But what's more, flyers with flexible schedules can also reap potentially significant savings by flying into or out of "alternate" airports. For example, air travelers in the Boston area can save significant amounts of money by avoiding Logan Airport. T. F. Green Airport in Providence (which is home to low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines) and even Worcester Airport offer service to popular destinations--often at significantly lower cost and with less aggravation.

As airlines, and particularly start-ups, look for ways to compete and be more efficient, these alternate airports will see vastly expanded service. In Chicago, Dallas and Detroit alone, secondary airports are beginning to provide travelers with viable and typically less expensive airline service options.

Finally, flyers in the U.S. are benefiting from flying in the world's safest airline environment. With hundreds of millions of passengers carried in a single year alone, an air traveler in the U.S. can rest assured that his or her chance of dying in a plane crash is significantly lower than while performing normal daily tasks.

To ensure that conditions stay as favorable for young, flexible travelers (as well as the rest of the flying public) more still must be done. The government must be particularly vigilant of monopolistic conditions at certain hub airports where the hub carrier frequently controls a majority of the flight slots. To do this, the Department of Transportation must not only open slots for start-ups and solid competitors at congested airports, but it must also do what it can to support new entrants. Just last week, for example, the federal government mysteriously denied Shuttle America, a new airline operating out of Hanscom Field in Bedford, the right to fly to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. This type of move not only hurts the start-up company, but also cheats consumers out of an affordable and convenient service.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) too must work harder to find a way to update an aging air traffic control system. The delays that have plagued the system this summer are nothing more than a result of the success of deregulation. The more planes and companies in service, the more congested the skies. Finding a way to handle this traffic will be essential to the long-run health of the system.

All that said, air transportation has never been more accessible to all people. And so long as the government continues to follow the advice of Alfred E. Kahn, who chaired the Civil Aeronautics Board that deregulated the industry and urged that we make "every effort to encourage the contestability of [airline] markets," the skies will stay friendly.

Scott A. Resnick '01, a Crimson executive, is an economics concentrator in Cabot House.