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Last week I finally wrote about something that really did happen. Amazing. Usually if I write about anything that’s as good as a death knell. But not this time.

This week Delta and Northwest announced that they really will merge.

They will, that is, if they get through the maze of bureaucratic red tape set up by the guvmint, which has to decide things like will this merger reduce competition? Delta has, it is said, arrived at a working arrangement with their pilots, but that leaves the NWA pilots somewhat disgruntled. That has to be settled.

In the meantime, some financial guru has announced—yet again—that the airline industry cannot work as a business. Said they can’t make money unless the guvmint takes it over—then, I suppose it would run as smoothly and as profitably as AMTRAK—or the guvmint leaves it in private ownership, then just regulates the daylights out of it.

This argument has reared its ugly head for decades. In fact, for decades the guvmint really did try to regulate the business end of the industry. They were involved in routes and prices. Everything ran smoothly, but prices were so high—as one flight attendant of the era told me—that nobody flew except businesspeople and people going to funerals.

Warren Buffet himself—the sage of Omaha and one of the very richest people in the world—sold his airline stock a few years ago, saying that there is no way to anticipate the industry.

Others wonder why the industry can’t reliably and dependably make a profit. For example, why can’t they raise fares in the face of horrendous fuel prices?

I will ride NWA roundtrip from North Carolina to Indianapolis this week, so will come back an expert just as everybody else is.

In the meantime, I hope everybody will remember how well the guvmint has run everything else over which it has had control. Things like Social Security, Medicare, and, for that matter, Congress itself. Pitiful!

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