While American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have used all their lobbying might to try to get the federal government to shut down competitor JSX - because JSX offers a product that consumers prefer to their own - the origin of the fight against JSX stems from the big pilot union. And it wasn't even JSX they were really concerned with. //

That triggered the Air Line Pilots Association, which fought hard to make it more expensive and take longer to become a pilot. They didn’t want an expansion of flying outside of rules meant to limit the supply of pilots.

To go after SkyWest Charter – which fully complies with current rules, but DOT has simply sat on the application for no valid reason – they had to go after JSX which is a bigger scheduled charter operation. There are others, like Contour, but they saw the space growing.

Once the union started going after Dallas-based JSX, they were able to get Dallas-based Southwest Airlines and American Airlines on board for the fight. //

Nonetheless, the FAA plans to issue regulations cracking down on part 135 carriers and then investigate whether there are actual safety issues. This is a solution in search of a problem, because no one wants to talk about the real reason lobbyists have been pushing this.

There is simply no legitimate safety concern with JSX operations.