Others, including most major airlines, have criticized it as a perilous first step toward reregulation of passenger fares and service and as incompatible with traditional antitrust enforcement. Spurring more competition Whether pursued by DOJ or DOT, the development and application of an empirical test for predatory pricing that would not inhibit legitimate pricing responses poses significant challenges. As a practical matter, it would require information, gathered retrospectively, about an airline's cost structure and the array of options it had available to it for using resources and capacity more profitably. More important, it would do little to remove underlying impediments to entry and competition. After all, for predatory pricing to be a profitable strategy, it must be accompanied by other competitive barriers that allow the airline to gain and sustain market power.
Competition is critical to making deregulation work.
Accordingly, aviation policies aimed at benefiting consumers should first and foremost center on those areas where government practices are hindering competition. A good place to start would be to correct the many longstanding inefficiencies and inequities in the provision of aviation infrastructure. Aircraft operators should be charged the cost of using and supplying airport and airway capacity. Neither the use nor the supply of airport runways and air traffic control services is determined on the basis of their highest-value uses. A commercial jet with hundreds of passengers, paying thousands of dollars in ticket and jet fuel taxes, is given no more priority in departing and landing than a small private aircraft.