Prior to deregulation, the consensus among many economists was that removal of governmental barriers to entry and pricing for airlines would result in a healthy competitive environment, one perhaps approaching that of perfect competition. Destructive competition, whose purported existence gave...

Airlines were among the first of the major infrastructure industries to be deregulated, with the promulgation of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. In that legislation, Congress took the unprecedented step of sunsetting a major regulatory agency - the Civil Aeronautics Board, which had been...