Capitalists Support the Free Market

Except when they don't. Airlines want to get money from the Federal government in order to put GPS on their airliners.

Airlines are pressuring the government not to saddle them with the bulk of expenses for the planned multibillion-dollar upgrade of the air traffic system to one relying on satellites rather than ground-based radar.

I've got two words for the airlines: Tough Shit.

Airlines have complained for years how unfair it is that small airplanes use the same air traffic control system as the airlines. "They should pay their own way," whine the airlines, forgetting the point that everyone who puts Jet A or 100LL into an airplane pays fuel taxes and that is where the FAA gets a large chunk of its money.

Smaller airplanes, especially those that routinely file flight plans to fly by instruments, largely have GPSs. It is becoming fairly rare to find a small airplane that has an IFR instrument panel that does not have a GPS unit installed, whether it is a new airplane or one that has an upgraded panel. Most small airplane pilots likely have a portable GPS in their flight bags, even the pilots who don't fly IFR.

I don't recall reading about the airlines seeking or getting government help fifty years ago when they had to phase out their fleets of nearly-new DC-6s, DC-7s and Stratocruisers in order to operate 707s and DC-8s. That was hellaciously expensive, compared to the cost of installing some new boxes. And frankly, given that the airlines now charge for every amenity (other than toilet paper in their lavatories) and given that a significant fraction of airline employees have adopted the interpersonal skills of concentration camp guards, it is hard to feel very sympathetic to the complaints of the airlines that "it costs money to keep up with technology."

They can suck it up or go out of business. For isn't that the capitalist way?

(Don Brown points out that the airlines' technology was, in fact, developed by the government and that the airlines largely have proven themselves to be unable to operate profitably without Federal regulation of the industry. Indeed, the government took over en-route air traffic control when letting the airlines do it led to a spectacular mid-air collision over the Grand Canyon. So the idea that airlines operate in anything close to a free market is really a load of hooey. They never have.)