The US Airline Industry, specifically 12 airlines including AirTran, Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, United, and US Airways, has called upon the public to help them lobby Congress about oil speculation.
The letter blames skyrocketing fuel for the thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service. They attribute the rise to not only normal market forces, but poorly regulated market speculation. The airlines are calling for increased regulation of oil speculation. They’ve established an informational website, Stopoilspeculationnow.com, for you to learn and contact Congress.
It is nice to know the airlines think a grassroots campaign to regulate oil will help. We cannot claim to be experts on the global economy, but it seems to be against insurmountable odds. The oil lobby is powerful, and if they wanted to, they could intervene to lower the price of fuel, but it would eat into their record progress.
Chris Elliott had some interesting insights…”No one plays the blame game better than our coddled, oversubsidized domestic carriers, and this is a prime example,” Elliott said.
We tend to agree. If the airlines want some regulation, how about bringing back some regulation of their industry? We seem to recall an airline passenger bill of rights that has gone nowhere. We don’t think it should be at pre-1979 levels, but some basic regulation seems to be in order.
But, we are amazed the airlines have gone to this measure. We’ll watch it play out.