The suburban Chicago Daily Herald reports that Midway Airport, on the city’s south side, is thriving.
While the rest of the aviation industry is struggling, Midway is thriving. Airline traffic nationwide was down last year, but Midway handled the most passengers it’s ever served: 17 million, a 9 percent increase over 2001. O’Hare had nearly 67 million passengers, down about 1 percent.
Why? Two words: Southwest Airlines. The low-cost, point-to-point airline has made Midway its midwest home.
Well, it’s more than that, of course. Not only is the airport served by Southwest–the only major airline to show a profit last year–but ATA, a mini-Southwest.
Some passengers call Midway better at customer service, “from accommodating people with handicaps to holding planes for late connecting flights.”
A recently reconfiguration of the small terminal makes the place a lot more attractive, and the food court featuring outposts of Chicago institutions (Potbelly subs, for example), is nice.
The key to the story though, is what the federal government did–or rather, didn’t do:
It opened in 1927 and was the world’s busiest airport from 1941 to 1959. Then the much larger O’Hare opened and took the crown, leaving Midway abandoned mostly to small private aircraft in the 1960s and ’70s.
Then in 1978, deregulation allowed new airlines to start serving new destinations.
The Reason Public Policy Institute has many fine reports–including this one–about how turning over airport operations and management to private companies can improve air travel. Unfortunately, much of the momentum to involve the private sector more often was stopped cold by 9/11, and the knee-jerk reaction to federalize as much as possible.
I am pleased to see the fortunes of this small airport revived, but I avoid it whenever I can–because of government policies, and they way they are implemented. Flying in is fine, but flying out makes me feel that I’m in a quasi-totalitarian state. There are more security checkpoints there than at other airports I’ve been to, and the screeners there seem more thuggish. Perhaps I would feel better about it all if I didn’t take my laptop with me; they’re always wanting to plaster a sticker on its sleek case, and someone is usually bleating “remove all laptops from all bags. Remove all laptops from all bags.” It just gives me the sense that so much of this is “security” just for the sake of appearances (wanding 70 year old grandmothers, etc.)