The airlines plead that they continue to lose money, though they had a reassuring quarter. There has been a lot of talk about a passengers' bill of rights, and it is true that the airlines are indifferent to substantive complaints of their customers. Yes, they will attempt to give quicker service when asked about flights and departure times, relying fruitfully on the Internet. What they studiously avoid discussing is the piracy that attaches to business class travel.
Regulation of airfares is effected by competition, which is as it should be. What is largely unnoticed is that in business class there is practically no competition. All airlines opportunize on the customer who craves uncramped travel.
Getting the price of an air ticket is something akin to shopping in a Chinese bazaar, one traveler recently commented. It is true that there are services -- one thinks of Expedia.com -- which will line up airfares from Point A to Point B with marvelous speed, permitting you to give your preferences for date and time of departure, and to opt for nonstop. But if you want business class, the fares are pretty uniform. Uniformly high.
An example, only one week old. To travel Washington to Phoenix to New York is $600, economy. By business class it is $2,800. To travel New York to Geneva by economy is $500, by business, $3,000. The penalty, in the first instance, is about 450 percent. In the second, 600 percent. It's easy enough to divine the undisclosed reason for the high penalty fare -- the airlines find people who will pay the price. What is hard to find is an objective reason for the larceny. There is more leg room and hip room in business, but not six times as much.
The perpetual quarrel over the regulation of air traffic eased off after 9/11, in part owing to the sharp decline in air travel. Air travel was severely affected and some airlines had to put a part of their inventory of planes into cold storage. The traveling public sensed that the travails of travel, which include baring one's feet in order to establish that there is no hidden nitroglycerine under your sole, are accepted as part of the price we pay for travel in the Age of Terrorism.