Airline Deregulation Act

[laughs] There, there, there is a history, you see? Uh, a- and it crosses party lines.

Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978.

Bill Clinton signed the legislation in 1999, uh, that repealed major restrictions separating commercial banking from investment banking affiliations.

Uh, then you have, uh, the financial crisis, the response under George W. Bush, the continuation of the emergency response under Barack Obama.

And then we had changes in how America travels and takes vacations.

After the Airline Deregulation Act in the early 80s, a little bit of a history lesson, they suddenly made airline travel, domestic travel very affordable.

So instead of like you and I used to do, we thought nothing of piling five kids in the back of our Woody station wagon and traveling to California for our family vacation from the East Coast.

Right.

It's the reason your grandpa calls this era the Golden Age of Air Travel.

However, this came to an end in 1978 with the Airline Deregulation Act, which heavily deregulated the industry.

Suddenly, airlines could now charge whatever they wanted and began competing for who could offer the lowest prices.

This inevitably started a race to the bottom, or bad choice of words for airplane talk.

That is the heuristic, the mental shortcut.

And for a long time, prior to the Airline Deregulation Act in the late 1970s, that was largely true.

But not anymore.

Not at all.

And the states, God bless them, a lot of the states did everything they could to try to address air ambulance costs.

But because of the Airline Deregulation Act, it was preempted by federal law.

So we had to have Congress say, do something to address both air ambulance and also other surprise balance bills.

So you went to an out-of-network emergency room.