Should we re-regulate Airlines or stop reading the NY Times?

After the NY Times called for more airline regulation following the FAA's software glitch and Southwest's cancelled flights Clifford Winston reminds that Airline Deregulation:  

Turns out that inflation-adjusted airfares were 60 percent lower in 2020 than in 1980. Indeed, flying is no longer a luxury. It’s cheap enough to allow most Americans to fly — by 2020, 87 percent of the U.S. population had taken a commercial airline trip. And low fares have cost us nothing in terms of safety: no major airline has been involved in an accident in the United States since 2009.   ... 

What about service reliability? Suppose policymakers force an airline that cancels a flight to immediately provide a cash reimbursement to all affected passengers – as the European Union requires in many circumstances. All airlines, not just Southwest, scratch thousands of flights every year, sometimes due to human or equipment error — but mostly because of bad weather. If airlines are forced to incur all the financial risks of delayed flights, something else must give — back to amenities and/or fares.

It's almost as if the NY Times editors have never read Chapter 3: the opportunity cost of regulation that imposes costs on an airline is increased prices or reduced service.  

HT:  MarginalRevolution.com