The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 reduced federal control over fares, routes, and market entry in the United States. It transformed airline competition, pricing, and route networks. The consequences spread globally as other regions reconsidered aviation markets.

Deregulation helped turn flight into a mass consumer product marked by bargain fares, crowded airports, and unstable labour. Late twentieth-century literature increasingly treats air travel as routine, stressful, comic, and economically revealing.