When you rely on the magic of the marketplace, this is exactly the kind of place that turns into a toad. The sparse service and high cost of tickets to relatively low-demand destinations is an obsession with many of our nation's elected officials. Most of the nation probably thinks being a U.S. senator from New York is a glamorous job. But Mr. Schumer seems to spend his entire life worrying about how he can make Buffalo happy. You'd have more fun being city comptroller.
Some people see Washington as a place that takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor.
But in fact, the true obsession of Capitol Hill is taking stuff away from crowded places and giving it to the ones that are empty or shrinking. North Dakota may not have many people, but it still has two senators, and last month one of them interrupted a hearing on electricity deregulation to demand to know why it costs more to fly from Los Angeles to Bismarck than from Los Angeles to Washington. If Washington really believed in free enterprise, it would auction off the right to land at the most crowded airports, like La Guardia and Reagan National in Washington. Right now, the airlines that have these slots get to keep them forever. Some carriers seem to be nothing more than slot assignments and a bunch of accountants, and some of the mergers seem to be less about acquiring airlines than acquiring the slots.