Flying Doesn’t Have to Be This Miserable

When did flying become so expensive, cumbersome, and, in a word, miserable?

While the summer 2026 travel season has officially come to an end, the bite of high airline ticket prices has lasted far longer than anyone would hope. Higher fuel costs pushed up already-steep ticket prices by as much as 27% this summer. But pricey fares show no sign of abating. As we move into the fall season with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve just around the corner, The Points Guy estimates that fares will be anywhere from 9 to 18% higher than last year’s holiday-season tickets.

Even before the war in Iran drove oil prices higher, major U.S. airlines had already become experts at turning the screws on the flying public. The major airlines started charging for checked bags in 2008; nearly 20 years later, U.S. carriers raked in more than $7 billion in 2025 in bag fees alone. Charges for seat selection—windows, aisles, or even just the privilege of sitting further up in the economy cabin—are widespread, even as the seats and legroom have shrunk. And perhaps worst of all, air service has worsened in many smaller cities and at regional airports. This means fewer airlines competing against each other on fares and schedules, more flights with layovers, and in some cases, much higher prices on less-traversed routes. 

The federal government has played an essential role in how we got here. While the 1950s to 1970s, known as the “golden age” of air travel, was certainly not perfect, American travelers benefited in many ways from the era of regulated competition. The federal Civil Aeronautics Board helped ensure that America had a stable, reliable air transportation system that served large and small communities alike and prevented the monopolistic exploitation of passengers. 

But in 1978, in the name of reducing the government’s hand in the airline industry, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, with the goal of injecting more competition into the air travel business. The theory sounded great: deregulate the airline industry, and the free market will make everything better. There will be dozens, perhaps even hundreds of new airlines. There will be more competition, lower prices, and no downsides for small communities, workers, or passengers. For a few years, this prediction even appeared to come true, but pretty quickly, the fundamental dynamics of the airline industry came roaring back. 

Scale matters in the airline industry. Big airlines started undercutting small rivals, pushing them into financial crisis and bankruptcy. The big airlines then snapped them up, consolidating the industry more and more. Big airlines shifted toward hub-and-spokes systems, even creating “fortress hubs” where competition is minimal. 

Today, for instance, Delta controls nearly 80% of flights in Atlanta, and American has approximately 90% of flights in Charlotte, N.C. Unleashed by pricing regulations, airlines were the pioneers of dynamic pricing, the practice of changing fares frequently for passengers. They then started “unbundling” their product to charge for every aspect of travel, from seats to boarding order. And now, with technology developing rapidly, the threat of AI-driven “personalized pricing” (read: even higher prices) is just a matter of time.

The good news is that we can have a system of air travel that is more reliable, resilient, competitive, and fair. It starts with acknowledging that the airline industry is essential infrastructure, and that it should be regulated as such. 

For communities, that means ending the idea of “flyover country.” Air travel is transportation infrastructure, and small and regional airports with affordable fares are critical to the foundations of our national economy. Airlines also get a lot of benefits from the public. They should have a duty to serve the country in return. One way to solve the problem of the loss of service in smaller places would resemble the “draft pick” system in the NFL. The airlines would be like the teams and get a pick order, and smaller cities would be like the players who are drafted. Every airline would have to go through and pick cities until all of them are taken, and airlines would be required to provide consistent, affordable service.

We also need a more resilient system, one that can better withstand shocks from nasty summer rains, extreme heat, winter storms, or economic crises. Over and over again, we’ve seen taxpayer bailouts or bankruptcies as airlines fail to deal with crises. And over and over again, delays and cancellations cascade across the country due to weather at big hubs.

We should have a “rainy day” fund for airlines, paid into when the airlines are making huge profits. There should be caps on hub concentration, so airline networks are not so dependent on a small number of airports, and so the whole country isn’t beholden to a crisis in one city. And we need significant investment in the basic infrastructure of flying, too, from air traffic control to airport infrastructure. And for passengers, the answers aren’t difficult: Congress could set minimum seat sizes, ban personalized and dynamic pricing, and require transparent pricing.