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James Fallows's avatar

Here is another comment from a personal email message.

(As I say, I will "intend" to have an improved-and-streamlined comment section and function here.)

It is from a reader in the western half of country:

>> "With all due respect, I beg to differ. Southwest's meltdown is not just about some isolated problems at a single airline; rather, Southwest's debacle highlights flaws not only of the aviation industry but of this era. The core problem, I think, is that American society has socialized risk for important industries while allowing the benefits of our increasingly productive economy to be captured by a relatively small elite.

"The airline business is a prime example. Due to failures to enforce antitrust laws, the United States is now beholden to just four airlines (Southwest, American, United, and Delta), each of which is too big to fail. So in troubled economic times, the American taxpayer has been left to repeatedly rescue these airlines.

"I can only hope that President Biden and Secretary Pete have learned the hard political lesson from TARP's fallout. Yes, TARP was a necessary evil to save the banking system from collapse in 2008. But President Obama and the Democratic Party made a generational error by bailing out the bankers and then holding no one accountable for causing a global economic calamity. Main Street felt the pain from the recessession for years while Wall Street executives quickly returned to collecting bonuses that were essentially subsidized by the American taxpayer. It's little wonder so many Americans soured on politics and lost faith in the basic fairness of American society.

"Fast forward to 2020. After COVID hit, the American taxpayer (again) bailed out the aviation industry (including Southwest) to the tune of $37 billion. Unfortunately the result was not a social compact between the industry and the American citizens whose taxes insure and subsidize the industry. Instead these airlines enriched their executives and shareholders at the expense of their employees and customers. These airlines have also spent millions of dollars lobbying for a favorable regulatory environment that, as tens of thousands of aggrieved Southwest customers are experiencing this week, shifted financial risk from the airlines to their employees and customers.

"The reason Southwest continues to blame the weather for its own systemic failures is because Southwest doesn't want to be financially responsible for the airline's systemic failures. Southwest wants its employees and passengers to be stuck subsidizing the true costs of the airline's mismanagement. Tens of thousands of Americans had their holidays ruined by Southwest, and many thousands incurred thousands of dollars of expenses to cope with Southwest's meltdown.

"The meltdown of this single airline thus poses a stress test for the basic fairness of our society. Will our federal government take the side of citizen-consumers, or will our government again yawn at corporate malfeasance? Will President Biden and Secretary Pete hold Southwest accountable by ensuring that passengers are properly compensated, or will Southwest (and its shareholders and executives) be insulated from the true costs of this debacle?

"It will be political malpractice if President Bident and Secretary Pete fail to hold Southwest fully accountable for this fiasco.

"P.S. I'm writing from home and was not personally impacted in any way by Southwest's meltdown." <<

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James Fallows's avatar

'Soon' (probably 'next year') I will use one of Substack's many features to set up a special comment-zone thread for evocative topics like this. I'm grateful for the excellent accounts and analyses like those below.

For the moment, I'm weighing in with a "comment" to post two interesting personal emails I have received, related to comments like the ones below.

First, one from a very experienced flyer, on the phenomenon of last minute through-the-nose fare increases:

>> "I am now sitting in the United Club at SFO waiting for the red eye to DC tonight. I have a last minute near emergency that I must attend to. The round trip from [a smaller west coast city] to DC and back is costing me $3k since I just booked it this afternoon. There is one seat left in first class. I can have it for another $2k.Never mind that I have over 4 million lifetime miles on United, that I am in the Global Services top of the United flyer hierarchy, I probably can’t get that seat unless I pay up which I am not going to do.

"I think there is something wrong with the pricing of tickets on a less time higher price basis. People have emergencies they cannot predict. I feel they should not have to pay through the nose because they must book on unexpected short notice...

"I am not sure there is any real competition between today’s airlines... I am in [the west] at this time of year and typically fly to DC through SFO or Denver. United owns both those routes. United totally owns the flight to SFO. Sometimes I pay more for that half hour hop than for the SFO -IAD flight.

"I used to like to fly. It has become increasingly a pain." <<

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