The airline industry is desperately in need of some kind of oversight. It simply cannot prevent itself from industry-wide collusion in route assignment and fare setting, and a long list of practices that are mind-numbing stupid. The cost of fuel is a handy excuse for airlines to hang on. If they would offer a fair price for a service, without endless games, people would eventually come to trust that what they were paying reflected the cost of the service they got. At this point some folks score below-cost tickets, and are sitting next to folks who have ended up paying the difference simply because they booked on a different day, or had the wrong credit card number to use for payment, or some other lame and unethical pretense. Airline industry management has a mindset that is sickeningly juvenile, and at times downright immoral. It needs to be saved from itself. This is where government should be able to intervene with some type of regulation. But the problems with that system are just as bad.