Both within the US, and on the North Atlantic, there has been a dramatic reduction in governmental control over airline pricing routeing and service policies. In the short run, the most visible and important development has been the substantial decrease in average fares, spearheaded by greatly reduced fares available in certain restricted circumstances.

Because decisions about price, routeing and service interact, I find it most useful to talk about the loosening of governmental strictures on them, collectively, as deregulation, and I want to concentrate my remarks on the impact of deregulation from my perspective as an observer of the industry, and as an airport operator. I hope also to develop the theme that loosening one of these strictures without attention to the others can adversely affect air service.