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I'm not that worried about safety of the plane as much as my fellow passengers going off the rail. I think the biggest problem with deregulation is ever decreasing seat pitch. When you cram more and more people into a fixed space, they get more and more irritable. Charging, what I consider ridiculous fees, for checked luggage makes people bring too much as carry-on resulting in not enough overhead baggage space for what is brought onto the plane. More potential conflict.
The current problems with Boeing aren't from deregulation, they are from a shift in corporate thinking on who the customer is. It's no longer the airlines. Now the customer is the shareholders.
I'm not that worried about safety of the plane as much as my fellow passengers going off the rail. I think the biggest problem with deregulation is ever decreasing seat pitch. When you cram more and more people into a fixed space, they get more and more irritable. Charging, what I consider ridiculous fees, for checked luggage makes people bring too much as carry-on resulting in not enough overhead baggage space for what is brought onto the plane. More potential conflict.
The current problems with Boeing aren't from deregulation, they are from a shift in corporate thinking on who the customer is. It's no longer the airlines. Now the customer is the shareholders.
Americans keep getting bigger and airline seats keep getting smaller. This is not a happy confluence of trends.
Recently, a pilot doing the preflight check on an American Airlines plane found a hammer left in a wheel well. Further examination found a couple other tools left in the same wheel well. Maintenance seems to be a lot more often now, or maybe we're just hearing about it more.
Recently, a pilot doing the preflight check on an American Airlines plane found a hammer left in a wheel well. Further examination found a couple other tools left in the same wheel well. Maintenance seems to be a lot more often now, or maybe we're just hearing about it more.
Hot button issue, now it's going to make the news instead of being an internal matter or not reported on in the press.
That being said air travel is inexpensive and safer than driving, there is a lot of safety hype right now that while it needs to be addressed has a lot of nervous nellys and political grandstanding piling on.
There were safety measures that are not now being adhered to.
Deregulation has brought prices way down, and planes are safer now than they were then. The flip side is that flights are far less comfortable and resemble more and more an extended city bus ride.
Does Boeing have a problem? Oh Yes. But that's independent of deregulation.
I was a young adult back then and knew it was ridiculous and would result in safety issues - but I guess the "experts" don't even care.
In some ways deregulation was one of the best things to happen for US airline industry. Carriers were able to lower fares and compete with each other more directly. This helped transform air travel from something just for businessmen, the "Jet Set" and otherwise wealthy into something more democratic.
Downside of deregulation was what we're seeing now and have done so for past few decades. Air travel largely has become sort of "mass transit" with all that entails. All the glamour and comfort is largely gone, instead it's more like an experience leaving one wanting to take a hot shower after it's over.
There were other effects both direct and indirect of airline deregulation.
For one thing it set off a wave of mergers, bankruptcies and other actions that dwindled number of legacy carriers down to just a handful. Pan Am, Braniff, Eastern, TWA and others either vanished or were merged into another carrier.
Loss of Pan Am was probably the biggest blow. Though much of their woes were caused by things they did to themselves, bottom line was Pan Am was caught with it's pants down after deregulation. Lacking a strong domestic route system they couldn't compete in new "hub and spoke" market place.
One of more positive outcomes of deregulation came to benefits and changes for cabin crews (stewardesses).
When airlines couldn't compete on price they had to offer other things to entice the business traveler onboard. That often were stewardesses and you know sex sells.
To their credit Pan Am never stooped to putting their airline hostesses in super short mini skirts, hot pants and Go-Go boots and whatever other near streetwalker attire other airlines came up with. Pan Am's stewardesses were always classy.
Deregulation had nothing to do with safety and has had no effect on safety. The CAB did not deal with safety issues, it was a commercial 'fixer' of the kind you had plenty of in the 70s which mostly disappeared once people figured out that they promoted inefficiencies and benefited no-one other than the bureaucrats and those designated as permanent 'winners' by those bureaucrats.
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