The airlines could have survived the original 911 attack, but the attack on the airlines by government in the form of "security" did far more damage than the terrorists themselves could ever have hoped to have done.   Unless of course our response is exactly what the terrorists prayed it would be.   Most of the $42 billion loss ($57 billion when Congress' $15 billion airline bailout is included) that the airline stocks took was due to the government "solution" rather than the original act of terrorism itself.

As usual, the government could not have done a better job of destroying the economy than by the public actions that it DID take.   There's nothing that makes a bureaucrat happier than to see a government "solution" which is many times more costly than the original problem it was intended to solve, and this must rank as one of their happiest moments.

This "bailout" had so many government strings attached that the airlines must have known that the conditions would give government so much control that the terms would eventually strangle them, but they had little choice than to accept this "corporate welfare" at the time.

If only they knew that most of their problems would be CAUSED by the government who pretended to want to help them!

If we accept the court's estimate of $1 million for each of the 4,000 lives lost in the WTC, this loss was a $4 billion loss, which means that the loss to the airline industry alone is 14 times greater:

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