Deregulated airline markets as open access commons

Summary This paper adapts the Copes open access model of market rent dissipation to the analysis of a deregulated airline industry. It demonstrates that the open access characteristics of such airline markets lead to the dissipation of market rents. The problems of the U.S. airline system are depicted in terms of the model and some remedies are proposed.The authors are indebted to Parzival Copes and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.