Hello from Washington, I'm Chuck Todd, cast. So you've been listening to this show for a little while.

You know that we like to have a little fun around the

holidays with a series of alternative histories a set of what if questions so we're

gonna do that later again this December but we thought it might be a good time to do a little bonus alternative history

this week for Thanksgiving.

No, we're not asking what if the pilgrims and Native Americans never met?

No, here's our what if question for the week.

What if the 1978 law deregulating the airline travel industry never happened?

I know what you're thinking usually I ask questions like, what if JFK had lived or somehow a Democrat would have won the

Secretary State office in 1998 before the 2000 election but airline deregulation

impacts almost everyone.

It's been on an airplane since the 70s, the rules apply to you.

And if you live in a smaller community across the country,

but you're sick of traveling to essentially one of three hub cities,

then you definitely know what airline deregulation

has done to you especially if you're over the age of 50.

So today I'm joined by Ganesh Ceterama.

He's the author of a new book called Why Flying is

miserable and how to fix it. He's going to help us understand how the deregulation

rules screwed things up a bit for air travel. Ganesh is a law professor at

Vanderbilt University where he's also serves as the director of the

Vanderbilt Institute for Political Economy and Regulation.

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