I used to work in the Reservations Department for US Airways in the 1990s. Formerly, USAir and Allegheny airlines with host of mergers and other problems, by the way. I had a phone conversation I will never forget.
The person calling on the airline's 800 number was complaining about the complexity of the air fares. I said it was due to deregulation.
(Normally I would not give such a flippant response to a potential customer but after hearing that same complaint for the 10,000th time and not withstanding the fact that Americans had so readily applauded deregulation, the response simply flowed from my mouth.)
She paused and completely changed her tone of voice, to my surprise, and confessed she worked in the government office that had deregulated the airlines under Reagan. She said they felt deregulation was the best thing that could happen to airline industry.
Then she said, if we would have known that deregulation would have caused the majority of airlines to collapse and hurt the untold thousands if not millions of airline employees, we would have never deregulated the airline industry.
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