Cheaper plane tickets are okay as long as we are maintaining safety in the air, security at the airports and reasonable standards of wages and labour conditions. Those things are crucially important too. Quite frankly having strictly competition with nothing else in sight is not the answer.
We hear of numerous stores that lower the price of a particular product to get customers into the store in the hope they will buy that product. If a shopper goes in for only that product and gets the cheaper price, that is great, but the bottom line is that the customer usually ends up buying something else in the store at a higher price.
In the case of cheaper airline tickets, we also want to know that the airline is safe, that it is a good quality product, that the workers are being paid fairly and that safety practices are followed. However those areas often end up being cut as well.
Competition for the sake of competition is not beneficial.
I want to mention something I saw on a program a number of years ago dealing with young children in Mexico. These children were not brought up strictly on the basis of competition, as are a lot of our children who are involved in competitive sports and those kinds of things. They compete at school as to who will get the best mark. They do not help each other to do great. They compete to make sure they get the best marks and do the best because that is what is most important.
However these young children in Mexico were given a game and whoever won would get a prize. Let us just say the prize was two chocolate bars. What they found was these young children in Mexico, who had not been brought up in a competitive environment, did not really care who won. They were able to come to a balance in not really caring who won and they would share the two chocolate bars.
That is the difference between whether or not competition is absolutely necessary and where we need a balance in maintaining the quality of service, not just something for the sake of a lower price.