David Field: November 2008 Archives

This may have been the last time that Bobby Sturgell was able to speak as the head of the FAA, acting or not. So it pays to listen very closely. Officially the Acting FAA administrator, and officially Robert A. Sturgell, he gave his farewell address the other day to Washington. In a pointed note, he urged the flying public, Members of Congress, and the industry to temper their expectations of airport and airline on-time performance, saying, "one of our toughest issues is managing expectations. Everybody has to have realistic expectations."
Sturgell told the Aero Club of Washington, "The actual number of operations an individual airport can sustain hour after hour has got to be the starting point in any discussion." And in New York, "you can't expect to see 120 operations per hour at JFK, even in perfect weather, and I think we all know the cap at LaGuardia is too high. You can only run so many planes on two individual, intersecting runways." (The FAA's cap on LaGuardia operations is 75 per hour by airlines, plus six-non airline flights, during peak hours.)

Okay, we were just about halfway serious the other day when we asked why the Tarmac Task Force hadn't been able to come up with any very strong recommendations other than urging the airlines to keep their stranded passengers updated about being stuck n the ground. Comes now The New York Times, easily the dominant voice in US newspapers. The Times, aka the Grey Lady, came out and opined that the Task Force panel was "stacked with airline and airport executives who treated the definition of lengthy delays as if it wrtee some conundrum of astrophysics." The editorial urged that the DOT take some action, unspecified, and added, "it certainly doesn't take an expert to realize that it is the passengers who pay to keep the airlines airborne." You can read their reasoning here.

First you build a hanger, then you rebuild the plane. And that's what Luftie is doing up in the snowy wilds of the great state of Maine with its newly built hangar at the Auburn-Lewiston airport. There, it's officially commenced restoration of the Lockheed 'Super Star,' the first long-haul aircraft operated by Lufthansa capable of non-stop trans-Atlantic flights. Over the next three years, the aircraft will be brought back into flying condition so that by 2011 it can take to the air again from its new base in Germany once it has been newly registered and repainted in Lufthansa's historic colours.

 

Vox populi: the voice of the people has spoken, and it has told airline guys to think again. So they did, and in response to protest by their frequent flyers, some major carriers have reversed recently announced changes to their loyalty plans
The latest is US Airways, which reversed a widely unpopular move and said it would reinstate bonus miles and a 500-mile minimum benefit for members with Preferred status in its Dividend Miles plan. The carrier had rescinded the minimum award and the bonus points earlier in the year, and said it would give the elites only as many points as the actual miles flown. For travellers in the top tier of its Dividend Miles program, Preferred flyers who schlep 100,000 miles a year or more, the change had the effect of cutting their mileage balance in half. Randy Petersen, the frequent-flyer expert behind FlyerTalk and InsideFlyer magazine, began an on-line campaign he called 'Save Dividend Miles' to bring attention to the decision and he was overwhelmed with postings. So in response the carrier will reinstate the awards retroactively to August 6 for members of the four preferred status levels.

 

 

It seems like yesterday, but it really is 15 years since the flight attendants at American Airlines hobbled their carrier with a strike that lasted five days. If you had to declare a victor in that confrontation, and you shouldn't have to, it probably would be the union: the carrier managed to sort of fly through at first, but the five days cost it about $190 million, leading to a $253 million loss in the 1993 fourth quarter. The union's president, Laura Glading, was on the APFA board during that strike. Now, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants has posted a little site that brings back fond memories of those glory days.

De-mand. It's like the cheering crowds at a football game yelling de-fense. Only now it's a weaker refrain. And getting fainter. Travel agent sales reported through the airline industry clearing house, ARC, show their first monthly double-digit decline in volume - almost 12% - in years and the most dramatic drop in October sales since October 2001, the month that followed 9/11. And these transactions tend to be advance purchases.
So the airlines have begun their sales, and even though they're from a higher base price than just a few months ago, they're out there. Southwest Airlines, the low-fare leader of the entire world (sort of), just announced its third short-term sale for travel right around the holidays as well as in the slow shank of the New Year. It launched a sale a week or so ago - its first pricing promotion in five months and quickly followed with two more. Others have come in with sales of their own. Fare watcher Rick Seaney of farecompare.com says, "I can't recall three airfare sales from Southwest in a quarter, let alone a week."

A rare grumbling is heard. Or seldom is heard a discouraging word at least at Southwest Airlines. But the airline's pilots union seems to have joined their cross-town counterparts at American Airlines in criticising their management. But there's a big difference: the Allied Pilots Association at American is making its very loud grumblings in any forum it can find. But over at Southwest, what dissatisfaction there is comes

within the family, as it were: on the corporate blog.The Southwest Airline Pilots Association and indeed other LUV employees have used the Nuts About Southwest blog to jump on the airline's plans for a code share with Mexico's Volaris. Says one, "As an employee, I'm disgusted with the continued outsourcing of our jobs. I guess the company loves us all, unless they can find someone to do the job that we could do for cheaper. This is just one step closer to 'Southwest the travel agent,' not 'Southwest AIRLINES.'"

Man, this woman is always angry. She's Kate Hanni, most vocal of the advocates of a passenger bill of rights. Hanni, of the Coalition for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, was the sole dissenting vote among 34 to the DOT's Tarmac Task Force, as the Department called the airport/airline/labor/passenger group that it set up to give guidance on dealing with extended delays during bad weather or mechanical failures.
In the end after lengthy meetings, the task force decide to push a voluntary plan that stresses frequent communications with passengers rather than such provisions as a mandatory return to the gate to allow passengers to deplane. The Task Force was created in December 2007 after such well-publicized events as a December 2006 eight-hour delay of an American Airlines plane at the Austin airport or the massive JetBlue 'meltdown' during a February 2007 ice storm at New York's JFK airport. Hanni, who happened to take part in the Austin disaster, promptly denounced the report as "an insult to airline passengers."

 

Planes, trains and busses. Everyone knows that the Pittsburgh airport has taken a serious blow since US Airways downgraded it from a hub to a focus city to a spot on its route map. Even with word that Delta will fly between the city and Paris, the region's suffering. Comes now word that at least one city in the region has new service from Pitt. Sort of. It's not a flight but a bus, a very nice bus, which will fly, er drive directly between Pittsburgh's downtown and the state's capital city, Harrisburg. Dubbed the Steel City Flyer, the bus is to be operated by a company called Railroad Development Corp. This company owns rail lines in Iowa, Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala. 

It must have been a hot time out in Hoosier Land the other day. They opened the new airport terminal in Indianapolis, and it's really a new airport, even though they're using the same runways. The thing is, they moved the terminal so it's sort in a logical place rather than being way off to the side, like the old one, so now airliners don't have to take a trip through several counties to get to and from the city's actual airport. We were supposed to talk with John Kish, who runs the airport and the indeed the city's airport authority, but every time we connected, he had to go run to another media demand. You know how those reporters are. We finally got to John, who explained, "it really is a new airport..."

 

Farelogix, which likes to call itself "the last GNE standing," says it is taking a tack toward the open source community with a new application it will be offering travel agents for free, starting next March. Dubbing its open source application Hawkeye, the company's chief, Jim Davidson, tells us that agents can use Hawkeye with or without tying into the main Farelogix products, the FLX platform; agencies can also built the open source front-end package into a custom application. Farelogix, which will be the community coordinator and manager, may be taking a risk in making the source code available for free, but, he says, "a certain number of people will take the source code and come back to us for our black box," which is the FLX middleware.

The leaves are turning, the air is crisp, the sun goes down early...it must be time for a story on holiday airfares. Left Field, for one, is glad of this because some of the self-proclaimed airfare experts have been marking the rounds out there about how there really are still a lot of bargains to be found. Our point is this: airlines will always have sales and promotions and the big print will always say 30% or 50% off. The important point is how much that percentage is off, and in this year's travel environment, it's off a much higher base. We were pleased when the Public Radio show Marketplace called the other day and asked us to discuss this (even though their headline was sort of the opposite of our point.) Also on the show was our friend Richard Aboulafia. You can listen here. 

Just in time for the holiday rushes, the TSA says it will have its so-called self-select checkpoint lanes at all of the nation's airports by the middle of this month. This is a very good thing - if it works. The concept is relatively simple: instead of letting all airport passengers just line up and then get delayed behind the state legislator who forgets he has a .357 magnum in his briefcase ("darn, I forgot"), you can let people who think they know what they're doing get in a lane for other smart people and the people who know they don't know what they're doing get in another lane. And you can have a third lane for people who aren't sure where they should go. Are you following?

When the chief of Volaris told us a few weeks back that they have word soon about how they plan to enter the US market, we figured that there'd be word about a few routes into Texas or the like. Nope. This is a big deal: Volaris signed a deal with Southwest Airlines to set up a code-sharing pact that starts in 2010. You know that Southwest already has a code-share deal with Canada's WestJet, set to begin next year, and that it has been looking southward as well. It does not give many details.

At United, they're doing some interesting things like announcing the first sale on an ancillary charge that we've seen. United is running a promotion that gives a 20% discount if travellers pay their first-bag fee on line by February 1 of next year. And the airline pulled back on its plans to raise the fee to check a second bag. The increase, set for Monday, from $25 to $50, followed moves by others, but instead it will stay at $25. The new chief marketing and customer officer, Dennis Cary, says "we are listening to our customers." Cary said this before when he took back United's plan to charge for food on international flights and to rescind its long-standing policy of giving a 500-mile minimum credit to its frequent flyers. 
The carrier has done a few more interesting things: it has rejigged united.com so that passengers can go on-line and pay fees for checked bags, which should save time at the airport, or they can purchase United's Award Accelerator, which lets members of its Mileage Plus frequent-flyer plan multiply the number of points they earn per trip.

Neither of these rivers is the Seine: Those guys down there in Atlanta have a lot to celebrate, what with the merger and the stock options and all, but we think they should stop drinking the left-over champagne. They just announced two new routes to Paris that have left us puzzled: Delta (yes, Delta, which includes Northwest) is going to fly from Pittsburgh, where it now has almost zero flights, and from Raleigh/Durham NC, where it has even fewer flights, starting next March. We are perplexed.

 

Over at Delta, they're using the takeover last week of Northwest Airlines to justify "an alignment and harmonization" of policies. This means that Delta, the last big holdout among network carriers on charging a fee for a first bag, will begin doing so, starting in December. It will charge $15 for the first bag and $25 for a second bag. This isn't all bad because it's half off the current second bag fee of $50; the usual elites are exempted. Steve Gorman, Delta's chief operating officer, says customers aren't making a differentiation between the airline and its fee-charging rivals. Delta also cut some other fees, like buying a ticket over the phone, which drops from $25 to $20, so it's REALLY not all bad.

Well, it does look as if Barack Obama will squeak by and land in the White House...and when he does, airlines will see some changes. Ya know, more labor-friendly, and so on. The pilots know this because some of them have already sent a note to the president-elect saying that they really like him. But Left Field thinks that the place you'll see some real changes is at the airport and in fact at passport and customs lanes. And you'll see some changes in the way the US of A promotes itself abroad.
Obama, unlike his rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, strongly supported federal funding of travel promotion and told the US Conference of Mayors he supported the initiative. He has also spoken in favor of expanding the Visa Waiver program, which lets citizens of certain more developed countries enter the US without a formal visa. The program, which does require registration, applies in general to nations that give reciprocity to US citizens visiting there; it limits visits to 90 days. Although some visitors feel that the registration for the program is annoying if not onerous, it's better than nothing.

New from the small change department, bureau of nickels and dimes. Left Field was on the NPR (National Public Radio) show Morning Edition, blabbing about airline fees and charges and the prospect for change. (as it were.) Click on this link to listen, but here are a few more things for the complainers to complain about, including the US Airways plan to start selling pillows and blankets on board and a move by United to show you that they may be skin-flints charging you for your checked bag - but it's still a better deal than the famed overnight purple machine.
US Airways tells its employees in their most recent newsletter that that it doesn't yet have a date for selling the blankies and pillows, but they'll costs about $7, while United says that if you don't trust it to carry your bag and you don't want to pay them, that's okay. You can check it into FedEx when you check in at United, but it will cost: $149 for a flight under 1,000 miles, and $179 for longer flights. This is only avaible on domestic flights. Before you start complaining, this is less than some of the existing bag-schlepping services: $325 to $375 was the quote for an overnight bag delivery from one of the companies that specialises in carrying unaccompanied bags.

AmEx Business Travel took BTX, its on-line community for cor porate travel out of beta testing, and started it live. In the year or so since the concept was launched, the site, dubbed BTX, or Business Travel ConneXion.com, has been intended as a free membership site to share best practices, build relationships, and do all the other things that social networking sites are supposed to do. But BTX will rely on members to supply just 60% of the content. The other 40%, a mix of editorial content and 'advertorials', will be supplied by the site. Over 950 industry members have joined the community, says Charles Petruccelli, president, Global Travel Services for American Express. Content providers include the National Business Travel Association, Executive Travel, PhoCusWright, Rearden Commerce, in which AmEx has invested heavily, and freelance industry writers. Some parts of BTX are intended for American Express Business Travel clients; for instance, the site's 'Product Lab' will allow feedback on new and existing products, but only from AmEx clients. Initially, it will seek feedback related to the design of the latest release of its Axis information solution. Petruccelli will run a live chat with members on November 20th.