But here there are limits. Congested airports like New York's LaGuardia and Boston's Logan and Washington National are at capacity. For the Boston traveler, Providence and Manchester offer cheaper fares, as do Baltimore and Washington Dulles. But this assumes you have an hour or two to blow on extra travel. There need to be strict limits on how much market power a dominant airline can exercise.
Regulatory policy needs to make room for new competitors whenever there is evidence of abuse.
If price competition can work in California, it can work in the Northeast and Midwest. The fathers of deregulation missed one key detail. In an industry so prone to monopoly power, competition needs a traffic cop. Unlike the old style regulation, where fares and routes were tightly regulated, this would be regulation in service of greater competition. Professor Kahn should appreciate this better than anyone.