Originally Posted by
sfspec
"free mar·ket
Noun:
An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses."
"Synonyms:
open market"
Looks like a free market is a free market only if there is competition.
If US Airways, or any other airline, has a monopoly on certain routes and chooses to charge what the traffic will bear is their right under our current laws. But DO NOT call it free market. Personally, I call it gouging.
I don't know where you got your definition of free market, but its a bad one. The absence of competition does not make a market non-free. If there is no competition there has to be low, or no, barriers to entry into the market for that market to be free. Considering that none of the airports we are looking at here (that I remember) are restricted slot airports, I see no barriers to entry other than the cost of capital, which is approximately the same regardless of airline and airport (i.e. have to have planes, have and train a flight/ground/terminal crew, etc).