[justme]

Government regulation = government run. When they're the ones that set the prices, make the rules and regs, decide who gets what slots, etc they are pretty much running the industry, are they not?

While I agree that DL, UA, CO, AA, etc all have hubs where they operate the majority of the flights, by definition, none of them are a monopoly. Here is the definition at investorwords.com: A situation in which a single company owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. This would happen in the case that there is a barrier to entry into the industry that allows the single company to operate without competition. They do not fit that definition. There are lots of different airlines that fly into each of their hubs. New airlines come, old ones go. They have no say in what other airlines can operate at their "hubs." If they did have a say, then they would start to fill the shoes of a monopoly. But just because one company is significantly larger or operates more flights out of a particular city than others does not automatically make them a monopoly.

Regulation, if done correctly, would be great for the consumer and wouldn't necessarily be bad for the airlines. The thing is, I agree with Judge in that the government doing the regulating would be a disaster.