Give Southwest Some Love!

Virginia Postrel has a New York Times column on some pointless old piece of restrictionist legislation that hobbles Southwest Airlines in its own home port.

Under that 1979 law, full-size planes may fly from Love Field only to adjacent states, plus Alabama, Mississippi and Kansas, which were added in 1997. (Planes with fewer than 56 seats are exempt.) Anyone wanting to travel somewhere else has to drive another 20 miles to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and pay the higher prices that American Airlines charges at what industry analysts call its "fortress hub." Both Dallas-Fort Worth and American Airlines support the Wright Amendment.

Unfortunately, liberating prices was only one part of airline deregulation. Crucial other bits, like privatizing airports, allowing foreign carriers to operate in the U.S., and removing nonsense laws like this, are still undone, and in many cases are further away than ever because of professed National Security fears. Meanwhile the UK and continental Europe, as I write about in the current issue (subscribe now!), continue to surge ahead.