I have read elsewhere, though do not know if it is accurate, that the airlines have received as much in bailouts as they earned in profits throughout their entire history up to, but not including, those that occurred because of 9/11. If that is true, how did regulation assure profitability. Personally, I am predisposed to the idea, but, again, if this is accurate, it seems like it does not provide any real benefit. Perhaps nationalizing would be better. After all, taxpayers do subsidize the airline industry heavily with airports, security, flight control, etc.

I think on the environmental merits, we don't want to induce more air traffic than the market wants.

Had taxpayers gotten stock for all the free money we've handed the airlines for every bailout, we would own the entire industry by now.

Deregulation is a scam, which is probably why the Republicans like it so much. We're still beholden to the previously deregulated industries when they lose money. However, when they do make a profit, all that money is privatized.

Nationalize the airlines and be done with this deregulation nonsense that never worked properly and only put federal money in the hands of the wealthy Republicans.

I think digamma makes an important point. Air travel was so cheap that people were flying to meetings when a conference call would have sufficed. A good regulatory structure, or nationalization for that matter, could solve both problems--raising prices enough to discourage unnecessary travel, while maintaining basic service to outlying communities. The system we had for 30 years was great if you lived near a hub, but awful if you lived in an outlying area.

Nothing wrong with cross-subsidies in principle, but the big cities already subsidize the small ones (and suburbs) far too much in this country.

Rather than bringing back the airline subsidies, we should abolish the farm subsidies, the Western water and electric subsidies, the Senate's systemic tilt towards the uninhabited parts of the country, the subsidies to abusers of federal land (grazing and mining), and refocus the Highway Trust Fund to disburse most of its funds to mass transit--and all proportionally to usage. And while we are at it, it would make sense to spend Homeland Security money where the security threats are, instead of using it as another subsidy to one-party states with Senators-for-life.

Most important of all, however, we should be charging carbon PRODUCERS a fee to cover the entire cost of disposal/mitigation of the carbon they produce. If we added to that a general garbage disposal fee, it would turn out that most smaller areas in the US cannot exist without massive subsidy. And maybe they shouldn't -- we'd all be better off if the suburbs and ex-urbs were converted to real countryside while the big cities got bigger.

And nowhere was the point made that, in other countries, small towns are served by trains. A good train connection to a city with an airport is just as useful as a lousy air connection.