselves! Government regulation is necessary to fix it! Yet some feel the government may actually responsible for the nation's transportation problems, and "benign neglect," meaning less government is the solution.

Steven Morrison of Northeastern University and Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution offer thoughts on who is responsible for America�s airline woes � from crowded planes and delayed flights to the fact that you may have paid twice as much as the guy sitting next to you for the same trip. Yet unlike many critics, these authors don�t blame airport hubs, frequent-flier programs or biased computer reservation systems. The government, they say, may be more to blame for these headaches than the airlines.

"Ironically, the industry's primary inefficiencies stem not from its own activities, but from government management of airport and airspace capacity, which limits competition and compromises service. Policymakers' initiatives seem more related to lobbying by special interests than to encouraging competition to improve the general welfare of travelers."

This article makes controversial claims like the power of frequent flyer programs has been overstated and a UA-US Airways merger would NOT undermine competition. It suggests the increase in pax complaints is due to a proliferation of websites which facilitate complaining! Can you think of any? They note that consumers are really no more disenchanted with air travel now than a decade before.

If interested in a good deabte of the majority/minority view, get the article at The Milken Institute Review:
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/poe.cfm?point=review

Note please that you must do a moderately long/brief download to view the actual article.