My concern is still the threat of cabotage. Has there ever been a proposal to abolish the Jones act by the airline lobby in front of Congress? If not, what are the political pressures that have kept us insulated from that fate?

I fear with the ever increasing proliferation of automation , the safety argument for why you want 150k+ earning Americans flying the domestic skies, versus foreigners for cents on the dollar, becomes harder to sell. Add the popularity of schadenfreude among american private workers against organized workers and public workers, and it becomes a stretch to imagine they don't crack the code within my own career timeline (next 20 years).