In my opinion, the best way to keep fares down is to support the discount airlines. Southwest is now strong enough that it won't be run out of business by anyone. I know the lack of first class and advance seat assignments bothers many FTers, as well as their limited FF program, but if it's really fares you care about and not all those other amenities, support the discount airlines.

Some of them, such as Jet Blue mentioned above, really offer a relatively high quality service, and AirTran offers upgrades on the day of departure for only $25/segment. And whatever you say about Southwest, you will most likely encounter the friendliest employees in the industry.

Another avenue to bring a little more competition into the arena would be to let the European airlines enter the US domestic market. It would be real interesting to see a few more well established airlines enter the marketplace.

Larry

Let's also not forget how many smaller airports are out there that aren't served at all by discount carriers. Maybe they get prop or RJ service from 2 or 3 big carriers that aren't vigorous about price competition. Reducing the field through mergers definitely won't help there. These poor people are also hostages to $40 "fuel surcharges" and stuff like that. People have to drive to the nearest big airport, IF that's an option. Folks in places like Montana probably have it the very worst. While it's easy to think that three non-price-competitive major airlines won't be any worse than 6 or 7 as long as the discount carriers are around, I think it's better to have the larger number because sometimes accidents do happen and they try weakly to compete with each other. Having three monster-size airlines also makes it much harder for a fourth or fifth to ascend to that size, even if well-liked by consumers. The Big 3 automakers from about 1965-1990 are a good case study there: many people knew that much of the product was bad, but the sheer size and barriers to entry/growth for others meant that it took many years to turn the situation around.