The "big" winner in the nearly two-week-long partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration: Airlines that promptly raised fares when a series of FAA-administered air taxes were suspended. They reaped an unexpected financial windfall estimated at as much as $400 million.

The "little" winner while the FAA was unfunded and forced to lay off about 4,000 employees: me.

I coincidentally converted points from my family's American Express Membership Rewards accounts into airline miles and saved $120 because the excise tax on mileage transfers had expired too.

The losers in the political sideshow that played out while the nation was otherwise dealing with the debt ceiling: everyone else.

Our communal tax coffers were starved of the revenue that went to airlines instead. FAA employees and tens of thousands of outside contractors lost wages, and airport construction projects were suspended. Business travelers who flew while the FAA was shuttered between July 23 and August 7 paid phantom taxes on tickets they'd purchased in advance.

The "big" villain of the piece: John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. He claimed he was saving the nation $16 million in wasteful spending in the Essential Air Service program, but ended up costing the nation all that tax revenue. Mica also inadvertently reminded observers that he is the pork-barrel power behind SunRail, a billion-dollar rail boondoggle that only benefits his Florida House district.

The "little" villain of the piece: Delta Air Lines, which has pressed for a change in a National Mediation Board ruling and was painted as the invisible corporate hand behind the FAA shutdown.

The bad news: Nothing was settled during the two-week battle. The FAA still doesn't have a permanent budget. The Essential Air Service remains a costly political football. Republicans and Democrats are still at loggerheads over the NMB rule, which makes it easier for airline labor groups to unionize.

The worse news: We may live though this again on September 16, when last weekend's hastily crafted political "solution" expires.

"It's a good thing [Standard & Poor's] was only watching the debt ceiling fight," one transportation wag joked darkly on Monday as the stock market plummeted. "If they were watching the FAA situation, they might have knocked a couple more As off our credit rating."

The only way to understand the chaos of the last three weeks—there probably aren't any lessons to be learned—is to take it quickly and chronologically.

The FAA has been working without a permanent budget since its last normal appropriation ended in 2007. It's kept running thanks to 20 temporary funding measures. Like previous increases in the debt ceiling, "clean" stopgap funding for the FAA had generally sailed through Congress.

But when the House and Senate first began talking about another short-term extension beginning on July 23, Republicans threw a curveball. There would be no "clean" extension. They wanted last year's NMB ruling on airline unions overturned as part of any temporary FAA funding.