When Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was elected president in 1976, the controllers hoped that after eight years of Republican presidents, Carter would bargain over wages (something not previously allowed under federal rules) and would move hundreds of controllers into higher job classifications to lift their pay. But Carter did neither thing. The 1979 oil shock pushed inflation to double-digit levels, and to help keep the budget deficit from soaring, Carter turned stingy on federal employee raises. From 1973 to 1981, federal employees’ pay slipped 3.1 percent a year, after factoring in inflation. This infuriated the controllers, who were already upset that they earned 18 percent less on average than private-sector air traffic controllers.

Carter’s embrace of airline deregulation made the controllers’ on-the-job stress even worse. Deregulation increased air traffic, encouraging the creation of low-cost airlines like People Express, which had a $29 fare from Newark to Boston and a $39 fare from Newark to Columbus, Ohio. Deregulation also spurred large airlines to develop a hub-and-spoke strategy, which meant a stress-inducing surge in takeoffs and landings each morning and late afternoon at many airports.

The controllers’ big hope was that the Air Line Pilots Association, with forty thousand members, would honor their picket lines and decline to fly. That would have assured a PATCO victory. But the pilots’ union, which PATCO had done little to cultivate, was angry because the controllers went on strike during the peak summer flying season, when pilots’ hours and earnings soared. In a crushing blow to the strike, the pilots decided against honoring PATCO’s picket lines.