From Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post:

There was something about the combination of rudeness and incompetence, something about the haughtiness of the half-dozen people I encountered at the other end of telephone lines, something about the failure to apologize for bureaucratic error, something that reminded me — if ever so faintly — of the Soviet Union. …


The point is not that the airline industry is the evil empire but that all these problems — from the bureaucratic inflexibility of airline employees to the overwrought complexity of the system — are typical of heavily subsidized, uncompetitive companies operating in a centrally planned economy. Which is no surprise, as most airlines nowadays are heavily subsidized, uncompetitive companies, operating in what is, in effect, a centrally planned economy.

Read the whole thing.