“IS THIS ANY WAY TO RUN AN AIRLINE?”

4/21/11

The Obama Administration’s new rules for airline have garnered much news coverage over the last few days and understandably so; this is news that directly affects a significant portion of the public in ways it can easily understand. The rules sound fairly innocuous; inter alia, they require airlines to refund baggage fees when those lines lose passengers’ luggage, to pay more for bumping passengers, to disclose all costs (including, for example, charges for meals, blankets(!), pillows(!), checking bags, etc.), and to not leave passengers on the tarmac for extended periods of time. Who can argue with such requirements? I can.

The problem with these oh so reasonably sounding rules are encapsulated by the typically inane comment of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who, despite working in a Democratic administration, is a Republican. Mr. LaHood, formerly a congressman from downstate Illinois, where people are normally quite sensible, remarked “Passengers have a right to be treated fairly.” Remember the likes of Mr. LaHood when you hear someone arguing that the Republicans are the party of small government and/or that there is a genuine difference between the two parties that jointly conspire to deny you your freedom and the fruits of your labor, but I digress.

Passengers may, but probably don’t, have the right to be treated fairly. There is nothing in the Constitution, or in the works of, say, John Locke or Thomas Paine, which stipulates that anyone, and certainly an airline passenger, has the inherent right to be treated fairly. More to the point, though, while airline passengers may (but probably don’t) have the right to be treated fairly, there is no doubt that no one has the right to be an airline passenger. Flying commercially isn’t a right; it’s a service for which we pay if we choose.

More importantly, while it might not be a right to be treated fairly, all of us wish to be treated fairly. Unfortunately for the modern American (the modern person, really), fair treatment is not something dispensed, or enforced, at least not in most cases, by the government; it normally takes some action on our part to be treated fairly. In this particular case, if one wishes to be treated fairly, one should not patronize airlines that treat us unfairly. If one airline loses our bags and charges us for the privilege, we should give the figurative middle digit to that airline and take our business elsewhere, perhaps, but not necessarily, to an airline that treats us with more respect.

I can hear the counter-argument already: That is fine in the abstract, but frequently there is no choice in airlines. In some, but not nearly as many as the complainers would have you believe, there is only one airline that can get people from Point A to Point B. Or, if there is more than one airline that runs a particular route, they all treat their passengers like cattle. There are a number of counters to this counter. The reason that many, if not most (I know at least one that doesn’t.) treat their customers like stowaways on a refuse scow is that their customers let them do so. Instead of going elsewhere, people pay for such abuse, finding it easier to whine to the government about one’s rights than to actually do something one’s self to secure one’s rights. And despite the protestations of those who think narrowly and/or don’t work very hard to find alternatives to rude treatment, there are ALWAYS alternatives to flying an airline that doesn’t deserve one’s business that extend well beyond equally insolent airlines. These include driving (Why on earth does anyone, for example, fly from, say, Chicago to Detroit or from New York to Boston? By the time one gets one’s self to the airport, endures the strip tease dictated by small government types like Mr. LaHood, and hurries up and waits, one could have quite easily driven that distance and gone point to point. Driving is also fun, if done properly. The best part of any trip to Orlando for yours truly, for example, is the drive down there and the drive home. Admittedly, the bar is set VERY low in this case, but the same is true in most cases. But I digress.), Amtrak (I said “alternative;” I didn’t say “necessarily good alternative.” Perhaps if more people took Amtrak, it would indeed become a better alternative, and how much worse can it be if the airlines are truly as bad as those who run supine to their public officials for “help” would have us believe?), teleconferencing, the telephone, or vacationing closer to home. We rarely (almost never, really) have to fly to conduct business or to vacation. We have, however, decided that flying is somehow a right, and the airlines have taken advantage of the vulnerability born of sense of entitlement to treat us in a way that deflates our dignity while inflating their revenue per seat mile.

The larger point is that we can’t depend on government to address our problems. The reason that we have a competitive, free market economy, or once had a competitive free market economy, is because such an arrangement delivers goods and services more effectively and efficiently than any of the alternatives. But in order for the system to work, we must actively participate in the system rather than ask the government to abort those aspects of the system that require effort on our part.