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Take Air Rage to the Polls
Opinion · April 4, 2004

Here's an election-year issue that hasn't gotten anywhere near the attention it deserves: the sad, scandalous decline of air travel.

The way we fly has changed more in the last four years than in the last four decades, and largely for the worse.

Airlines have cut back on services and amenities, airports are guarded by a new federal agency, the humorless Transportation Security Administration, and passengers are rowdier and ruder than ever. Many once-robust mainline carriers are on the verge of bankruptcy or liquidation. The list of troubled airlines includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, which is already in bankruptcy. US Airways isn't expected to survive the year.

Should we hold the current administration responsible? It's hard to do that when there are other convenient excuses, like 9/11 terrorists or market forces.

But here's something we should pin on the government: its enabling role in the stunningly rapid downfall of the airlines - from a series of meddlesome and misguided federal loans to the responsibility it bears for the record high fuel prices that now threaten to destroy the commercial aviation industry's fragile recovery.

After the terrorist attacks, the government rubber-stamped an unprecedented $15 billion aid package to rescue the domestic airlines, of which $5 billion were outright grants. The rest were loan guarantees. Many observers believed that the aid was excessive, and only postponed the demise of carriers that would have eventually succumbed to competitive pressure and poor management decisions.

That the federal government approved the aid is controversial to begin with. But now comes word that the U.S. Treasury Department is investigating the circumstances of the loans, and recently subpoenaed records from America West, United Airlines and US Airways.

If only that were the end of it. US Airways, the recipient of $900 million of these questionable loans, is now likely to follow one of two paths. It could either liquidate, taking every last penny of taxpayer-backed loans with it. Or it could sell itself to Virgin USA, the new budget carrier that's being launched by Richard Branson. Nothing against Branson, but should American taxpayers be subsidizing a British entrepreneur to the tune of almost $1 billion?

It's just something to think about when you go to the ballot box in November.

While you're at it, don't forget fuel costs. We're paying record prices at the pump now, and so are airlines. At the beginning of January 2002, a gallon of jet fuel cost 59 cents. More than two years later, in April 2004, the same amount of jet fuel costs nearly twice as much, 95.95 cents, according to the Energy Information Administration. Never mind that the current administration authorized a war in Iraq, of which an unarticulated goal was to secure the country's immense oil wealth.

Now there's speculation that these higher fuel expenses could destroy the tentative airline industry recovery. Would someone please explain why fuel bills have doubled after a war to liberate Iraq's oil?

Maybe that's something else to ponder on Election Day.

Has the current administration destroyed the domestic airline industry? Probably not to the same extent as the airlines - at least the high-cost, legacy airlines -destroyed themselves by being slow to change, bureaucratic and incompetent. No, if the current administration is guilty of anything, it's of loving the airline industry to death. It gave the carriers what they wanted: generous aid, loan guarantees and promises of cheap post-war fuel.

Little did it know that the very things the airlines and their powerful Washington lobbyists craved would do them in. The money only ended up postponing what for many airlines was the inevitable: bankruptcy, and possibly, liquidation. Jet fuel prices took off. And now we're left with a badly dysfunctional, hopelessly broken domestic airline industry that is expected to lose more than $2 billion this year.

Do those responsible deserve another four years in office? It's up to you.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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