[mikedh]

Well the fact that demand and prices were higher during the evacuation of Florida meant that airlines were incentivised to have more flights out. It seems like this directly resulted in the huge volume of flights headed to and from Florida, which meant more people were able to evacuate by plane. And those people weren't clogging up the highway so people who couldn't afford tickets also ended up better off.

How was the "price gouging" in this case not an unequivocal good on the macro level? It seems the alternative is that the airlines held prices fixed but ran out of supply immediately.