Carter picked Mondale as a concession to progressives.
And as President he deregulated the airlines and appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed to jack up interest rates.
Carter did not cut the health and safety regulations on the airlines, that was Reagan.
He's talking about policy changes which let airlines fly where the wanted, price tickets how they wanted, and actually compete with eachother for passenger flow (the government used to control these things for some reason)--the consequences of which of course led to mass affordable air travel. The fact that someone thinks this was a bad thing with hindsight is truly strange.
If one is only concerned about how cheaply one can get from city A to city B, sure, deregulation has been great. But one can also be concerned about the stability of that industry and what that has meant to its labor force. One can also be concerned about the level of service and comfort.
One can also say that deregulation did lower fares and barriers to competitors for 25 or so years, although clearly bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions have led to decreased competition, which should begin to increase those prices.
Yes, on net, deregulation has been mostly positive. The question is whether it will continue to be so. Here's a good read:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223075818_The_Good_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly_30_Years_of_US_Airline_Deregulation
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