Somewhere around the 1980s, public ownership of airline companies began to be viewed with aspersion in many developed countries. State ownership of national carriers was deemed to be unnecessary and inefficient, breeding lack of competition and high costs, and reducing the flexibility required to be internationally competitive. In keeping with times, over the 1980s and early 1990s, most such "national carriers" were privatised, and even when governments retained a share, it was rarely sufficient for management control.
 
At the same time, it also became fashionable to decry "over-regulation" in the airline industry, and deregulation was touted as the best means to increase competition and lower air ticket prices for consumers. The more deregulated market of the United States was frequently held up as an example to Europe and other developed regions, of how deregulation could provide leaner, more efficient and therefore cheaper, flight services. (Of course, those who had to travel regularly on the US domestic flights with minimal  and grudging service, old and rackety planes and casual safety procedures, realised that there was a definite downside to all this.) By the late 1990s, the skies over Europe too had been substantially deregulated, and most other developed countries in other regions were rapidly following suit.
 
Strange to say, these moves did not appear to make air travel all that much cheaper, more pleasant, or even safer. In fact, even though the volume of passenger traffic increased exponentially in the decade of the 1990s, these moves did not even make airline companies themselves more profitable. Most of the major international airlines have experienced quite significant financial problems in the course of the past five years, and by early this year the situation became quite acute. The airline industry was one of the worst afflicted by the world economic recession, in particular the slowdown of the US economy, with several carriers being close to breaking point.
 
And of course, the last month has been nightmarish for the industry. After September 11, the airlines have had to cope with drops in passenger traffic of up to 40 per cent, huge increases in insurance premia, and so on, all of which have thrown their fragile finances into almost complete disarray. The response in terms of cutting jobs has been equally swift. The American-based airlines have already cut more than a hundred thousand jobs, while several European airlines have announced job losses of several thousand each.
 
In the face of this crisis, suddenly, airline company executives have rediscovered the hitherto discreet charms of state intervention. Throughout the developed world, and especially in the United States, there have been vociferous demands for government intervention and rescue packages for troubled airline companies. And suddenly the governments too, no longer seem so convinced of the advantages of deregulation and distancing.
 
In the US, for example, when executives gave out dire warnings of imminent bankruptcies, a bailout legislation was rushed through Congress by overwhelming margins and rapidly endorsed by the Bush administration. Along with $10 billion in loan guarantees, the airlines were awarded $5 billion in cash to cover their immediate losses. This amount is to be administered by an Air Transportation Stabilization Board, with enormous powers to decide  which companies get how much money and on what terms.