Another View: United deal to leave travelers up in air

Much will be made of United Airlines' announced intention to acquire US Airways and thereby reshape the commercial aviation industry. It is hard to imagine how the American air traveler can come out a winner if the deal, as expected, goes forward.

The $4.3 billion purchase, which must be approved by the Justice Department's antitrust division, will dissolve the US Airways name and hand the airline's hubs in Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and Philadelphia over to United.

Thus the number of domestic carriers continues to shrink in this era of commercial aviation deregulation, and the resulting consolidations, and the trend toward hub-and-spoke operations, continue to hurt medium-sized markets such as Toledo.

As Paul Hudson, executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, put it, ''If this merger is approved without major divesting of routes and other restrictions, the 'Big Six' will quickly become the 'Big Three' and U.S. airline passengers will be the major losers. No airline should control more than 25 percent to 30 percent of the nation's airline seats or more than 40 percent of seats in a particular region. This merger would give United dominant control of most routes in the Northeast and Midwest.''

Finally, at Reagan National Airport in Washington, most US Airways routes would be sold to Robert T. Johnson, owner of Black Entertainment Television, creating DC Air, the nation's first minority-owned airline - a step that may appease the Justice Department when it reviews the merger.

All of this will assuredly make United the largest airline in the world. But it doesn't do anything to extract air travelers from the deregulation nightmare, which has compromised air travel since 1978 when deregulation became the law of the land.

Relatively unfettered competition was supposed to help air service by opening markets like ours to spirited head-to-head battles among the airlines. To say it hasn't worked is a colossal understatement.

What exists now is a fare structure in which wildly different seat prices exist on any given flight. Business travelers have been victimized by high air fares, while vacation travelers, who can plan ahead for their travel, have enjoyed lavish fare discounts.

Largely a thing of the past for mid-market travelers is point-to-point air service. The hub-and-spoke system, at which UAL and US Airways are both experts, has pushed cities like Toledo into second-class status, forcing travelers who use Toledo Express to fly smaller jets and change planes, sometimes more than once, en route to their final destination.

Another result of deregulation has been a loss of comfort and the amenities that used to be part of air travel. Seats are too small, leg room is too cramped, and a tiny bag of peanuts is expected to suffice as a ''meal.''

Commercial aviation, once an elegant way to travel, is now the airborne equivalent of taking the bus.

Then there's the problem of tight connections and lost luggage. It's no wonder air travelers are more vocal about the miserable conditions that now seem unavoidable.

Re-regulation - putting some of the old rules back into place - is important if commercial aviation is to regain a semblance of its previous prestige. The UAL-US Airways deal will doubtless be approved, but the real issue is to what extent this new mega-airline can self-regulate itself into a service-based airline that will keep its customers' needs, rather than money, as its bottom line.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)