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The article is long on rhetoric - language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content: all we have from the opposition is empty rhetoric - and short on verifiable facts.  There are too many assumptions, fallacies, etc. in the article to go into all of them. Under the regulated scheme favored by many, including presumably the authors of the article, incompetent airlines were allowed to survive at the expense of consumers, who were forced to pay higher than market fares for air travel, as well as depend on support from the taxpayers to cover operations that could not be sustained in a free market economy.  This applies equally well to railroads, trucking companies, telecommunication companies, utilities, etc. Deregulation weeded out the incompetents.  More importantly, however, it opened the market to new carriers, i.e. Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, etc. that have made air travel possible for millions of folks who otherwise could not afford it.   Numerous studies have shown that when the cost of air travel is adjusted for inflation, it costs less to fly today than it did in 1979, which was the last full year before deregulation.   Airlines have had a difficult time making money. That's part of the idea behind competitive markets.  If you cannot offer a product or service and make money on it, you go out of business. And someone else has a go at it. Propping up inefficient businesses, read Amtrak, means that the taxpayers (non-users) have to pay for a money losing operation. The authors have cherry picked scenarios. For example, they decry the fact that U.S. Airways pulled its Pittsburgh hub, thereby reducing significantly the number of its flights into and out of Steel City. They seem to have overlooked the fact that Southwest Airlines has filled a significant number of the U.S. Airways slots. For April 25th Southwest has six flights from Pittsburgh to BWI, with connecting service to New York. American, Jet Blue, United, Delta, etc. have 12 non-stops and 10 one-stops for the same date. The average fare for the non-stops is $71.80, whilst the average fare for the one-stops is $82.60. Of course, the cost of walk-up and last minute fares will be much higher.   My brother lives in Pittsburgh. I visit him two or three times a year. I have no trouble getting there from Austin on Southwest or American. And he has no trouble traveling from there to a variety of locations, which he does frequently.  It is true that approximately 40% of the relatively new Pittsburgh airport is shuttered or under utilized. The reason is because the airport was over built for a city that has been losing population for decades.  But the city fathers and mothers did not want to recognize it, so they built an airport for a city that was! What about Cincinnati?  Getting from there to major centers does not appear to be a problem.  As examples, there are 12 non-stops and 5 one stops to New York. To Los Angeles there are two non-stops and 32 one stops, with the lowest fare being $89.10.  Of course, as is true for many locations, service to smaller communities has been reduced or eliminated, although in many instances it is no more than a couple of hours by car to a major city airport.  The service that remains to smaller communities can be pricy.  But this has always been the case.  Passenger rail service to smaller communities, even in its hay day, was never as good for smaller communities as metropolitan areas. The only place where passenger rail makes sense is in relatively short, high density corridors where the cost of expanding the airways and highways is prohibitive.  In most instances bus service is the best option for smaller communities that need commercial ground passenger transport. The last thing this nation needs, given its tremendous debt burden, is to be locked into a transport system that the users will not pay for and, therefore, must be carried by the taxpayers. <div></div>
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