You can say the same thing about many US industries. As the economy has slowed, auto sales are down. Manufacturing in general has slowed down drastically over the past 11 months. The tech companies have been hard hit by the events of the past 15 months. Even the service sector is experiencing layoffs. Each of these sectors is vital to the economy. If they go under, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. Are we going to bail out all of them? For that matter, could we bail all of them out if we had to?

If we bail out the airlines, won't we be setting the precedent to bail out other industries? At the moment, perhaps the best thing we could do in the short term would be to temporarily waive some of the more damaging government regulations that cost industries a fortune but accomplish very little other than providing job security for bureaucrats.

I'm not at all opposed to helping the airlines recover from the damages they suffered last week during the shutdown. However, bailing them out for everything that has happened in the last year is a different situation. How about all of the other businesses hurt by the shutdown, like the taxi companies and airport concessionaires? How about the Mom & Pop FBOs at hundreds of airports around the country that are still being hurt by flying restrictions? They're transportation companies, too.