Washington is cleaning up the airline industry with more regulation. NOT!

This latest example of Washington intervention is more patently absurd than others. All are absurd; this example is just so simple that it is understandable without a complex chain of reasoning.

It is classic top-down management in a world that is run from the bottom up. It illustrates perfectly why reality cannot be legislated out of existence. Trying to do so always produces unintended consequences. In this, as in most examples to help consumers, your life has been made worse.

From the American Thinker:

Unintended Consequences of Regulatory Overreach: Airline Delays

Clarice Feldman

Hoping no doubt to curry favor with passengers beset by lengthy delays Administration bureaucrats set unconscionably high fines for delays. As a result airlines will simply cancel delayed flights rather than bear these punishing consequences for often unavoidable delay:

Under new federal guidelines that take effect next month, airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a plane is stuck on the tarmac for longer than three hours.

“How can they say there is nothing wrong with having someone sit on a seat and run out of water and everything and sit on there for three, four, five hours? That’s ridiculous,” Kelly said.

With the new fines, a delayed MD-80 could cost American Airlines close to $4 million, and a fine for a full 757 could cost more than $5 million.

“It’s unavoidable that more flights will be canceled to avoid fines,” said American Airlines spokesman Steve Schlachter. “It’s one of the unintended consequences of a bill that has no flexibility.”

Reminds me of Stalin’s punishing factory managers as saboteurs when they could not meet  the unrealistic goals set in Five Year Plans by state planners.

Thomas Lifson adds:

Continental Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek explicitly told an investor conference that the airline will cancel flights rather than delay them and suffer fines.

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