Hi!
Deregulated? No. We're still feeling the effects of deregulation, even now, because it was not done.
Deregulation would've meant that, on the date of deregulation, NO airline would have any route rights, gate rights, or landing slot rights.
On that day, every foreign and domestic route would've been opened to the highest bidder. Every gate, at every US airport, and an foreign gates with a US carrier would have gone to the highest bidder, and every landing slot would've gone to the highest bidder.
The above did NOT happen. All the carriers flying foreign routes go to keep their routes. Existing gateholders and slotholders got to keep them also.
This meant that those airlines were given, by the US government, valuable assets that an airline trying to enter a market had to buy with cash. If we wanted to deregulate the airline industry, we should've. BUT, instead, we left HUGE barriers to start-up airlines, that exist to this day.
If FULL deregulation had actually ocurred, the US aviation industry would be DRASTICALLY different than it is today. We may have even avoided the 911 meltdown, because the whole structure would've been WAY more efficient.
cliff
pdc (Playa del Carmen, Mexico)