I'm flying Frontier.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES wrap-up - Viewpoint essay

I think we can all agree that of all the businesses we could be in--publishing, mortgage lending, commercial or investment banking, real estate, high tech, retail, et al--pretty much last on the list these days would be "air carrier."

Being an airline seems to be one of the few major business endeavors over many years that never really had its day in the sun. I mean, c'mon, for all the crying and whining and bailouts and bankruptcies in all those other businesses of late, they at least had several years of record profits to reach this point of economic crisis. Airlines have been operating on a wing and a prayer for as a long as I can remember.

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"When you get on an airplane these days, the chances are better than 50-50 that it will be operated by an airline in bankruptcy." I know that sounds like it could apply to these times, but that line was actually the opening sentence to a piece in USA Today more than three years ago--right in the middle of the economic boom for everyone else.

Go back even further. Everyone here is now talking about the Frontier bankruptcy filing of April 2008, but the old Frontier (this new one, founded in 1994, is a completely different animal, as it were), filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and subsequently folded. The list is nearly endless, really. Since the airline deregulation law was passed in 1978, something approaching 200 airlines with operations in the United States have filed for bankruptcy, and more than 300 of such firms have either folded or been absorbed by other airlines. In the 30 years before deregulation, none went bankrupt.

I am not going to be a Pollyanna and blame the current spike in airline bankruptcies and outright foldings on deregulation; I'm just pointing out that it's been a very tough business for the past 30 years, economic boom and bust cycles notwithstanding. There have been labor troubles, plenty of competition, maintenance issues, some bone-headed management decisions, and not a few travelers inconvenienced or completely stranded by sudden drops in--ahem--air pressure. Contrary to what flight attendants so politely, if robotically, tell us, the fact that the bag...