Very nice article in The Washington Times today. (Edited to the best bits)

The Fading of the Mirage Economy By Steven Pearlstein
The global economy is purging itself of unsustainable imbalances. Most of us understand that an overabundance of cheap credit created a housing bubble that produced too many homeowners supporting a lifestyle they could not sustain. We are now coming to accept the reality of lower prices and the wisdom that a house is not a substitute for a retirement fund.

The reality is that for too many years, airlines have sold too many tickets at prices that failed to reflect the real cost of providing the service passengers want and expect. But they also include costs that may be less obvious, like keeping up with preventive maintenance, hedging fuel costs, paying a decent wage to front-line employees, investing in modern air traffic control systems, and paying a price that reflects the true value of scarce air space and landing rights.
Airline executives will say that if they were to charge enough to reflect all these costs, they would have many fewer passengers. That's the point: A sustainable equilibrium will inevitably involve a smaller industry with fewer planes, fewer flights, fewer passengers and fewer employees.