Airlines / Aviation

As seen in The Onion (note the source):

Cash-strapped American Airlines announced a new series of fees this week that will apply to all customers not currently flying, scheduled to fly, or even thinking about flying aboard the commercial carrier.

The fees, the latest introduced by American Airlines in a continuing effort to combat its financial woes, will take effect on Monday. According to company officials, these charges will include a $25 tax on citizens traveling with any other airline, as well as a mandatory $30 surcharge for passengers who decide to just stay home for the holidays instead.[…]

Arpey said that non-passengers of American Airlines should expect to pay a small fee when making Greyhound bus reservations, choosing to drive to their final destination, or simply being a citizen of the United States with a valid Social Security number.

Sometimes, the Onion feels remarkably close to reality.

Meanwhile, a few of us need to argue to make sure that surcharges for non-middle seats are considered approvable items on our expense reports, to make sure that corporate travel policy stays ahead of the a-la-carte-ing of air travel.

Seen at New York Daily News:

An investigation by the Department of Consumer Affairs found that 14% of the scales at John F. Kennedy Airport and 4% at LaGuardia Airport overestimated the weight of bags by a pound or more.

"If airlines are going to start charging travelers left and right for their luggage, their scales better be perfect," Commissioner Jonathan Mintz announced.

Oops.

Before market pressures drove more airlines to become sticklers about luggage sizes and weights, this probably wouldn’t have mattered much.  Scales at the check-in counter just confirmed what check-in staff and passengers knew was blatantly obvious, in those situations where bags were blatantly over the limits.

However, now that airlines are paying closer attention and checking….well, it’s probably a good thing that regulatory entities are checking the scales’ calibrations.

Seen at the Courant’s Coach Class blog:

Curious that Delta Air Lines should choose one of the biggest news days of the past century to slide out some changes to its fee structure. Doesn’t Delta realize that people might be too distracted by the election to pay attention? […]

[Delta is] falling in line on fees for the first checked bag. So this fee, which the airlines blamed on high fuel prices, is now institutionalized on all the Big Six (soon to be Big Five) legacy carriers. Regardless of fuel price, which have fallen to less than half their peak.

Thank goodness I travel light when possible.  (“That’s all you’re bringing” is a common refrain when I travel with coworkers.)  However, I dread seeing more folks trying to stretch the bounds of carryon baggage…or the slowdown at check-in as the baggage fee is collected.

Delta/Northwest’s baggage fee will be $15 for the first bag, and $25 for the second bag, effective December 5.

There are other changes, not all of which are bad – reduction of telephone booking fees, elimination of Delta’s curbside-check-in fee, elimination (for now) of the fuel surcharge on award tickets…and Delta’s adoption of Northwest’s practice of surcharging certain seat selections for non-elite flyers.

The bag fee is bad PR.  Presumably that’s why the announcement was made on a day when almost no one would pay attention.

One of the problems with working a day job is that it interferes with blogging.  Sadly, for bloggers like me whose interests are too unfocused and whose writing style is rather amateurish, the day job pays better. 

While I was away, I flagged several articles I could point at, or topics I could write about.  Sadly, it looks like I’m not going to have to time to do much detailed catch-up (especially with another many-miles-in-little-time trip coming next week).

But I can do a quick chop-suey post.

• While transiting ATL yesterday, a coworker and I were accosted by Delta folks asking, “are you a SkyMiles member?”   I suspect they were trying to get folks to sign up with Delta’s affinity credit card.  I waved them off with the response “not until that part of the merger goes through” (I use Northwest’s program to aggregate my DL/NW/CO miles).   They didn’t seem entirely happy with that answer;  whether that was because they were getting few takers for the credit card offer, or disgruntlement with the Delta/Northwest merger (which apparently passed the last major regulatory hurdle while I was in the air), I cannot say.   I guess I can ask when I pass through ATL next week.
   
• I had thought Memphis’ days as a hub were numbered, with the merger of Delta and Northwest.  However, a Commercial Appeal article paints a more positive picture, due to capacity constraints at ATL.
   
• There is one advantage to Congress’ approval ratings being so low.  When spending time with a couple of coworkers whose political views seem to be frequently-in-opposition to my own, it’s nice to find common ground on the irrelevancy of the Presidential race, given the lack of turnover in Congress.
   
• IJ has a blurb on some good news (from an insurer’s perspective, at least) from the world of asbestos litigation.
   
• The Courant expects that same-gender marriages will begin in Connecticut on or about November 10.
   
• Travelers and the AIA are becoming vocal about how many mainstream property/casualty insurers are not in need of bailouts, and therefore we shouldn’t be bundled in with the woes of those carriers (life, surety, and some leveraged specialty/reinsurance) experiencing indigestion with the state of their investment portfolios.  However, word of CNA’s cash infusion from Loews illustrates the caveats that ought to come with such a pronouncement. (CNA, however, does deserve some respect for masochistically joining the no-bailout bandwagon.)
   
• I’ve seen rumblings that some folks believe the crash of ’08 marks the end of the soft market, and the beginning of a new hard market for commercial insurance.   For example, a Wall Street Journal article (subscriber link) quotes Ace’s chairman’s observations that the industry isn’t as overcapitalized as it was less than a year ago.
   
• Speaking of the end of overcapitalization, the Palm Beach Post has an article mentioning how several Florida-only subsidiaries may be up for ratings downgrades due to the current turmoil.
   
• The Moderate Voice has an interesting post up about the varying views on the oldest extracurricular activity for teenagers in red versus blue states.  
   
• CT News Junkie passed along word of a UConn poll suggesting a plurality of support in favor of Connecticut’s constitutional convention question (50% yes; 39% no; 11% undecided) .  A telling comment in the story: “The Constitutional Convention question appears to be a referendum on the performance of the General Assembly.  Connecticut residents unhappy with legislators in Hartford support holding a convention to amend the constitution, whereas those happy with the General Assembly oppose holding one.”  That’s in spite of the pro-ConCon campaign’s push to make a ConCon about ballot initiatives.
   
  That comment also furthers my amazement that incumbents by-and-large will likely be reelected countrywide, in spite of an apparent across-the-board dissatisfaction with most legislative bodies.

While I was busy, and the site was down, last week, many of the large traditional U.S. airlines announced plans to reduce capacity in the face of ever-higher jet fuel costs.   Presumably, such reductions in capacity should bolster airlines’ ability to raise fares to the point where fuel costs can be better funded.

A blurb in the New York Times reminds us of one side-effect of those reductions:

Virgin America opposes an effort by six rivals to protect takeoff and landing slots they may not use in New York, Chicago and Washington this winter because of high fuel costs. The request by AMR’s American Airlines, UAL’s United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, the US Airways Group and AirTran Holdings is “anticonsumer,” Virgin America’s lawyer told regulators in Washington. Under federal law, carriers must use slots at restricted airports or risk giving them up to rivals. The six want to waive the requirement so they can trim flights without later losing the access.

While I appreciate the airlines’ strategic motives in not releasing unused slots, I think Virgin America has a point about the practice being anticompetitive.

Of course, considering how congested those airports can be…perhaps the landing slot bank could do with a little capacity reduction as well.

Seen in the Washington Times:

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem. [...]

“In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,” said the air marshal, who asked not to be named because the job requires anonymity. “I’ve seen guys actually being denied boarding.”

Having a no fly list is not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it makes sense that you’d keep folks who might want to turn aircraft into manually-guided cruise missiles off those aircraft.

The problem with the no-fly list arises from the hassles faced by folks who are confused as being a suspect on the list.  It seems to be rather challenging to prove that you are you rather than someone with a similar name, in a manner to appease paranoid bureaucrat.

That folks working in a different branch of the air-security theater are getting snagged by the no-fly list, is just very amusing to me.

Looks like those orphan miles I have in my Delta SkyMiles account might finally be salvaged. Quoting the New York Times:

Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines agreed to merge late Monday, in a $3.1 billion deal that would create the world’s biggest airline and could prompt other airlines to pursue mergers of their own.[...]

Seven board members from Delta and five from Northwest would join the board of the new airline, to be known as Delta. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at both airlines, would receive a board seat.[...]

Pardus Capital Management, an investment firm, estimated in November that a combination of Delta and Northwest could reduce costs by about $1.5 billion a year, in large part by combining hubs. Delta’s hub in Cincinnati is close to Northwest’s in Detroit. And Northwest’s hub in Memphis is close to Delta’s in Atlanta.

Some earlier discussion that I read indicated that the merger proposed maintaining current levels of operations (i.e., not shutting hubs) for about a year post-merger. Assuming that’s true, and remains true in light of fuel cost pressures…I’d still expect CVG and MEM to be de-hubbed as soon as the merged Delta can get away with it.

What will be very interesting is to see how the competition responds to that eventual reduced utilization of those soon-to-be-former fortress hubs. If it weren’t for the pressure high fuel prices is placing on airlines’ bottom lines, I’d expect Southwest, for example, to attempt to move in big. After all, Southwest already has a loyal crowd in Memphis who drive to Little Rock or Nashville to take advantage of the significantly lower fares.

I suppose that this reduces the odds that I’ll see direct passenger flights between my current home airport (BDL) and my old hometown (MEM) anytime soon. However, relief from the tortuous cost to fly into Memphis will be welcome.

Update: The BDL spotters mailing list passed along a link to a DL-NW merger propaganda website, which includes information on what the merged airline would look like for different airports. BDL-MEM still shows on that website…but I won’t be surprised if that disappears too long post-merger in a savings-driven dehubbing of MEM.

A couple of blogs I follow have mentioned that the May issue of Popular Mechanics includes a feature called, “10 Pieces of U.S. Infrastructure We Must Fix Now”. I’ve seen the feature mentioned in the context of Atlanta’s water shortage, but the entire list is actually rather interesting to me (not surprising, given my interests):

• Circle Interchange, Chicago
   
• Brooklyn Bridge Approaches, New York City
   
• Industrial Canal Locks, New Orleans
  (Ships can wait 36 hours for clearance to transit, creating a drag on the efficiency of the Port of New Orleans. PM doesn’t mention that survivors of the Lower Ninth Ward would like to see the canal itself fixed by being filled in….)
   
• Atlanta’s water system
  (PM estimates 18% of the daily water consumption in ATL is the result of leaky water mains)
   
• Alaskan Way viaduct, Seattle
   
• Lake Okeechobee dike, Florida
   
• Dover Bridge, Bonner County, Idaho
  (Northern Idaho bridge for US95, scores 2 out of a possible 100 in sufficiency rating.)
   
• Wolf Creek Dam, Kentucky
  (Kentucky River dam deemed in enough danger of collapse that TVA reduced the water level behind it, to reduce flood risk to downstream towns, including Nashville.)
   
• Sacramento River levees, California
  (Remind me not to write flood cover on the Arco Arena, or on SMF.)
   
• O’Hare

None of those are surprises, and many of them are slated for repairs in the next few years, assuming funding remains available. However, it’s nice to be reminded every once in a while of some neglected priorities.

(How much money have Presidential candidates raised to date for this election cycle?)

So, tell me again about how that impenetrable airport security is supposed to keep us safe?

From the BBC:

Four people were arrested after unfurling a banner from the top of the British Airways Airbus A320, which had arrived from Manchester.[...]

The move came as protesters were gathering in Westminster on Monday to oppose plans to expand the airport.[...]

Greenpeace said protesters put a banner reading “Climate Emergency - No Third Runway” over the plane’s tailfin at about 0945 GMT.

Is it wrong I feel a sudden urge to hop across the pond to see the site of this nefarious deed, thereby aggravating the problem the protesters were protesting against?

Seen at the Guardian, and submitted without further comment:

Asked if [Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary] was concerned about the chill that appears to be spreading across the sector, he said: “Not a lot. In many ways we would welcome a chill or something even colder.

“We would welcome a good, deep, bloody recession for 12 to 18 months.

“One, it would lead to lower fares and, two, it would expose the regulatory scam that is going on over here,” a reference to the group’s long-running argument with the Civil Aviation Authority over airport charges.

O’Leary also claimed that a recession would put an end to the “environmental bullshit among the chattering classes that has allowed Gordon Brown to double air passenger duty. We need a recession if we are going to see off some of this environmental nonsense.”