How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwing People Off Flights

Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by yock on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:16PM (#14109531)

You can't talk about busting up near-monopolies without first considering the market environment which created those near-monopolies. I don't see too many people asking how we got here in the first place. Without those questions (for which I have no answers) we're doomed to end right back up here.

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by droopyEyelids on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:55PM (#14109885)

What question is there? We created monopolies with the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.

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.

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by mindcrime on Thursday April 13, 2017 @03:59PM (#14110432)

I'm a little iffy on this idea that there is any monopoly on air travel in the US in any general sense. Maybe for specific routes, but if you look at the big picture, you have:

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.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by droopyEyelids on Friday April 14, 2017 @11:41AM (#14115080)

With air travel the routes are the product. If there is a monopoly on the route, there is a monopoly. And a cartel situation with the carriers agreeing not to compete with each other on that route.

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by oconnore on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:24PM (#14109611)

The whole point of capitalism is that you solve those problems from the bottom up, not from the top down. Pick one.

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by Thrymr on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:37PM (#14109729)

Are you confusing the free market with capitalism here? Capital is striving to destroy competition; in a truly free market, consumers will counterbalance that if it is not in their interest (e.g. favor smaller airlines that give better service).

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by droopyEyelids on Thursday April 13, 2017 @02:56PM (#14109902)

How could consumers possibly counterbalance a monopoly? The whole point of a monopoly is that you remove choice from the consumers while creating barriers to the entry of competition.

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Re:How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwin... by yock on Friday April 14, 2017 @11:16AM (#14114936)

I completely agree, though I thought it more polite to not completely dismiss out-of-hand the person to whom I was responding.

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