It stopped forcing airlines to provide service to regional airports, and paved the way for the consolidation of the industry into the monopolists as Eastern, Midway, Braniff, Pan Am, Continental, Northwest Airlines, and TWA were liquidated.
4 "major" carriers - American, Delta, United, Southwest
1 "mid major" / borderline major in Alaska Airlines
1 "not a major, but not exactly a regional carrier" in Jet Blue
and a bunch of regional outfits like Frontier, Porter, Spirit, etc.
That's not to say that more competition wouldn't be nice, but it's hardly the case that there is no competition. Heck, as far as that goes, Peter Thiel uses airlines - and their razor thin profit margins - as the prototypical example of why "competition is for losers"[1] in his talks.
Businesses either need competition or regulation. If they have neither, you end up in the situation we have now. Airlines are killing all but a few chosen cities in our country by cutting flights and jacking up the prices.
On top of that, they're completely indifferent to customer service. It'd be bad for their business to care about the customers when they already have regional monopolies.
I'm trying to talk with exactly the same degree of absoluteness that droopyEyelids is. Frankly, I'm not sure why you read my statement in any way different from that.
The article discusses how the Justice department approved a series of mergers between the major carriers that significantly reduced consumer choice.
It's funny that this "vote with your wallet", "capitalism at work" rhetoric never finds fault with these near-monopolies. You can't have it both ways: either the justice department needs to do its job splitting up big business to preserve competition and consumer choice, or we need to regulate the market so that consumers are treated fairly despite their lack of choice.