Inside Airline Cockpits (Some Sunday Context) w/ Ganesh Sitaraman

Today, another in our "Some Sunday Context" series, where we bring you new conversations and episodes from the archives that try to help us make sense of life here in 2025. Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal" -- unexpectedly -- has many of us thinking about airline safety and aviation policy. His show is concerned with the interpersonal dynamics inside a cockpit, but the larger context is of an industry that has been deregulated, degraded, and ignored to the point where, well... flying really sucks. So, today we bring you an episode we did in December 2023 about the roots of airline deregulation.

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It’s December 17th. This day in 1978, holiday travelers are flying around the country under a regulatory system that was about to come to an end. The next year, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 would kick in.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by Ganesh Sitaraman of Vanderbilt to discuss how the act changed the competitive structure for airlines — and in turn led to a degradation of service, reliability, and the glamour of flying.

Ganesh’s new book is “Why Flying is Miserable… And How To Fix It.”

Here’s our holiday book gift guide! https://thisdaypod.substack.com/p/a-this-day-books-and-merch-gift-guide

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

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