It is said that 1978 was a great year for the consumer: IATA's face was pushed in the mud; President Carter had a great new freedom of the skies policy; and the CAB had a new deregulation policy. At long last the consumer benefited from the massive new spread of low fares.

This is a gross exaggeration; low fares have been around for a long, long time. European inclusive tours, for instance, through the fifties, sixties and seventies, through trials and disasters, have grown to be a new way of life for the holidaymaker and vacationer from Northern Europe, who vacates Northern Europe en masse in the spring, in the summer, through the autumn and goes to the Mediterranean. No other way could that have been done without the promotion of low fares as part of a total package.