I’ve written on the subject of baggage fees a number of times before. I feel that for any legacy carrier, indeed any carrier other than, perhaps, an Ultra Low Cost Carrier such as Spirit, to charge a fee for the first bag checked is wrong.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
When you are flying to a destination, that is called travel. Travel is universally accepted to include the need to take along some belongings such as clothes, toothpaste and maybe a jacket, too. Taking these items for a trip longer than an overnight or, perhaps, a casual 2 day trip, generally requires a bag that is larger than what airlines accept as carry-on baggage. I can accept charging for a 2nd (or more) bag, but I refuse to go silently along with charging fees for a 1st bag and especially when an airline like Southwest Airlines refuses to charge for such a bag.
Almost all airlines operating in the United States charge to check a bag now. In fact, off the top of my head, Southwest is the only that doesn’t. There was a rush to charge for this when we entered the Great Oil Crisis and the ancillary revenue has titillated both airline executives and financial analysts all over the country. These fees were implemented and then they were even raised in many cases as the Great Oil Crisis eased off.
My extreme chagrin originates in the fact that while everyone in The Business blesses these fees and likes to angle these new fees as “services”, they aren’t services. This isn’t a charging for a Coca Cola, this is charging for a basic requirement (for most) when traveling. A Coke is a much more optional item. Furthermore, these fees subsidize giving these “services” to business class and/or frequent fliers for free.
Regardless, they are here in our system. So, if they’re going to be in our system, it would be nice to at least have some transparency both on the price of the fees as well as the requirements and restrictions governing these things. In other words, we should be able to see an “all in” price for our trip when we’re making the purchase and, by the way, that should be *before* we actually hand over our credit card number for this purchase. This industry is somewhat unique in that there are “fees” being charged after the purchase that while styled as “optional”, really aren’t. And the baggage fee is the epitome of that.
However, these fees have been around for 2+ years now and I don’t think they’re going away. Because of my history with airlines and certainly because of this blog, I know about these fees and I just “handle it” when I’m traveling. My own preferences towards airlines today lean towards LCC carriers such as Southwest and Airtran and on Airtran, I just pay my baggage fee online when doing my online check in and simmer down from my annoyance (which isn’t as great with Airtran since they charge a paltry $15 / bag instead of $25 like most legacy carriers.)
Consider this an open letter to American Airlines.
My daughter went to visit her uncle and grandparents yesterday. Her grandparents paid for her ticket and they chose American Airlines. Now, I should note that I haven’t flown AA since they instituted their bag fees primarily because I find American’s service product to be poor when compared to my other options. In short, I fly other carriers now and I’ll point out that I live in the DFW area, location of AA’s biggest hub.
Guess what I discovered? American Airlines wouldn’t allow me to pre-pay my daughter’s checked bag fee(s) online. There is absolutely no option for that anywhere on AA’s website. None. Zero. Nada.
Really American Airlines? Is that the best you’ve got?
After 2 years, you haven’t made a single accomodation on your website for the change in your business model? And, yet, Airtran made it almost in real time.
I get that you, as an airline, are a leviathan and that it’s difficult to change th direction of such a big ship. I really do. That means I’d have given you about 180 days to get that problem solved. All I can conclude from your inability to implement this kind of stuff is that, as a company, you’re just damn lazy.
But if you had to change your ticket pricing model and accomodate that on your website, you would have that done in 30 days, wouldn’t you? Sorry but a $24 Billion company should be able to get its act together a lot better than that. In fact, I know it’s been pointed out that your website is outmoded already but it is remarkable that as somebody who has visited it regularly since it was in existence, it really hasn’t changed much at all.
By the way, that means it still is a relatively large pain in the ass to get answers to my questions.
What’s more, when I discovered your egregious lack of accomodation for the inconveniences you inflict upon your customers, I phoned your company to see if this could be done on the phone. After your voice recognition mangled my requests 4 or 5 times, I retreated to asking for “Agent” and “Operator”. Imagine how aggravating it was for your system to actually say to me “I understand you want an agent but let me find out more about your needs before I connect you.” Or words to that effect.
Let me clue you in: I’m an English speaking, native born US citizen who is actually known for not having an accent despite living in Texas for 40 years. If your system can’t understand me, that’s *your* problem. Not mine. In fact, it wouldn’t be anyone’s problem because this is a prime example of why I find it distasteful to fly on your airline in the first place and it’s why I book myself away from your airline and have done so successfully now for over 2 years.
It’s worth the extra time to connect in a different city on a different airline. It just is a whole lot stressful than dealing with you, American Airlines.
Second, should I really be on the phone waiting to finally speak to an agent on this issue (which, by the way, isn’t addressed in your phone tree options as nearly as I can tell but I never did get far for all the voice recognition mistakes) for over 18 minutes on a Monday night? In 2010, I should be waiting that long? By the way, AA, I never did get through to an agent. I mashed the “end” button my phone and got in my car and drove to my bank to withdraw extra money to give to my daughter so she could pay for your infuriating baggage fee when she got to the airport the next morning. All because you, American, can’t answer your phone nor be bothered to update your website.
So, like everyone else, I’ll ask one more time: Really? Is that the best you’ve got?
When Emirates announced its latest purchase of 30+ more A380 aircraft, a lot of carriers took notice, particularly in Europe. The planned capacity increases that Emirates has put into place for the next 7 years is nothing short of baffling to most and it has made many airline CEOs wonder what they’re missing.
Emirates operates on a model of being “hubbed” in the perfect place from traffic between Europe and India, Asia and Australia. They compete with other international carriers on service and they compete with everyone with frequency and convenience. Currently, many of those flights from Europe to those destinations require a fuel stop and Emirates uses Dubai for that fuel stop which allows them a big advantage on X things: fuel is cheap, landing and taking off is cheap, Dubai is “on the way” to most of those destinations and isn’t much of a diversion for them, and they’re able to utilize their aircraft much more than some on a per day basis.
That’s a powerful advantage. Emirates has also kept many of the largest European governments (economies) from protesting much at all by being a huge customer of Airbus. It’s very difficult for those governments to bite the hand that feeds their aerospace industry. It’s notable that neither Canada nor the US have felt nearly as accomodating towards Emirates (and other UAE carriers) when it comes to access to their markets and in the case of the US, this is despite the fact that Emirates has also been a pretty good customer of Boeing’s.
All of that scares the hell out of European international carriers. Emirates also claims that these carriers are discovering that it takes an A380 to compete with an A380. And then they went all in with their latest A380 order. It’s very tough for those airlines to sit at the table and wonder if they can afford to go all in.
I don’t think it takes an A380 to compete with an A380. I think it takes an A380 to compete with an A380 on a few trunk routes and I think Emirates’ model crumbles with the 777LR, 787 and A350 for much of the destinations it serves.
Right now, I think there is an attraction to the A380 on those routes for 2 reasons. First, it’s the latest and greatest in long range aircraft. Second, it has the freshest service product installed as a function of it being introduced by airlines for only the past 2 years. Over time, the “newness” of the aircraft will go away (just as it did with other new aircraft introduced) and the service product will be matched by others on other aircraft.
Right now, a lot of those legacy international carriers that are so worried are trying to compete with Emirates using 20 year old 747-400 aircraft with a service product that is, in many cases, a generation out of date. If it isn’t a 747-400, it’s a 777-200/300 with a service product that was “copied” from the 747. See where I’m going here?
Since we don’t have much visibility into the real financial picture of Emirates, a lot of analysis of them is speculative. We don’t know where their financing comes from and at what terms. We don’t know what their fuel prices are and we don’t know what their labor costs are either.
That said, I don’t believe it is impossible to compete effectively with Emirates now and particularly in the future. I believe those long, high capacity trunk routes that Emirates works so well are going to fracture with the next generation of jets.
It’s already possible to use a 777LR to reach all of Asia from Europe and the 777-300ER will serve 90+% of Asia and do it point to point. While Europe has traditionally been the transit point between Africa and the Americas, that’s already changing. US airlines are now serving Africa more and more with smaller equipment that fits those long, thin routes pretty well. South American airlines are initiating services to several parts of Africa with similar equipment. and it only gets better as the 787 comes on line.
So Emirates may capture some traffic for a while from the US but it is unlikely to dominate particularly in the future. The magic routes to Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand are likely to remain an Emirates strength but take note that those same international carriers in Europe who are freaked out right now are also now taking delivery of their own A380s. Air France has them, Lufthansa just took delivery of its first and British Airways has them on order. They will have the aircraft to compete with Emirates.
Frankly, I don’t understand why someone such as British Airways doesn’t explore setting up a Dubai base to compete directly with Emirates. Or any of the others, for that matter.
Regardless, this belief that huge trunk routes will remain is, in my opinion, false. Those trunk routes will fracture into more and more “point to point” routes that are longer and thinner than ever before and the airlines serving those will be the preferred airlines for that travel. People just don’t like connections when they can go non-stop. If they can’t go non-stop, they still prefer the fewest connections. It’s the time saver and saving time is why we fly.
Frankly, I can see Emirates becoming a bigger player in its region of the Middle East/India/Northern Africa/South East Asia but I see them contracting over the next 15 to 20 years on those trunk routes provided those other international carriers step up and get to work on their fleet and service planning.
There isn’t anything magical about Emirates and despite their potential advantages from being Dubai owned and based, that doesn’t make them the carrier that can’t be beat. It takes work, investment and planning but it can be done.
The last thing those airlines want is their own governments becoming more restrictive of access to markets. It’s a world where that game is tit for tat and that works to no one’s advantage. They can all survive and prosper with the right combination of leadership, management, planning and investment.
It was reported last week that Virgin America is now considering flights to Mexico as their next move and I’m now officially at the point of asking “What the hell?”
The original transcontinental flights kind of made sense to me. The service product they offer is very attractive for transcontinental flights whether you’re in business class or economy. And they’re clearly working for VA.
But then we see flights being added to Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Las Vegas. Even Las Vegas I kind of get because it allows a bit more utilization for the aircraft between transcon flights. But West Coast to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando? Even if they do make money, is that really the best use of VA’s time at this point?
There has been a lot of words from CEO David Cush about access to airports such as Chicago O’Hare and Newark and I get that it is expensive to enter those airports. That happens in big cities dominated by large carriers. However, other airlines have made them work, why hasn’t VA?
Access exists and being continually afraid of it is getting old. I’ve pointed out in previous posts that there are *plenty* of destinations in the middle of the US who would love to enjoy VA’s service. Airports in places such as Dallas / Fort Worth, Denver, St. Louis (with a big aerospace connection to both Seattle and Los Angeles which are existing VA destinations), Kansas City, Austin (big connections to the SF Bay area) , San Antonio (another aerospace connection) and I suspect that even Atlanta might welcome VA.
But, no, the next vision is Mexico where competition from California is fierce and many other entrenched carriers are revisiting their business. Perhaps it is to, again, increase utilization but all I’m seeing are primarily leisure destinations and/or convention destinations. Not exactly the places where your yield is great and your service product is appreciated by high paying business class customers.
David Cush says they’ll be profitable next quarter. Great. My question is, are you really viable as a choice 3 years from now?
When does VA begin investing in the routes/businesses that its service product was designed for? When do we see them willing to compete with established airlines (most particularly AA)? Don’t tell me it can’t be done because I’ll point to jetBlue which started at JFK airport. Don’t tell me most of those destinations aren’t LCC friendly because I’ll point to Southwest and Airtran.
A close friend of mine is with a touring Broadway show (crew) and has been for over 2 years. As a result, he’s flown some major miles week by week and many of those were on Delta or Northwest Airlines. Nonetheless, he’s a mid-miles accumulator with them and he decided to use some of those miles to fly his girlfriend from Lansing, Michigan to Los Angeles to visit.
It was a bad day for that flight from Detroit to LAX. Held on the ground for over 45 minutes in Detroit, the pilot managed to make up some time on the 4 hour flight but when they arrived, they were held on the ground again for about an hour. It is notable that weather wasn’t the source for these delays. In fact, the hold in LAX was because there were no gates available.
Personally, lack of gates when there is no weather delay and late at night to boot is just bad, bad, bad. The airline knows the flight is coming in and knows it is a 767-300 and knows they need gate space to accomodate it. No gate is just one of the worst reasons to be delayed short of really bad weather.
Now, because this friend is crew on this Broadway show, he works every night and a good portion of the weekends on these shows and because of that, he couldn’t pick up his girlfriend at LAX. So he arranged for a SuperShuttle trip. The problem is, because of the delays she missed *her* SuperShuttle and had to take one that was much later (way past 12 midnight arrival in the Hollyweird area) and that was the final straw for him.
So he wrote them an email. He first said:
” I booked passage for my girlfriend on DAL1819 from DTW to LAX on June 10, 2010. The flight was 46 minutes late leaving DTW, and then once it had landed in Los Angeles, it was detained on the tarmac for *fifty minutes* at LAX, due to lack of an open gate. This, I’m afraid, is totally unacceptable after a four-plus hour trans-continental flight.”
and
” Need I remind you that you are in a SERVICE industry. I suggest you re-evaluate your definition of the word “service.” And quickly, if you want any more business from me. In this economic climate, I am not required to pay money to companies who do not provide adequate SERVICE.”
I’ll be honest. If he had asked me in advance, I would have advised him to complain because I don’t think things ever get fixed until people do complain but I also would have advised him not to expect any real response either. In fact, I would have predicted a canned response only tangentially relevant and not much else.
Well, Delta, you surprised me. Not only did you respond promptly, you responded in a way that left no doubt that you actually read the complaint, followed up on it (possibly even escalated it to the station manager in LAX) and then delivered a flight credit for the inconvenience and delivered it very promptly. It doesn’t get better than that. I’m impressed with the context of the response, the speed and, frankly, I’m impressed that it was a responsed that was neither an under nor an over reaction to the customer complaint. Here is their response (with names redacted):
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding irregular flight operations while your girlfriend traveling with us. On behalf of everyone at Delta Air Lines, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience
caused to your girlfriend due to delay of our flight #### on June 10, 2010.
I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused when our flight #### was delayed on the tarmac waiting for an available gate. Be assured I will be sharing your comments with our Operations Control Center and Airport Customer Service leadership teams for their internal follow up. We want to make every effort to deplane all passengers in a timely manner,especially those passengers with a connecting flight.
To demonstrate our commitment to customer service and as a gesture of apology for the irregular flight operations, I have issued an Electronic Transportation Credit Voucher (eTCV) in the amount of $75.00 for Ms. <name redacted>. Please note the voucher number and associated Terms and Conditions will be arriving in a separate email. Please keep the voucher number and the Terms and Conditions since the number is required for redemption. It is also important for me to mention that no charge is assessed for reservations confirmed online at delta.com.
As a loyal SkyMiles member since August 30, 2008, you are an integral part of our customer base and we are always interested in your feedback. I hope I have been able to resolve any concerns you have about irregular flight operations. Your business is important to us and given the opportunity of serving you in the future, I am confident Delta will not only meet but exceed your expectations.
Sincerely,
Yousef M. Sequeira
Coordinator, Customer Care
Delta Air Lines/KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
Mr. Sequeira, your response was the epitome of what good airline service should be with respect to a legitimate complaint. You were responsive without being a doormat.
Everyone should hear the good as well as the bad. This is another good story and let’s hope I keep hearing about more good ones.
Update 6/10/2010 at 11:00am CDT: I sent 2 emails yesterday afternoon to American Airlines’ Public Relations department and while I got several odd “out of office” emails back, no one yet has responded to my inquiry on whether or not they plan to comment or react to this video.
Original post:
So, I found this video this yesterday evening:
The real lesson in all of this is for American Airlines. You never know *who* is flying on your airline and *who* your employees are potentially harming or lying to on any one day. It might be some powerless schmo and it might be a powerful executive. Even worse, it might be someone with pretty good graphic skills and who knows how to both tell a story and edit a video that goes viral beyond an airline’s worst dreams.
The guy will probably gets some satisfaction from this. Probably a new bike and based on what I saw, that’s probably a $2000+ bike. But the cost isn’t the bike. The cost is the PR nightmare that this will become over the next few days when this video truly goes viral worldwide. And it’s good enough to do so. The cost of everyone at AA now scrambling to deal with this will far exceed the cost of the bike and their efforts won’t fully repair the image problem.
You can read more about the author’s problems at NYC Aviation.
It’s rare for me to comment on in flight entertainment and internet access on aircraft because A) it doesn’t interest me that much and B) these developments seem fractured at best.
There isn’t much harmony between IFE offerings between various airlines. Everyone has their own system and their own content and controls it in their own way. The differences range from portable media players to LiveTV to offerings that approach what you might be able to get on cable TV. Some airlines charge a lot for it, some charge a little and some don’t charge for it depending the fare you’re traveling on. It’s terribly mixed up and in the United States, you never know what you might be able to access from one flight to another. Who wants to make plans for that?
Internet access is a bit different in that most airlines are adopting the GoGo system (although Southwest has adopted Row44’s offering) but even though the system is (mostly) consistent, you still don’t know what aircraft it will be on in many cases and it certainly isn’t something one plans on having available.
The recent conversation about JetStar offering iPad units for rental and IFE got me to thinking about what’s wrong with IFE and internet access on aircraft in the US.
Value.
The pricing for many of these options doesn’t really strike me as being of real value. Most often, content is priced on a per flight basis and while that seems like value, it really isn’t. I wonder if more revenue could be generated if airlines would get over their fears of earning money and change the value proposition. Charge by the show instead.
In other words, follow an iTunes model instead of an “all in model”. Allow people to buy a movie for viewing for $2.99 or a TV show for $0.99. Give them a rational a la carte option and I suspect on shorter duration flights, you’ll earn more revenue from people wanting a diversion for a price that is appropriate for the time they are on the aircraft. Those a la carte pricings will also make “all in” package seem like more of a value the longer the flight is. In other words, concentrate on the “take” per flight and less on recovering fixed “costs” per flight. The truth is, the more people use it, the more they will use it in the future.
Internet access seems like a “value” at first glance on most aircraft. Originally priced from $10 to $12 per flight, GoGo InFlight is now offering packages that range from $4.95 per 1.5 hour flight to $12.95 for flights over 3 hours in duration. That’s a step in the right direction but what I want (and what I suspect people want) is the option to just buy “time” no matter what the length of the flight is. Few people plan to use their “service” for 3 or more hours on aircraft. Offer them the ability to do “business” for 1.5 hours for $5.00 and I think you’ll see the use rates skyrocket.
The thing is, anytime someone doesn’t use these services on a flight, you’ve lost a revenue opportunity you’ll never get back. More flexibility in both access and price means a more attractive set of options for what is a widely varied group of people traveling any one day.
When iTunes began as a store for music, music labels were horrified at sellings songs for just $0.99 a song. Until they saw the revenue streams that developed. Once they saw the use rate go up, they actually argued with Apple to offer more diverse pricing opportunities. Bargain rates for slow selling items and premium rates for hits. This is a model that I think will work better on aircraft because it fits more needs and because it is a model people have become comfortable with.
Continental Airlines announced their first route to use their soon to arrive 787 aircraft. It will be from Houston to Auckland, NZ and if nothing else, this is just fun to think about. Tentatively scheduled for November of 2011, it’s a long way off still and I would regard it as being subject to a lot of things going right such as the aircraft arriving in time.
This is exactly why I believe aircraft such as the A380 and 747-8 have a very limited role in the future of air travel. We now have aircraft that, in the broad scale, are medium sized but very long range capable. The 777-200LR was the first but even that aircraft is a touch big for some routes. Not so for the 787-8. The 787-8 is a 767/A330 sized aircraft capable of handling longer, thinner routes that, frankly, really don’t get flown today.
Houston to Auckland may strike many as a little weird but it really isn’t. It puts Auckland within range of the middle of the United States with a full load and margin for safety. Suddenly there are a whole lot of cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest that can enjoy 1 stop service to New Zealand. Previously those people had to fly to the West Coast and, in many cases, had to make 2 stops before arriving in LA. Even if they had to make one stop, this flight will mean less travel time “door to door” than ever experienced before.
Houston might seem an odd gateway to Auckland but it isn’t. Consider the hub cities the new ContiUnited will have. You can feed traffic from NYC, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Cleveland, Chicago and Houston to that flight. That’s probably not enough to fill a 747-800 but it’s plenty to fill a 787-8 aircraft and I suspect a lot of that traffic will tend towards a more premium customer.
The United part of the airline will continue to handle West Coast to Australia trips. Air New Zealand will probably keep their routes from New Zealand to the US but ContiUnited will now be the first to open up the eastern half of the US to Down Under. That’s huge and a bit of a blow to both Delta (SkyTeam) and American Airlines (Oneworld). This could potentially see Delta and/or AA opening up routes using the 787 to similar destinations Down Under.
Will it happen? I think so but it does have a certain fairy tale quality to it. I remember Aviation.Net members discussing such fantasy routes as far back as 2005 I think and when such things get fantasized on Aviation.Net, I tend to believe they’re too good to be true. However, I believe this has a better than 50% chance of happening because it fits well within how Continental is run, the Star Alliance network and its what a SuperLegacy network airline should be flying when it comes to long haul destinations.
Last week, someone I know was scheduled to fly to Las Vegas from DFW on US Airways. Their teenage child had gone into the hospital at the first of the week due to a severe and hard to cure infection. She couldn’t take the trip because of this and asked me what to do. I gave her the phone number to US Airways and told her to call and describe why she couldn’t make the trip. I also warned not to expect much, if anything, because it was the most Economy of Economy fares.
US Airways heard the reason, called the hospital to verify the hospitalization and then called back to waive the change fee ($150) and give a credit for the value of the flight ($260) usable for the next 12 months. I advised my friend to call US Airways an hour later and just confirm that the credit and conditions were in fact on the record locater and they were.
Not only was it a satisfying experience but it was handled expeditiously and with sensitivity. I have to give US Airways a lot of credit for how this was handled and its proof that not everything goes wrong in the airline world.
Since I wrote this post HERE in mid January, I’ve kept an eye on airfares between these two cities. A check made yesterday revealed that advanced purchase (and not too advanced as in less than 30 day) fares are now at $158.00 on American Airlines and Airtran. They are a few dollars higher on Midwest and a few more dollars higher on the Frontier flight that is actually the Midwest flight.
Airtran hasn’t started these flights yet and when they do, they’re planning to use SkyWest CRJ-200 aircraft for those trips. Not the most comfortable airliner for 2+ hours of flight. It’s interesting to note that since I last visited this subject, AA has upgraded its equipment to CRJ-700 aircraft on most of the flights with just one ERJ-145 remaining. Midwest/Frontier continues to use Embraer E-170 equipment and both those aircraft are quite tolerable for the trip.
Even more interesting, Southwest Airlines is now offering not one but two “direct” flights with no plane change between the two cities and their cheapest available fares match Airtran’s offerings. The flight times are 3 hours, 10 minutes which is just shy of an hour more than the others nominally. In other words, they’ve shortened up the transit time by 20 minutes and when you consider where you live in Dallas, flying through Love Field just might make that a wash at this point. You also get to fly a mainline Boeing 737 instead of a regional jet. The real kicker is no bag fees on Southwest which, in many cases, makes Southwest the cheaper flight and potentially no longer than the others “door to door” for many in the Dallas area.
I would say that if Airtran does expect to keep this route, the CRJ-200 isn’t going to be adequate for that route. They’ll need to offer the kind of service they have on their B717 aircraft to siphon away traffic from both AA and Midwest.
Have I missed something in the pay of flight attendants? Are there flight attendants running around and purchasing 10 bedroom McMansions on their salary? Are Gucci and BMW their favorite affordable brands?
I am baffled at how there can be so much resentment towards flight attendants and their pay. If you looked at what the annual take home pay was for a real worker bee at *any* airline, you’d wonder how the airline manages to hire people. They make many teachers look well off. I’m not exaggerating.
So why is everyone so resentful of flight attendants wanting a living wage? In particular, I’m calling out those airline enthusiasts who love to pretend that flight attendants are bred for serving them and who believe anything less than perfect service (and they, the enthusiast, define perfect) just serves up a reason why flight attendants are underpaid.
A 25 year AA veteran flight attendant doesn’t earn what en entry level administrative assistant earns at my company.
Regardless of who happens to lead a union and what drivel they may promote, surely we can all agree that flight attendants (and gate agents, etc) aren’t overpaid and perhaps, in light of pretty significant rise in the cost of living, could use a raise.
Both Delta and jetBlue have requested exemptions to the 3-hour rule about to be implemented in April for their operations at JFK airport citing the runway closure for re-construction that will be in place until July. At first glance, this seems a reasonable request and I’m sure most would say such a condition is justified.
To be honest, I thought so at first as well. However, the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like the idea. This will set a precedent for other “exceptional” conditions in the future and what I don’t like about this is that this is not an unplanned or unforeseen event. We know the runway will be closed. There has been plenty of time to plan operations to accomodate this closure. Both the airlines and the FAA have had plenty of time to come up with a contingency plan to deal with potential problems. When I consider that, I really don’t think the 3 hour rule should be exempted.
If this runway closure was sudden due to unforeseen circumstances, I could certainly get behind the idea of an exemption. That isn’t the case. Granting exemptions for planned events is unwise, precedent setting and undermines the rule itself for future events.
It makes no sense to have rules and advocacy for customers if those rules can be undermined by a planned event. If we do grant these exceptions, then I have to ask what is the sense in having a rule in the first place?
Airlines might be tempted to state that they did plan for this event but the rule caught them out since much of their planning was done before the announcement. My response would be that that planning clearly was inadequate if there is a genuine fear of running into 3 hour delays.
If the FAA feels it must make some kind of accomodation, I would suggest they grant the exception only on days with weather events that impact airport operations or some similar conditions. Set a boundary range of conditions and if the airport meets those conditions, no exception is allowed.
I realize that these thoughts likely rankle many airline employees and airline fans even. I’ve never believed the 3 hour rule is a perfect rule. I do, however, think it is a good rule to start with and the nice part about rules is that they can be changed if they don’t work. With the massive and constant changes that go on with carriers’ carriage contracts that are simply designed to protect the interests of the carriers only, it’s time to have some rules that protect consumers.
I recently read one article that pointed out that while a consumer can be charged an egregious amount for needing to change their travel date on a non-refundable ticket, an airline can change that flight at any time without penalty to the consumer. This is a great example of the imbalance that exists between consumers and airline service providers. We have finally begun to address some of those imbalances and I think that is a good thing. I also think that by addressing some of these imbalances with rules that define a more just and fair relationship between the consumers and airlines, airfares may well go up in price a bit. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing either.
The relationship between consumer and airline today is, frankly, one of the more dysfunctional in existence. It resembles two spouses who hate each other and yet refuse to get a divorce or seek other options in life. That relationship is only going to change if we actually do something and doing something shouldn’t take several years of hearings either.
I would love to see a commission that addresses these issues in a timely manner similar to BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission that addresses how this nation closes and realigns military bases on an annual basis. It’s isn’t perfect but it is bipartisan and something that we all generally can abide by.
Imagine a airline industry rule making commission made up of 3 former airline executives and 3 former FAA and/or DoT administrators and one former Federal judge that address these needs and issue guidance upon reaching a simple majority consensus on a fair rule. No consensus, no rule. Have them meet and issuance guidance twice a year and let the rules be implemented. It’s bipartisan, reasonable just and fair and may well have the ability to help both the airline industry as well as consumers.
There has been a great deal of talk about Midwest Airlines and Republic Airways’ intention to consolidate that brand with its Frontier brand in the near future. Most notable is that few people seem to be decrying the loss of Midwest Airlines anymore. Certainly not like they were when Airtran attempted to take them over a few years ago.
Midwest ceased being an airline last year and became a brand only. When Frontier and Republic equipment began to fly its routes, the distinguishing features of that brand were eroded heavily. Now it’s basically a logo and a location and no one seems to care anymore and that means the brand has little, if any, value.
Will Frontier be the new brand? No one has really said much about what the plans are but there have been a few vague hints that it might be a new brand altogether. The fact that anybody is talking about this in vague public hints really shows just how much Sean Menke is already missed in getting this thing figured out.
Frontier has an excellent brand and one that could well work in Milwaukee just as good as it has in Denver. Frontier had better service differentiation and a better selection of products than Midwest ever hoped to have. It’s nationally known and folks in Denver have learned to be very loyal to it. Others could too.
A new brand is the mis-step that I think many are wondering about. You can only have so much of a “virtual” airline in operation until people begin to wonder who they’re flying with. Dilution of both brands in favor of a much more generic but new brand is not a good idea.
There are signs the industry is, perhaps, starting to slowly recover. That recovery is likely to be slow and painful and it isn’t the time to be trying to introduce yet another new airline brand to the country and compete against established airlines who are arguably better situated to compete already (SWA, Airtran).
Republic would be far better off to work on consolidating the operations between both Midwest and Frontier and standardizing on the Frontier brand which means getting the Frontier services onto all aircraft too. Marketing and sales then will have much better guidance on what they’re selling and who they are selling it to. No matter what the brand’s name, it’s time to get a cohesive marketing plan together and begin executing it on all fronts including online social media as well as local sales efforts. Wait too much longer and Frontier, as a brand, is liable to go the way of Midwest and I’ve already pointed out that that brand suddenly has no value to anyone anymore even in its home market.
According to USA Today, QANTAS is eliminating their First Class sections on all but the Airbus A380 aircraft in their fleet. Going foward, QANTAS will be selling Economy, Economy Plus and Business Class seating. Certainly this strikes me as pretty smart. It’s expensive and difficult to chase after first class passengers and those first class passengers are few and far between these days.
Notably, the airlines that have made their business class sections their top offerings are also the airlines that have captured a great deal of lucrative business traffic. Business class *is* first class if we’re in 1995. It’s way better than what we called first class in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s.
I’ll also point out that one of QANTAS’ best competitors, Air New Zealand has pursued this strategy for years quite successfully. Continental Airlines has a very loyal group of passengers and has done quite well with it too.
The number of people who might be upset at there being no First Class offerings on an aircraft can be counted on one hand and certainly don’t offer a very good return on investment when one considers the cost to create the offering on the aircraft and then pursue the customer.
Why are they keeping First Class on the A380’s? I suspect its for a couple of reasons. One, they can probably capture some first class traffic on those “capital” routes. Two, the product is brand new on the A380s and they likely don’t want to have to go through the expense of refitting those aircraft. Three, the A380 isn’t exactly demanding more space for business class customers right now anyway. Will it go away? Probably but only when a refurbishment of the aircraft is called for.
All around the United States for the past 2 weeks there have been huge snow events and often in places that are not accustomed to accomodating them. Just yesterday, we got 10+ inches at my house and I think DFW is well over 8 inches. DFW saw hundreds of cancellations, many delays and lots of entangled airliners all day.
Over the past 2 weeks, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC-La Guardia, NYC-JFK, NYC-Newark and several more smaller airports saw true blizzard conditions and snowfall measuring in the tens of inches. One friend in the Baltimore area reports that Baltimore has seen nearly 7 feet of snow this season so far.
Yes, there have been many more cancellations for each event but there is one thing I’ve noticed. It’s been strangely quiet on the consumer front. I haven’t seen people ranting on TV that their flight could have gotten out if they had had just 1 hour more to sit on the tarmac. Believe me, I’ve been looking for those folks.
Even stranger, despite these terrible events (and, let’s face it, these are once in 20 year events at best), airlines have been recovering their operations with a bit less fuss. No airline executive has gone on TV ranting that if his company had had just one more hour to sit on the tarmac, they would have gotten more passengers to more destinations. Believe me, if that had been said in the news media, I’m pretty sure I would have noticed.
No doubt we’ll be hearing about some losses due to these events. But here is the thing: those losses were going to occur whether or not the infamous 3 hour rule was in existence or not. However, this “terrible” rule has given airlines some cover and, I think, allowed them to make the better decision without pressure to try to carry on. Or, more importantly, it’s given dispatchers and pilots the cover necessary to make the smarter decision.
Despite a rule that every airline employee said was bad, the system is working better under these conditions than it has in years and years. Passengers are checking before they leave for airports and seeing the flights cancelled. Are they disappointed? I’m sure they are. Few people aren’t disappointed to have to delay a trip whether it is for business or pleasure. But they aren’t massively inconvenienced by traveling to the airport for a flight that will be cancelled but which hasn’t been cancelled yet because of the eternal optimists at airlines. They aren’t sitting on aircraft for hours wondering if they’ll ever take-off. They even aren’t returning to gates only to discover that they can’t get a hotel room and they can’t get back home. That’s the stuff that infuriates passengers. If it was really important that they leave, many took advantage of the airlines’ offer to switch flights with no fees or penalties and got out early.
In other words, yes, consumers have been inconvenienced by the cancellations but they appear to be much *less* inconvenienced than they were in previous years during similar events. Consumers understand why flights get cancelled when 20+ inches of snow is falling.
More important, I suspect flight crews are being disrupted less (I didn’t say they weren’t being disrupted, just less) and from the way the airlines are recovering their operations and moving passengers again, I suspect many airline ops people are less stressed out and, perhaps, even a bit pleased at having a smoother, more sustained ramp up once the weather is over. That *can’t* be bad for airlines even on the bottom line.
The 3 hour rule hasn’t been a travesty and it is clear it has helped all involved.
It would appear to me that a few airlines are heading for a second set of problems just as their economic situation is improving a bit. Several legacy airlines have employed a strategy of delaying negotiations and keeping the dialogue open without really resolving things among their employees. American Airlines and United Airlines have been particularly bad at this.
Southwest, on the other hand, recognized a need to continue to have settled relationships with its employees and made quality of life as much as pay a big issue. The same is true of a few other, newer airlines.
I really believe that offering better quality of life possibilities is the way to get these conflicts resolved. Everyone focuses on pay but the issues such as health care, time off, flight benefits and even fatigue are the things that can be resolved to the benefit of both sides and lead to more productivity and less conflict (which leads to distractions in running the business.)
Healthcare is a big one. It’s expensive and among airline crew, very much needed. While companies see it as expensive, in many respects, it isn’t. $10,000 worth of healthcare per employee can be worth $20,000 in salary and lead to much better loyalty, happiness and productivity. While it is difficult to tie this to direct savings elsewhere, there is no doubt in my mind that relieving employees of this worry would lead to much better labor relations.
Think about how tired *you* are after flying just one long trip in a day. Imagine how it must feel if you’re “working” 2 or 3 trips in one day.
Time off is important too. All too often, airline crew are seen as having lots of time off because of their schedules. What isn’t often observed is just how much recovery is required after flying 2, 3 or even 4 very long days in a row. It takes a few days to recover from the kind of grueling schedules that are required to stay profitable. Restructuring trips so that employees can maximize their pay while working and, at the same time, have enough time off to recover and be ready for their next set of trips will lead to better quality of life.
Flight perks are a very demoralizing area for many airline employees now. Yes, they get to fly free . . . when there is space available and, let’s face it, there isn’t much space available these days. That makes people feel as if those perks’ value has been greatly diminished and, in many respects, it has. Airlines would be better off to scrap unlimited “free” travel and, instead, offer a limited set of guaranteed positive space benefits. There would be a great deal more value in the employee being able to count on being able to use those benefits *when* they wanted to use them as opposed to having to live in a state of uncertainty as to their plans. Modest guarantees have much more value than unlimited perks dependent upon space being available.
Why not allow an airline employee accrue a guaranteed space ticket much like most of us accrue vacation time? Work so many flight hours, get a guaranteed space ticket. Let them carry the benefit on the books as long as they like so they might “earn” enough benefits to take their family someplace. Award them a business class seat at various anniversaries but not at 5, 10, 15 and so on years. Do it every 3 years of service.
Pay is important and its time for airlines to start looking for a different way to pay their crew. The pay for most airlines has become too complex and, frankly, rewards seniority far more than the work provided. 30 years ago, flight attendants weren’t expected to make a 30 or 40 year career out of flying. They generally flew as much as 10 or even 15 years and then quit. That allowed a great deal of turnover in seniority that became arrested in the late 1970’s.
The truth is, a senior flight attendant for a legacy airline (and by senior I mean 20+ years) is generally able to hold schedule in a city he or she wants to be domiciled in and fly a relatively easy schedule while making a good salary.
By easy, I mean that flight attendant might fly one or two legs a day, maybe spend one night away from home and fly another one or two legs before being off for 3 or 4 days. A junior flight attendant may be flying 3 to 5 legs a day, staying away from home as much as 3 or 4 nights and have just 1 or 2 days off before doing it again to earn a salary that, frankly, isn’t very much a living wage.
Pay and productivity aren’t matched very well. Airlines need to pay not by the mile and size of aircraft but, rather, by something like the number of legs they fly in a day and the number of nights away from home they endure. Airlines want more productivity but there is a disconnect from that with the current seniority system.
Keep the seniority systems for allowing a flight attendant to choose their schedule. But make the pay for a grueling schedule rewarding and the pay for a light schedule less rewarding. You’ll find senior flight attendants taking on the hard, difficult trips to earn that pay and you’ll find them doing a great job of handling it by virtue of their experience *and* their reward for hard work.
Most of all, take care of your employees. Make it easy for them to get something to eat and drink between trips. Make it easy for the gate agent to have a brief respite between serving 2 flights. Find ways to allow more cross-functionality between jobs at the airline so that employees want to help each other get through the day faster and happier as opposed to protecting their jobs.
I don’t see airlines like American and United trying to take care of their employees. I see them looking at their employee base with contempt and hostility. After 30 years of this, it’s time for everyone to take a breath and work out something that works for both sides.
If this isn’t done, legacy airlines will find themselves being held hostage via strikes just as their situations have improved. The worst thing you can do is to starve a person and then when you have all the food, fight them for it. At that point, the starving person has nothing to lose by fighting and everything to gain.
Frontier has announced some new flights recently but there is one that caught my eye for two reasons. One, I know and use the Newport News / Williamsburg Airport and, two, that’s one strange route.
Now, the Newport News / Williamsburg airport is a secondary airport for the Norfolk area but it is really only convenient to a small portion of Norfolk and those living on the peninsula between Norfolk and Williamsburg. (Anything much past Williamsburg is more conveniently served by Richmond International Airport (RIC).
Understand, I think Republic/Frontier clearly saw something to the route because they’re putting an E-190 jet on it first and plan to upgrade it to an A318 later. However, it puzzles me as to what they saw since there are exactly ZERO non-stop flights between those two areas at present. Sure, I would imagine there is some connecting traffic via AA and United Airlines through both DFW and ORD but there just can’t be much or one of those two airlines would have something working on that route by now.
This one just doesn’t make much sense to me. There are no obvious business ties between the two cities and even the military contractors that have offices in both cities don’t have much business that is shared between the services in those two cities.* Yes, Norfolk is a big military area but it is primarily a Navy/Marines area where Colorado is primarily Air Force. Newport News / Williamsburg is a nice airport to fly into if you’re going to that side of Norfolk or anywhere on that side of the bay. I like it because I visit family in Williamsburg and its just a 15 minute drive from there to the airport compared to nearly an hour to Norfolk (ORF) or an hour or more to Richmond (RIC). I’m glad for Airtran serving it but while I do see the connection for Airtran, I don’t see it for Frontier.
There are plenty of connections serving DEN-PHF but they all funnel to flights from Atlanta or Charlotte (Delta/Airtran and US Airways respectively). Those flights are all on small RJ’s and the fares, frankly, don’t seem to offer a whole lot of yield either. Prices for a late February flight with a Saturday overnight stay are as low as $205 ranging up to about $240 (for any flight someone would realistically take.) That doesn’t suggest a lot of yield available.
I’d love to know what Frontier saw that made it seem such a smart move.
* I work for a major first tier Defense contractor myself based in Richardson, Texas.
The Middle Seat Terminal Blog had THIS post today regarding schedules and schedule padding. The question was, are airlines cheating when they pad their schedules to improve their on-time rating?
From the point of view of a consumer looking at their on-time rating, it might be a cheat. Frankly, I think there is little value as a consumer to look at an airline’s overall on-time rating. Now, it does help to see what the rating is for a particular flight and/or similar flights through FlightStats.com. But even then I would take such information with a grain of salt.
There are too many variables involved to make your choice on the basis of an on-time rating. You have to consider the cities involved, the time of year and weather, the equipment being used and even what impact severe weather at another hub might be having on a route. For instance, Dallas might not be badly impacted by weather much at all at any time of the year but what if Chicago is and the equipment used for a Dallas originating flight comes from a flight between Chicago and Dallas? What is a flight was being served by equipment with a poor dispatch rate such as an ERJ-145 and suddenly gets replaced with newer and better CRJ-700’s?
Schedules should be evaluated for whether or not a particular flight will get you where you want to go at the time you want to go. Period. Smart consumers will now that leaving themselves 30 minutes connection time at a hub will result in lost baggage and/or missed connections.
But are the airlines cheating? No, not really. Frankly, airlines needed to adjust the block times for routes for years before it really got done. Block times, the time a flight leaves a gate to the time it arrives at its arrival gate, are important and they have grown considerably. Airports are busier than ever.
I can remember that a DFW to ORD flight in the mid 1970’s used to take right about 2 hours in block time. Today, it’s about 2 hours, 45 minutes. That reflects the arrival of hub operations, crowded airports and very old infrastructure in place. It’s amusing to me that some trans-continental flights are now calling for as much as 7 hours transit time. That’s as much time as the last prop airliners were doing it in the late 1950’s.
Rather than calling it cheating, I’d say that “padding” isn’t padding. It’s getting real with reality for the first time in quite a while and that means consumers can count on the airline doing what it said it would do which makes the entire experience more pleasant. However, that kind of reality scheduling will go on only as long as it receives some scrutiny so its good that someone such as journalists are reporting those rates on a regular basis.
These three alliances have been forming, growing and shifting for some time now and it is almost fair to say that they’ve reached a certain maturity that lets us take a look at what the future might hold.
There will always be shifts between alliances as time goes by but the major structures are now in place and let’s be honest in that airlines are not equal partners in these alliances. There are bedrock airlines and there are airlines who are really more associate partners.
In the Star Alliance, US Airways has definitely been more of an associate member than, say, United, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines and with the recent addition of Continental and the close partnership its formed with United, US Airways is even more the redheaded step-child in this organization.
SkyTeam really has the strongest core though. Formed, in part, from the original Northwest / KLM alliance that began in the 90’s, it now has an extremely strong network that spans both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. If it has a weakness, it is in South America among South American carriers and I’m not sure if that is really a weakness right now.
The Star Alliance and SkyTeam have both managed to work among themselves in pretty close partnership and develop strong networks playing on each others’ strengths. Schedules between those partnership airlines are pretty rational and they do tend to treat affiliate partners as having value in the organizations.
Then there is Oneworld. Oneworld isn’t so much a partnership alliance as it is a looser affiliation of airlines. To be sure, at one time Oneworld’s members represented a very strong core of airlines who were profitable and very strong on a global level. To a degree, they still are but this has definitely become the weak alliance over time and with the fight over JAL taking place, its now fighting for its life.
Oneworld doesn’t know how to work well with each other. Partners American Airlines and British Airways have dominated that relationship and because of their obstinance over trans-Atlantic routes and slots at Heathrow, they haven’t been able to work closely together over time and develop those relationships that have been grown in other alliances. Because of their dominance, other potential strengths in their network, QANTAS, JAL and Cathay Pacific for instance, haven’t really been exploited fully either.
Oneworld is, for most intents and purposes, an old style Anglo-American relationship with AA, BA, QANTAS and Cathay Pacific dominating that alliance. (If you don’t think Cathay Pacific is Anglo, look up its history and its executive team.)
If Oneworld loses JAL, I’m not sure this alliance survives in the long run. It cannot afford to be an alliance with two dominant partners (AA and BA) and it cannot afford to lose even one trans-Pacific partner. If JAL moves over to SkyTeam, then I suspect over the next few years we’ll see one or more “majors” in that relationship find homes elsewhere.
No matter what Oneworld does, they lose a major network in Japan if JAL leaves the alliance and they have no hope of luring ANA over to their alliance either. The best they can hope to do is build their routes systems into Japan with more direct flights from outside Japan. That isn’t very satisfactory.
They already lack a major partner in China itself (Cathay Pacific isn’t quite that kind of partner) and lack a major partner centered in Korea and Southeast Asia/India.
I suspect we’ll see one or more core partners in Oneworld slip away to one of the other alliances. It wouldn’t be too hard to attract LAN away from Oneworld, for instance. Nor would it be difficult to perhaps walk Cathay Pacific away from Oneworld. That would leave three basic Anglo American core partners who have no harmonized strategy and not much to offer smaller affiliate partners either.
What’s more, JAL doesn’t need their money now that they’ve gone into bankruptcy. The Japanese government is financing them and will provide all the capital they need at this point since they have little choice to do anything else. That means JAL is free to consider a long term strategy and if it can get some real signal that anti-trust immunity would be granted to a partnership between Delta and JAL and the rest of SkyTeam, that’s their best deal.
It has occurred to me that the reason there hasn’t been more worry about the dominance such an anti-trust immunity would grant is that, maybe, Delta has signaled its willingness to draw down its legacy network to and inside of Japan that it gained in its Northwest Airlines purchase. Northwest Airlines not only had a strong system to Japan, it also had a strong network system of flights originating from Japan to regional Asian destinations.
If Delta is willing to let JAL fly that system on its behalf, that may well satisfy regulators in the United States.
There have been a few attempts to create long haul, low cost carriers over the past several decades. Laker Airways and People Express were two examples of that from years past. Neither succeeded in the long run due to competition but also because long haul flights are a different creature.
Now I’m beginning to think someone could do it. It would require a few very special adjustments to make it successful and those adjustments would be a real challenge to accomodate but, yes, I think someone could do it.
Michael O’Leary of Ryanair has talked of doing this but his concept, at least how he has laid it out, is fraught with peril since it is based on a Ryanair strategy.
Long haul flights really only work between two large population centers because they do depend a lot on airport infrastructure and originating traffic in those areas. They are international and that requires airports that can accomodate customs and immigration facilities and airports that have runways that are long enough for long haul aircraft.
They also can’t depart and arrive at just any time. Not to be attractive anyway. So schedules are much more important and frequency isn’t necessarily the key as much as finding routes that offer high aircraft utilization.
Until recently, they also required really large aircraft such as the 747 or DC-10/MD-11 to lower the costs per available seat. Filling those aircraft day in and day out is difficult on a point to point basis if you don’t have really large population centers to feed those aircraft.
Things have kind of changed though. For one, there are aircraft that might be suited to such operations which offer very low CASM (cost available seat mile) but which aren’t so big that they become difficult to fill. I’m thinking of the Boeing 787 and 777 and the Airbus A330 and A350.
These aircraft are capable of long haul flight, offer enough capacity and the kind of operating costs that might just make such a venture possible. In particular, the 787-8 and A330 make this look real attractive.
The one twist that I think you would need is partnerships to feed these flights at major cities that would serve as the departure points for such flights. In the past, I would be skeptical of this being possible. Now, not so much. Southwest Airlines is forging partnerships with LCC carriers in Canada and Mexico (WestJet and Volaris) and its just the kind of partnership that a long haul LCC venture could use.
Imagine an LCC carrier using the A330 or 787-8 flying routes such as DFW-London or Chicago-London or NYC-London. Or even Portland, OR to Amsterdam or Denver to Germany. Maybe even Salt Lake City to Japan.
The best aircraft would be the 787-8. It would accomodate medium to long haul flights perfectly with low enough CASMs for virtually any city pair. Its expected to be more low maintenance than any other aircraft of its kind. It could become the 737 of long haul quite easily.
If you had partnerships with LCC carriers on both sides to feed connecting traffic (something else that Southwest has done a time or two with its relationships with ATA and Icelandair (which was actually an interline agreement), you might be able to do it.
Imagine Southwest Airlines feeding such an LCC in places such as Denver, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Portland or Seattle and Ryanair feeding such a venture at airports such as Dublin, London-Standsted or Frankfurt-Hahn. Or, perhaps, Airtran feeding such an airline from Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro with Azul providing the feed in Brazil.
This new LCC would have to be the “codeshare” on the domestic/regional flights and its own entity on the long haul international portion. Domestic/regional partners would benefit from the additional regional traffic but really should not be selling tickets from Kansas City to Rio de Janeiro via Atlanta. It goes against their models. These partnerships should be about each sticking to their models but providing some interlining between the two.
Oddly enough, I see airlines in two parts of the world being able to do this. The United States would be ideal because a US based long haul LCC carrier can reach around the world from the US borders. The other area would be one based in the Middle East such as Dubai which could also reach around the world.
With Open Skies agreements falling into place left and right, the right aircraft being available now and LCC IT infrastructures becoming flexible enough to enter into this kind of partnership, it might just be possible in the near future.
Yesterday on my post about flights between Dallas / Fort Worth and Milwaukee, the surprise of that investigation was that Southwest Airlines was most probably the best choice based on cost (price + baggage fees + convenience from doorway to doorway) and service (mainline aircraft and service product).
Well, that got me to wondering about other routes out of the DFW area that I’m generally interested in. So, I checked on flights between Dallas and Portland, Oregon, another city I have an interest in. Southwest offers a number of two stop connections between the two destinations at competitive prices but your travel duration on those would be excruciating.
However, Southwest *does* offer a couple of flights each day that are one stop – no plane change flights. And guess what? They’re pretty reasonable in flight duration. Again, I cannot tell where that one stop is but it must be mostly right along the flight path. Best of all, their price is about as good as I’ve seen in a long time at an advance purchase fare of $129 each way. Again, considering that Southwest doesn’t charge for baggage and is more convenient in the Dallas area, this is the best deal all in all.
American Airlines offers 5 non-stop flights a day (all 4 hour long flights using MD-82 aircraft) for the same nominal price and charges for baggage.
And I have to tell you, I think I’d rather fly Southwest even with one stop. AA’s MD-80 aircraft are woefully worn out, uncomfortable and their crews are surly at best. Southwest offers me a more comfortable seat, most likely a newer aircraft and certainly a better maintained cabin and a service staff that was happy to get out of bed that day and go to work.
So, what does this mean? Well, it’s hard for me to research every route that SW and AA might compete on but it looks as if Southwest might be getting aggressive with American on a lot of routes that AA has been dominating with almost zero competition for a long time. Southwest is doing it by offering direct, one stop, no plane change flights and they look pretty good to me.
If you live in an area served by Southwest, it may very well pay dividends to take the extra moment to see what they’re offering on your chosen route. Just remember that you won’t pay baggage (or non-alcohoic beverage) fees and you will fly on mainline aircraft with friendly service staff. That has a value in and of itself.
In way, it is a shame that Southwest continues to refuse to list itself with online travel agencies like Expedia and Travelocity as I think they would compare so favorably against legacy airlines that it might well be worth it.
