Editing Airline deregulation (section)

===Civil Aeronautics Board===
{{Main|Civil Aeronautics Board}}
In 1938 the U.S. government, through the [[Civil Aeronautics Board]] (CAB), regulated many areas of commercial aviation such as routes, fares and schedules.
The CAB had three main functions: to award routes to airlines, to limit the entry of air carriers into new markets, and to regulate fares for passengers.<ref>{{cite web |title=Air Transportation: Deregulation and Its Consequences |url=https://www.centennialofflight.net/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Dereg/Tran8.htm |website=www.centennialofflight.net}}</ref>

Much of the established practices of commercial passenger travel within the U.S., went back even farther, to the policies of [[Walter Folger Brown]], the U.S. postmaster general from 1929 to 1933 in the administration of [[Presidency of Herbert Hoover|President Herbert Hoover]]. After passage of the Air Mail Act of 1930, also known as the [[Charles L. McNary|McNary]]-[[Laurence Hawley Watres|Watres]] act, Brown had changed the mail payments system to encourage the manufacture of passenger aircraft instead of mail carrying aircraft.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|title=The Air Mail Fiasco|url=https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0308airmail/|access-date=2021-09-25|website=Air Force Magazine|language=en-US}}</ref> His influence was crucial in awarding contracts so as to create four major domestic airlines: United, American, Eastern, and Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA). Contracts for each of three transcontinental air mail routes were awarded to [[United Aircraft and Transport Corporation]] (later United), [[Robertson Aircraft Corporation]] (later American), and [[Transcontinental Air Transport]] (later TWA).<ref>{{cite web|last=Baltazar|first=Lyndon|title=Airmail Comes of Age|url=https://www.faa.gov/about/history/milestones/media/Airmail_Comes_of_Age.pdf|url-status=live|access-date=25 September 2021|website=FAA History|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924005325/http://www.faa.gov/about/history/milestones/media/Airmail_Comes_of_Age.pdf |archive-date=2015-09-24 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Spoils and Scandals {{!}} National Postal Museum|url=https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/fad-to-fundamental-airmail-in-america-airmail-creates-an-industry-from-public-to-1|access-date=2021-09-25|website=postalmuseum.si.edu|language=en}}</ref> The contract for the New York to Washington route was awarded to [[Eastern Air Transport]],<ref name=":0" /> which would later become [[Eastern Air Lines]]. By 1933, United, American, TWA, and Eastern accounted for about 94% of air mail revenue.{{citation needed|date=October 2021}} Similarly, Brown had also helped give Pan American a monopoly on international routes. (See also the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission <ref name="centennialofflight1">{{cite web|url=http://www.centennialofflight.net/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Dereg/Tran8.htm |title=Air Transportation: Deregulation and Its Consequences |publisher=Centennialofflight.net |date= |accessdate=2021-12-11}}</ref>)

Typical regulatory thinking from the 1940s onward is evident in a Civil Aeronautics Board report. In the absence of particular circumstances presenting an affirmative reason for a new carrier, there appears to be no inherent desirability of increasing the present number of carriers merely for the purpose of numerically enlarging the industry.<ref>1941 CAB reported quoted on Page 32 of "Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America" by Richard H. K. Vietor.</ref>