If American Airlines' argument for the Wright Amendment sounds familiar, that's because we heard it almost 30 years ago.
That's when Congress deregulated the airlines, and opponents warned that small cities would lose service. Let airlines fly where passengers wanted to go, and traffic would gravitate to the metropolitan areas.
We pressed on anyway, and things worked out pretty well -- except for the bankrupt carriers that couldn't get their costs down.
Air fares plunged, discounters became a force, airlines figured out ways to reach smaller cities, and millions of everyday folks have been flying ever since.
Now American is saying the No. 1 reason to keep Wright is to keep its far-flung service intact at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.
Lift Wright, and American says it will have to cut flights to places like Lawton, Okla., and Springfield, Mo., and more seats will be sold to Philadelphia, Chicago and the like.
Yeah ... and that's supposed to be a bad thing?
I guess that depends on whether or not you have a grandma in Springfield or a branch store in Lawton. But we decided long ago to let the market decide which cities get the most service.
On lightly traveled routes, there's even a national subsidy, so towns are assured some access.
Ask North Texas residents if they'd trade some back-road or distant destinations for more frequent, less expensive flights to bigger cities, and the vote wouldn't be close.
Of course, we can only wish Wright were subject to a public referendum. Only Congress can repeal the law that restricts long-haul traffic from Dallas Love Field, which may explain why American is putting such an emphasis on this old argument.
Lawmakers who might support repealing Wright on philosophical grounds -- to spur competition, for instance -- will have to face constituents who are more worried about losing their D/FW connection.
American's study lists 86 cities that are at risk of losing some service, ranging from one dropped flight to more than five flights a day.
American and its consultant, Eclat, tell us this huge number stems from the economics of hub-and-spoke systems. They feed traffic from many markets (or spokes) into one large hub, and a few passengers can make or break a flight.
Eclat concluded that if American shifts 45 flights to Love to meet Southwest head-to-head, three times that many connecting flights would be dropped at D/FW.
I'll accept the math but not the notion that it's more important to protect American's hub than to spur traffic to popular destinations.
American cut three mid-sized hubs in the mid-1990s, and Nashville, Tenn., San Jose, Calif., and Raleigh, N.C., report that they've recovered just fine.
Nashville was the subject of a Wall Street Journal story last year with the headline "How a city can win by losing its airport hub status."
It documented how Nashville had lamented American's decision to close its hub in the early 1990s, only to see Southwest move in and lure millions of new local travelers.
The Nashville airport doesn't have the reach it once did, and total passenger traffic is only now approaching the peak in the early 1990s. A spokeswoman says there are 47 non-stop flights today versus 104 in 1992.
But fares are down 18 percent, and local traffic is already topping 7 million this year, compared with 4.2 million for the same period when American's hub was at its peak.
Nashville officials even report that corporate recruiting is strong, because companies put as much emphasis on saving money as on booking a non-stop flight.
Nashville's experience illustrates a conundrum. An airport with a dominant airline creates a hub that brings greater reach and frequency, and lots of pass-through traffic. But residents generally pay higher fares, because there's less competition.
Southwest's campaign to repeal Wright is all about offering lower fares. American's study counters by claiming that much of the potential savings has already occurred, because low-cost carriers compete with American.
There may be some truth in this, but Alfred Kahn, the father of airline deregulation, says that's not a justification for keeping a regulatory fence around Love Field.
"It's like saying, 'We've got 95 percent of the benefits of deregulation -- why bother going for the rest?' " Kahn said.
Three decades of deregulation proves that we have more to gain than lose.
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