These previous posts have examined the hopelessly obsolescent Wright Amendment, which protects DFW Airport and its main airline — American — from competition that is beneficial to consumers by restricting Southwest Airlines and other discount carriers from flying passengers from Dallas’ more consumer-convenient Love Field to most states. Despite the absurdly anti-competive and anti-consumer nature of the Wright Amendment, American has done a good job of lining up powerful politicians on both sides of the aisle to oppose repeal of the outmoded law. As this Ft. Worth Star-Telegram article reports, American’s lobbying efforts appear to have paid off.
Rather than an outright repeal — or at least a reasonable phase-out — of the Wright Amendment, politicians and airline officials met Friday at DFW to talk about a “compromise” that would delay long-haul flights into Love Field for at least eight more years. This proposal flies in the face of the latest positive news from the exemption of a state from the Wright Amendment — since Missouri was exempted from the Amendment in November and Southwest started flying directly from Love Field to St. Louis and Kansas City, airfares have decreased dramatically and passenger traffic to those cities increased by almost 45% percent in the first two months. But rather than passing along this obvious benefit to citizens wanting to travel to other locales, our politicians are talking about forcing consumers to wait until almost 2015 to enjoy this benefit of competition.
I can hardly wait to hear the rationalizations for that one. One benefit of publicity over the Wright Amendment is that it provides a clear view regarding the leadership qualities of Texas politicians. Although American has bought support of the Wright Amendment from both sides of the political aisle, it is interesting that most of the Amendment’s supporters are Republicans, which is supposedly the pro-business and pro-competition party. So much for such myths.
Update: Mitch Schnurman has further analysis on the the skinny on the compromise, including Southwest’s conclusion that GOP Rep. Joe Barton would have bottled up an outright repeal of the Wright Amendment.

Things are not looking all that rosy these days at Austin-based computer powerhouse, Dell, Inc. While competitor Hewlett-Packard, Inc. is undergoing a revival of sorts, Dell’s revenue growth has slowed considerably and profits have fallen. Not surprisingly, Dell’s share price has steadily declined to around $25, a loss of about 40% in less than a year. Long gone are the heady days of the company’s $60 share price in 2000.
Noting these problems, this NY Times article provides a good overview of Dell CEO Kevin B. Rollins‘ plan to reverse the downward trend at Dell. The seriousness of Dell’s problems is perhaps best reflected by the fact that the company is questioning virtually everything in its business model, including the possibility of breaking its longtime exclusive alliance with major chip supplier, Intel. As the story notes, it’s far from clear whether even Rollins’ plan will revive Dell’s dominance in the notoriously competitive PC manufacturing industry, so stay tuned.