clanum

I'm a bit young to have done much airline travel before 1978, but I'm very interested in how the system worked. I understand that the government set prices by city/pair, and the airlines competed on service. Does that mean that for a heavily served route, such as Washington-Los Angeles, there was no point in calling different airlines as they would all quote the same price? I understand that the regulations even defined specifically which meals could be served on which flights? What was the purpose of that?

Was the city pair price static - meaning was it the same if I walked up to the ticket counter as opposed to buying weeks in advance?

I know there wasn't as much of a hub and spoke system then as there is now, but there must have been connections - how would connections work? Again the same price?

Was the price constant for all flights the same day, meaning a morning transcon was the same price as a red-eye? Didn't this result in abysmal load factors for the undesirable times?

How would prices be set for new city pairs when an airline expanded to that market? What was the government's involvement?

How did Southwest compete as a low cost carrier if they couldn't undercut other airline's fares? Only by flying underserved city pairs?

If anybody has any good references on reading about how the airline industry worked under regulation, I'd love to find them. I'm studying how firms and customers adjust to regulation/deregulation, and I'm interested in learning from the airline model.

Thanks!