The situation has raised serious questions about whether airline deregulation was a good idea after all.
The move is a significant departure from the Government's 20-year policy of support for airline deregulation.
Since airline deregulation, passenger service has come and gone several times.
They are free to do so under airline deregulation and have taken advantage of that freedom often in recent months.
At first, airline deregulation looked like a masterpiece of public policy.
Since airline deregulation in 1979, more than 40 new carriers have come and, mostly, gone.
Not surprisingly, an early result of airline deregulation was an increase in air travel.
That effort, early in airline deregulation, was abandoned, but now United feels the time is right.
Such an exchange would have been unthinkable before airline deregulation.
The 1980s and airline deregulation brought many changes to the Jetport.