Stuff: March 2009 Archives

Our mother always told us that we should be grateful, either for the roof over our head or the vegetables on our plate. She probably would have felt that same way about employment. Too bad she didn't know Tom Horton, the chief financial officer of American Airlines parent AMR Corp. Horton was at the JP Morgan investor conference where people in the audience asked about labor negotiations.
They were especially worried about American and the Allied Pilots Association, where talks have at best been real unfriendly and real slow. Horton responded, "In a world where lots of people are losing their jobs and benefits, and the world looks pretty dark, well I'll just speak for myself, I feel pretty good to have a job."

We didn't believe him when Michael O'Leary came out and began moving his lips. He was yakking about how Ryanair was going to start charging people to use its on-board lavatories (oh the headlines!) and then said while it was improving customer comfort this way, his airline would get rid of airport check-in counters. Everybody would have to check in on line, O'Leary said.
Well, he was serious, at least about the airport part. Ryanair now officially plans to eliminate its airport check-in by October. You will have to check in from home, and the airport will only offer a drop desk where you can check your bags (for a fee).

 

This post is as much a personal note as it is professional one: we take note of the passage of Fred Krum, the man who ran the Akron/Canton airport and more or less single-handedly made CAK, as the airport's known, into a center for low fares that competed, and competed successfully, with its giant neighbor some 38 miles to the west, Cleveland Hopkins. Krum was director of the northeastern Ohio airport for 28 of his 33 years of service there. He was able to lure AirTran, which has thrived there, as well as Frontier, providing a balance to the presence of Southwest at Hopkins. Fred retired last September when medical conditions had slowed him down; he was only 57 when the brain tumor that had slowed him finally was to claim him.

Eternal truths: Veritas Aeternas. From MIT, home of smart things, comes this profound insight; people do not like connecting flights. Also breaking from this institution that drinks deeply from the all-wise waters of the Charles River, evidence that flyers prefer first-class seats to sitting in the baggage hold. Seriously folks, enough snark. The MIT working paper from Steven Berry at Yale and Panle Jia at MIT takes a very disciplined economic look at some of the ups and downs of the airline industry in the past year or two. Among their findings is the fact that "the number of passengers on a direct flight would reduce by almost four-fifths when a layover is added to the route."