I received the NetSAAver Fares from American Airlines today.  Sao Paulo, Brazil is on special for just $428 each way.  Now, yes, that is still a lot of money but it’s cheap for the route and this is a great time to visit Brazil. 

The next most interesting destination is Paris, France for $289 each way.  I once flew to Paris, stayed for 50 hours and flew back to Dallas.  It was worth every penny at $600 round trip.  It was actually an unplanned trip.  I bought the ticket and left the next day.  I went for the ’99 to ’00 Millennium New Year’s Eve on the spur of the moment.  Would I do it again?  You bet.  Even without some special event?  Absolutely. 

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The Dallas Morning News Aviation Biz Blog wrote THIS post yesterday about Continental’s business class passenger traffic being down.  Significantly, there is an abrupt drop in trans-Atlantic travel.  Continental has a reputation for being an excellent business class product and has a very loyal group of customers for their trans-Atlantic destinations.  I am, however, unsurprised at that sharp decline.  That is a cost that businesses address very rapidly in situations involving declining revenues and/or profits. 

The company I work for, a Fortune 500 DoD contractor as well as an aviation industry supplier, mandated coach travel for business trips overseas back in October.  In addition, all travel (including domestic) must be approved at the director level.   I must say that those rules have had a noticeable effect too.   Many people known for being routinely gone on business trips are now routinely in their office doing work. 

It has also imposed some hardships.  I have one co-worker who had to travel to Finland on business last Saturday.  He had to travel to New York City, connect to a flight to Helsinki, connect to another flight to a very northern town in Finland and then travel by car for 2 hours to the destination.  Now, ordinarily I do not approve of the rather lavish use of busines class even on transcontinental flights but I would have given him the business class seat on that trip.

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An article on CNN writes of passengers trapped on an Airtran airplane for 10 hours before taking off for Orlando from Colombus, Ohio.  No one would argue that this is not something that should be happening at this point and the flying public should take issue with an airline that can’t competently make a decision to cancel a flight after keeping passengers on board for just a few hours. 

If airlines do not want a passenger bill of rights passed in Congress, they must clearly communicate to their staff that this kind of event is both avoidable and irresponsible.

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Update:  For those interested, the Hang Up Act (as reported out of House committee) can be viewed in its entirety HERE.

The Runway Girl has posted THIS entry to her blog on the subject of in-flight use of cell phones.   Mary Kirby (aka Runway Girl) is apparently distressed over the “Hang Up Act” rolling around Congress and decries it as  “silly”  and is apparently in solid support of the Passenger Communications Coalition which is comprised of members she often writes about.

Silly eh?  I don’t know about that.  If I were an airline, I would want to avoid use of cell phones on aircraft in the US as much as possible.  Adopting a libertarian attitude and comparing what is going on in the Middle East and Europe isn’t a very unbiased outlook either.  US Airlines fly crowded, uncomfortable flights that are often late, understaffed with a minimum of flight crew and which only serve to antagonize passengers already.   European and Middle Eastern airlines fly in different cultures that set a very different scene for the use of cell phones and how that might be perceived as a personal space violation when compared to the United States and Canada. 

Allowing in flight chatty people to conduct phone conversations seated among other passengers under those conditions is a good idea?  Really?  Who manages disruptive people abusing that privilege?  The flight attendants?  Really?  The pilots? 

While I do agree that many would likely not abuse such a privilege, I fear what happens both to the perpetrator and the victims when some guy refuses to lower his voice and stop disrupting passengers when asked to.  Aircraft here in the US are already on a short fuse with temperaments.  As an airline, I really wouldn’t want to invite more opportunity for conflicts and I certainly wouldn’t want to add to my staff’s list of things to control.

Add in-flight connectivity to the internet all you want.  Allow text messages and web browsing via cell phones all you want.  Be very careful about introducing something that has the potential to violate personal space such as cell phone calls.  Cell phone calls and internet connectivity are not the same thing and to treat them as such is folly.  And recognize that different cultures might well allow for the successful adoption of new technologies in one place and mandate against them in another place.

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There isn’t any industry shaking news right now.  4th quarter / annual financial results are coming out on a variety of airlines but the news is much what you would expect.  Lots of losses, lots of hope for 2009.  So, a few things of interest that are going on but aren’t worth a post of their own.

Airtran

Airtran, interestingly enough, posted its first annual loss since 1999.  What is remarkable to me is that in 10 horrific years in the airline industry, they made a profit until the end of 2008.  That is impressive to me given where they hub from (Atlanta) and who level of competition they experience on almost all of their routes.  You can read more HERE in a USA Today / Associated Press story.

United Airlines

United Airlines posted a rather stunning loss of $1.5 billion (with a “B”) for 2008.  Those losses are a result of both declining revenue *and* being on the wrong side of a lot of fuel hedges.  To a degree, this was already expected.  However, UAL’s unrestricted cash reserves have declined to $2 billion (with a “B”) and while that seems like a lot, it really isn’t.  Yes, the airline industry is in the dumps right now but at some point sooner than later, United needs to earn some money.  Their status quo attitude isn’t helping with that goal.

Virgin Atlantic

The Telegraph newspaper in the UK is carrying THIS rather creative complaint letter from a passenger written to Sir Richard Branson himself.  It’s funny and it points out some flaws that should be addressed.  If for no other reason than humour, it is worth the time to read it.

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines has announced $49 one-way fares between Chicago and its new destination, Minneapolis / St. Paul.  Between Southwest, American Airlines, United Airlines and, most of all, Delta/Northwest Airlines, this is surely going to spark a capacity and fare war between these two cities.   There is no doubt in my mind that the legacy airlines will defend their flights on that route to the utmost.  Most particularly, Delta/Northwest will likely get downright ugly about it and while Southwest does understand the need to spend time growing a new market, they won’t necessarily try to win by wearing down Delta/Northwest with fare sale after fare sale.  If customers don’t embrace Southwest in a reasonable time, that route will get dumped.

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CNN is reporting that an FedEX ATR-42 cargo plane crashed in freezing mist at Lubbock’s Preson Smith International Airport.  While the aircraft did catch fire, both pilots were reportedly taken to a hospital but are considered to be in good condition. 

Airport officials are saying weather was *not* a factor although it defies my imagination how they could know that. 

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As I suspected, the new focus on airline safety is all about bird strikes.  The Middle Seat Terminal Blog (a Wall Street Journal blog) has THIS post.  After the US Airways Flight 1549 ditching, I suspected that there would be lots of chatter about preventing bird strikes and there has been.

Some of this chatter is about putting screens in front of the engines, for instance.  No one stops to think just how strong and well engineered a screen would have to be to withstand the force of an 8 pound bird and well as how fine it would have to be to keep debris from entering the engine.  Nor does anyone consider that by putting such a screen in front of an engine, you are effectively disrupting the air flow into the engine and that will, at the least, reduce engine efficiency if not keep it from operating as designed.

Consider a goose that weighs about 4 kilograms being struck by an aircraft going about 250mph.  That is just about the exact scenario for Flight 1549.  Such an impact represents over 27,000 joules of energy.   In very rough terms, that is enough energy to move more than 3 tons of weight about 1 yard.  By the time you engineer a screen for that jet engine, you need a better, more powerful jet engine to carry all that extra weight. 

The truth is that bird strikes are not uncommon and almost always result in non-event.  In fact, engines and other parts of aircraft structure have to be engineered to withstand most bird strikes likely to be encountered.  Jet engine makers have to prove their engine can take a strike and not furiously disassemble itself and damage a wing or fuselage.  Cockpit windows have to be able to take a punch too. 

The truth is that commercial aircraft handle these events very well and what happened to that Airbus A320 was actually a statistical anomaly.  It is so rare for a commercial jet to encounter birds and lose both engines to the point that the aircraft cannot return to an airport that in my research, I cannot find another instance.  Oh, it may well have happened but it is exceedingly rare. 

Put another way, you have a far greater likelihood of experiencing an “incident” from turbulence than you do from a bird strike.  That doesn’t keep you from flying does it?   From my perspective, this incident proves that nothing more does need to be done to mitigate problems from bird strikes. 

First, it is rare for them to disable an engine but it does happen.  A jetBlue Airbus encountered a bird strike this past weekend and rejected its take off.  After returning to the terminal, evidence of a bird strike was found.  Any other week, this would not have made national news.  For birds to disable both engines is virtually unheard of and that is a good thing.  Any modern two-engine airliner is capable of taking off, losing an engine and maintaining climb power to go around and return to an airport. 

Airports do their part to prevent this problem.  Unfortunately, airports happen to be places that attract birds because of the wide, open areas that are flat and which generally contain a lot of what birds want.  Airports scare them away and do their best to make flight areas a very unattractive place for them to flock to.  And they are very successful at that in general. 

One of the other points that I think escapes what happened to US Airways is the altitude that they encountered these birds at.  It was at about 3000′ above the ground and how common do you think it is to find birds at that altitude?  Very rare.

The traveling public is quite safe when it comes to bird strikes.  This was an anomaly and you are just only now hearing about this “problem” because it just rarely happens to ever truly affect a flight. 

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I received an email off line expressing wonder at how quickly everyone showed up to assist the passengers of Flight 1549.  The truth is, the captain couldn’t have picked a better place to put down.  That particular part of the Hudson River is rife with all kinds of water traffic including multiple ferries, barges, tug boats and even private water craft.  It’s a major commuter corridor between Manhattan and Hoboken. 

The FDNY and New Jersey State response was impressive because on both sides of the river there are many docks with old warehouses and older boats.  Sometimes they catch fire and you really do want to respond to that asap because those old docks, warehouse and boats go up like tissue paper in a bonfire.  So both the states and the cities along the Hudson are very well prepared to respond to emergencies on the waterfront in a moment’s notice.  Nonetheless, their response and professionalism is very praiseworthy.

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This incident with US Airways Flight 1549 has made me realize that we now have two incidences (at the least) on record where a superb landing was made in an emergency situation and was done so during moments that call for graceful aircraft handling. 

I feel certain that this US Airways incident is one.  It does take grace and experience to land an Airbus A320 gently enough in the Hudson River so as to avoid any breakup of the aircraft.  A fully loaded, fully fueled airplane is not easy to handle and keeping it from over-stressing itself and breaking apart is a genuine feat.    The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, is a certified glider instructor. 

Another incident that many airliner fans certainly know about is the Gimli Glider episode.  An Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel and was glided to a safe landing at a decommissioned air force base.   A fueling mistake had  been made at its last stop and both pilots found themselves woefully out of fuel in the middle of a transcontinental flight.   The Captain of that flight, Bob Pearson, was also an experienced glider pilot and used some flight techniques from that experience to make a safe landing at Gimli.  You can read all about that incident HERE.  (It’s well worth the time.)

What strikes me about this incident, so far, is that the pilots had very little time to execute a plan and manage their situation when it happened.  The bird strike occured somewhere near or over the Bronx Zoo (based on the observed flight track from Passur.Com).  From that moment, they had just a hair over 3000 feet in altitude, two failing engines and a highly populated area underneath them.  With engines providing some forward thrust, they maintained control of the aircraft, executed a tight turn just north of Manhattan and made contact with air traffic control.

While attempting to manage the aircraft for an emergency landing at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, the pilots had enoug presence of mind to realize, quickly enough, that they had not enough altitude nor forward airspeed to make it there and quickly lined up on the Hudson River instead.  Gently landing an A320 that likely weighed in excess of 150,000 lbs and which had little airspeed to maneuver with  is a nightmare scenario for any pilot.  Captain Sullenberger managed to line the aircraft up with the river, lower it to just above the water’s surface and then stalled the aircraft just right so that it essentially dropped into the water with almost no forward motion.  He did it so good, most passengers have described the impact as no worse than a minor rear end car accident.

A very well done job for all the flight crew and it was a genuine touch of class that Captain Sullenberger was able to walk the aircraft and ensure all his passengers were off and manage to be the “last one off the ship” as well.  For a really bad situation, it was the best of all outcomes.

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James Wallace of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting today on Airbus and notes a Wall Street Journal report that quotes Tom Enders of Airbus saying:

 

He disclosed that the A380 superjumbo program remains troubled by teething problems in its industrial phase, and that the company now expects just 18 deliveries of the world’s largest passenger aircraft this year, down from a previous target of 21 that was revised from 24 last year.

I optimistically forecast that Airbus would *increase* its deliveries over their projected schedule in this post. 

That’s a significant reduction in deliveries for Airbus and the A380.  What it means is that Airbus will suffer financially on that program even more now that they will be unable to receive the forecasted revenue for 3 of the A380 deliveries.  The list price fo the A380 is about $320 million for each aircraft.  Even with significant discounts, that 3 aircraft reduction in the schedule means reduced revenue of nearly $1billion. 

It would seem that, this time, the problems are that the computer models for production of the aircraft did not take into account the effects of gravity on the aircraft structure itself and, accordingly, some assemblies and parts won’t fit correctly on production aircraft. 

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I’ve made an animated gif of the US Airways Flight 1549 flight track from when it took off from New York City’s La Guardia Airport until it landed in the Hudson River. I was able to follow the aircraft using Passur’s AirportMonitor website and taking screen shots. Notice that in the middle of it, another aircraft was flying northwards up the Hudson River and, at very close point, the vertical separation was just 500 feet with the other aircraft turning hard over Manhattan.

You can see this animated gif HERE. (Note: This is a large file)

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Here is an image of the area where US Airways Flt 1549 went down. It landed somewhere in the middle of the river just a hair south of where the Hoboken label is. It has since floated to near the Battery Park Pier shown in the lower right of the image.

CLICK HERE FOR IMAGE.

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Update:  The Dallas Morning News Airline Biz Blog has THIS post about the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549.  He’s Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and I suspect he will be cheered by many for his cool head while landing the aircraft and his conscientious handling of passengers.

Update: Here is another photo from CNN’s I-Report showing passengers on both wings evacuating the aircraft.

Update:  The aircraft is still floating and now approaching Battery Park.  HEREis a photograph shown on CNN’s i-Report.

Update:  After speaking with my brother, I’ve learned that this aircraft landed in the water of the Hudson River between Hoboken and Manhatttan.   He is a resident of Hoboken.

Update:  This certainly will change my mind about the real possibilities of surviving an aircraft ditching into water. 

Update:  According to Today in the Sky, ABC has reported that the pilot may have been attempting to fly and land at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

Update:  Bloomberg News is reporting that pilots reported the loss or partial loss of both engines on the aircraft.  Flying into a flock of geese would certainly be a reasonable explanation for that.

Update:  For information on bird strikes, The Fort Worth Star Telegram Sky Talk Blog has THIS post.

Update:  Flightblogger, Jon Ostrower, has THIS image of the flight’s track through New York and along the Hudson River.

Update:  Courtesy of the Dallas Morning news, very good photos of this accident can be found HERE and HERE.

Update: A very striking photo of passengers evacuating the aircraft and getting into rafts and standing on the wing.

Update:  Flightaware.Com has this URL for the flight showing it to be, in fact, an A320 and having a flight duration of 6 minutes.

Update: There are now credible reports that the airplane’s captain reported a bird strike and subsequent engine failure to air traffic control. All passengers have survived. Remarkably, the aircraft remained afloat and passengers were able to exit in an orderly manner.

CNN is now reporting that US Airways Flight 1549, a flight from NYC (La Guardia) to Charlotte, North Carolina, went down in the Hudson River after just taking off.  There is a report that a flock of geese may have been the cause of the crash. 

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Runway Girl has THIS STORY on some newly available flight tracking websites for the hard core traveler. 

For those of you who prefer to use your Blackberry or iPhone or Treo or other PDA-type mobile phone, there is a new service you can use to track your flight online.

http://mobile.flightview.com/

And there is another new service being offered that will permit you to track both your flight and the flights just before it that are using the same aircracft.  The advantage?  You can see how weather or other system delays are affecting your flight long before anyone begins updating the status for you flight.   The downside?  They charge for their service.  $8 per month or $88 per year or you can buy “packs” of flight tracking (10 flight tracks for $15 or 50 flight tracks for $75).  This is for the serious road warrior who is traveling from or through highly congested hubs.  Here is their website:

http://fltadvisor.com/fltadvisor/home.jsf

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American Airlines has a contest titled One Big Million offering one million frequent flier points to those who are AAdvantage Members, register for the contest and purchase one ticket between now and March 5th, 2009. 

http://www.aa.com/onebigmillion/

Look for other contests and bonuses for other frequent flier programs and do register.  Why?  Because it quite literally costs you nothing and could well offer you more points.  Many airlines offer “bonuses” for traveling on certain routes or to certain destinations but you must register for the bonuses BEFORE booking the trip.  One coach trip to Belgium once netted me 21,000 miles total.  Another to Baltimore earned me 7,000 miles total. 

Ordinarily I no longer believe in hunting miles but if airlines offer these kind of bonuses, it really is quite possible to get yourself a domestic ticket in short time even if you are the casual flier.  The trick is, don’t horde the miles, use them instead.

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Maybe.  News media yesterday and today have been full of stories about various airline fare sales.  A friend of mine managed to book a business class fare from Raleigh/Durham to NYC for just over $100.  He also booked two round trip tickets on Airtran to Las Vegas (for travel in May) for just $198 / ticket.  American Airlines has sent me not one but two emails in the last 24 hours advertising fares as low as $39 / each way.

Reading over the AA email, that low price of $39 each way is to fly from DFW to Tulsa.  I’m pretty sure that is a fairly small market but let’s give them credit for drawing us in to read the email.   Here is a sample of some of there other teasers:

• Chicago to Detroit:  $43
• San Jose to San Diego:  $49
• Boston to NYC (LGA): $59
• Chicago to Kansas City:  $63
• Dallas to New Orleans:  $64
• Chicago to Orlando:  $78
• Washington D.C. to Miami:  $101
• Atlanta to Dallas:  $104

Now, all of these fares are one-way based on round-trip purchase.  I’m sure that most of the other airlines are advertising similar fares on similar routes with similar restrictions.   The part that interests me is that some of those fares AA is advertising are primarily business routes (DFW to TUL, ORD to DET, ORD to MCI) and those aren’t customarily the routes you discount that much.  Some of the others are to leisure destinations and that makes a bit more sense. 

When there is a fare sale, I like to price DFW to PDX (Portland) because American Airlines dominates this route with non-stops and has exceptionally high fares for those flights.  If those prices have dropped, then I know they’re hurting.  I did so today and AA is proud to offer me a $278 roundtrip (with taxes, $320) which is actually pretty good.  A year ago that fare was being offered for over $400.  But there is a catch.  AA wants me to fly from DFW to LAX,  change planes to either Alaska Airlines or Horizon Airlines, and fly to Portland.  Transit times range from 7 hours to more than 9 hours.   Would I do it for the fare?  Perhaps.  I’d certainly think about it. 

A quick check with Travelocity.Com shows fares for that route at $327 and up and AA advertises the non-stop routing for $378.  The $327 fares on Travelocity are those same AA fares I found at AA.Com so the next non-American Airlines best price is actually Continental Airlines for $356 changing planes in Houston and with approximately the same transit times that AA has through LAX.

Would I go?  Probably not.  Why?  Because the cost to me in vacation time, actual flight costs (more than $40 more than the advertised price once I pay taxes) and the sheer agony of spending about 8 hours making the trip just isn’t worth it.  What would be worth it?  A fare of about $200 to $250 (taxes included) I suspect. 

The point of my analysis is that while those fare teasers are interesting and very attractive, they really aren’t all that good for where most of us want to fly in the next 3 to 4 months.  If you want to fly from DFW to TUL, you’re set.  If you want to fly from DFW to just about anywhere else, the prices really haven’t come down much if at all.  These sales are, I suspect, airlines scrambling around and yelling “Look At Me” but without much substance.  If I were going to shop for a mid to late spring flight, I’d probably wait a few weeks.  The reality of spring / early summer bookings will be more clear to the airlines and then I think you’ll see some real discounting. 

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Pilots and flight attendants are perceived as having jobs that are easy and financially secure.  This is largely due to the fact that flight crews commonly have several days in a row off each month where they are able to enjoy a different schedule and life.  Flight crews, in fact, have just as much stress, fatigue and constraints as any other job. 

Many in the flight crew start out augmenting their income with 2nd and even 3rd jobs they work during their off-duty hours because they earn so little money at the start of their careers.  A fully trained and qualified pilot starting out on his career can expect to make as little as $20,000 / year and flight attendants often earn less than $16,000 / year to start.  So in order to pay their rent and other living expenses, they take on flexible 2nd and 3rd jobs.  Later, when they are earning living wages, they tend to keep those jobs because their needs and wants have continued to grow in proportion to their total income.  In other words, they become a bit financially addicted to the supplemental income those 2nd and 3rd jobs provide.

Airlines pay so little to start because the lifetime costs to employ that flight crew members can be very expensive when they enter the last half of their career.  Unions have negotiated contracts that are first and foremost dependent on date of hire seniority and flight crew turnover is therefore very small compared to other industries.   There is no incentive to look for another job with another airline unless your present employer goes through a significant contraction or bankruptcy and has to lay you off.  Even then a flight crew member may well have incentives to earn supplemental income and wait for a callback rather than seek employment with a new airline. 

But it is airline management that has created this problem because they’ve failed to redefine the job positions to fit a new economic reality.  They exacerbate their situation by treating their employees (and unions) as hostile entities to be fought at every turn rather than finding new, more efficient ways to employee people. 

Airline management needs to first realize that the lifetime earnings of flight crew are unlikely to go significantly down or up.  But there is a way to distribute that income during the flight crew career in a way that provides better job security, more productivity and in a way that provides the stability employees want. 

First, stop paying flight crews horribly low salaries in their early years.  These people are trained and qualified professionals and deserve to be paid a wage that is more commensurate with the job skills they must possess to perform in those roles.  In other words, it’s time to pay a living wage right from the beginning.  Pilot’s should earn from $40K to $50K to start, for instance,   And pilots should recognize that in return for a living wage right from the start, they have to offer more flexibility in work rules.  They need to be willing to work on a more daily basis but for fewer hours per day so that airlines can begin scheduling them in a more rational manner.

Second, airlines should pay salaries that are roughly equivalent to engineers.   A senior engineer (not manager but engineer) can earn as much as $100K / year at the zenith of their career but not $300K.  For that kind of wage, an engineer must enter management and exhibit performance that justifies that wage.   Pilots should have retirement plans that are also commensurate with engineers.  Not pensions that pay out by the years of service but, rather, modern investment plans such as 401k plans that allow them to manage their futures and have some opportunity for portability.  Pensions are tied to seniority.  401k retirement investment plans are tied to the person and smart choices. 

Why is such a system better for a pilot?  For one, it reduces their dependency on one airline.  They are far less tied to the fortunes of their employers and have more opportunity to leave a badly managed airline in favor of a better managed airline.  Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to work for a better managed airline in favor or a badly managed one?  Making that possible industry wide would provide more opportunity for pilots to manage their stress and the demands their job makes on their personal lives. 

Unions should focus less on maximizing wages and more on improving the quality of life for their members.  Unions have the power to negotiate better work rules that alleviate horrific fatigue and stress and which provide a more humane way of living.   Happiness really doesn’t come from a top wage.  It comes from a living wage and having a real life.  Unions should seek more security for their members by negotiating flexible work rules that might allow flight crews to fly part time or job share with someone else.  That kind of flexibility would allow airlines to schedule flights more rationally and earn more profit  and be better positioned to offer wage increases more regularly rather than fight them at every contract negotiation. 

Airline management must recognize that the largest variable controlling their financial success is their flight crew.  Flight crew represents the largest part of their costs and the biggest factor in determining the service product they offer.   Treat them humanely and pay them a living wage and airlines can begin to experience more profit which will only make their investors happy. 

Unions have to recognize that the work rules in place now were only fitting for airline up to the late 1970’s.  It’s time for them to define how to best serve their members by identifying all the variables involved in a prosperous career rather than simply wages.   They should push for company financed training, better scheduling and work rules that permit both parties to profit from extra effort put forth serving a flight.

The go! Airlines pilots mentioned in yesterday’s post were fatigued because they were flying 8 leg segments for multiple days in a row.  Why?  Because under the present system of compensation and work rules, airlines must schedule pilots intensively in order to get the most for each dollar spent.  Airlines would actually be more flexible with hours worked if pilot’s earned a salary and had a negotiated minimum and maximum of hours to be worked each month.  

Under a new system such as I described above, pilots (and other flight crew) would no longer feel tied to working for an airline that punished them with a grueling schedule week after week.  They could seek better employment elsewhere without necessarily taking an enormous pay cut to do so.  Airlines would have more predictable labor costs, greater productivity and an incentive to take better care of their crew. 

It would also solve another looming problem for airlines.  A shortage of pilots.  Presently, the barriers to entering a career as a pilot are huge.  Airlines require new hires to obtain their minimum qualifications for hire at the employees expense and then pay them near poverty level salaries for the first several years of employment.  Fewer and fewer people can afford the $100K to $150K price tag to obtain those initial qualifications and certainly find the idea of earning a poverty wage after being hired unappealing. 

Under a new system of training the pilots and paying a living wage initially, airlines can attract new people to the jobs and ensure a steady, well trained and stable work force that wants to come to work and offer an efficient service product.  Potential pilots (and other flight crew) have better opportunities to enter the profession and a career that is more stable in the early years and entirely profitable throughout the lifetime of the employee.

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I want you to imagine waking up at 5:00am on a Monday morning and then being at work by 6:30am.  Once at work, you’ll be climbing into another car and driving 1 hour trips across a busy metropolitan area such as Chicago or Dallas or Los Angeles.  At each stop you’ll have about 5 to 10 minutes to go to the bathroom or to get something to drink or munch on through the day.  You do this from 7:30am until 7:30pm at night. 

Once finished, because you are far away from your home, you get a motel room and go someplace to eat like Chili’s.  You do get to sleep by 10pm (and mind you I just gave you only 2.5 hours to find a motel, get something to eat and then get yourself prepared to sleep which sounds like a lot but really isn’t) but you are in a strange, hard bed and your sleep is disturbed somewhat. 

You get up at 5:00am again, shower and pack and get a ride back to your duty station and climb back into a car to drive from 7:30am to 7:30pm again under the same conditions described above.  Once done, you do get to go home and sleep and arrive home at around 9pm.  You have to eat, get to sleep and, once more, get up at 5:00am to do this routine one more time all day.

How tired are you going to be on that third day of duty?  Almost anyone, physically fit or not, is going to be pretty exhausted.  He or she will be prone to make mistakes in their daily work and will find it difficult to stay awake at the wheel at certain points of the day.  That’s the life of a domestic airline pilot.  It’s really not any different for flight attendants, by the way.   Oh and before we go on, I want to point out that that pilot working those duty hours will actually only be paid for about 8 or 9 of the 12 hours they’ll be working on such a schedule. 

Now, some people might be tempted to say they could or did handle such a schedule and it wasn’t any big deal.  Really?  No big deal?  Well, I’ll agree that many of us have had to work such a fatiguing schedule (including myself during my courier driver days 20 years ago) but let’s not act like it isn’t a big deal.  It is.  Under such situations, most people will make bad mistakes, act irritable towards fellow workers or even customers, they’ll eat poorly and they’ll be prone to falling into micro-sleeps (nodding off for brief moments) during their work. 

Is that who you want flying you from Chicago to Cedar Rapids?  Well, you have probably a 2 in 3 chance that your pilot on such a flight will be just that fatigued.   Think about that for a few moments.

 Earlier in 2008, two pilots (an experienced captain and first officer) fell asleep while flying a go! Airlines (a subsidiary of Mesa Airlines) commuter flight in Hawaii.  The NTSB has released a final report on that incident which can be found HERE.  In short, both the captain and first officer had flown schedules not unsimilar to the scenario I described at the start of this post and both fell victim to fatigue.  While there was no harm suffered from their falling asleep, it is a disturbing development.   Mesa fired both pilots as a result of this incident which, in part, ultimately came to light from their self reporting the problem (as well as the problem being originally identified by ATC when they tried to clear them to their destination.)

It highlights a problem that is growing among pilots over the past 20 years.  Fatigue and work rules to mitigate it are a major subject of many, if not most, union contract negotiations.   Airlines are fighting new work rules as proposed by the FAA in court now.  Pilot unions are refusing to cooperate with work rule variances on many new ultra-long haul routes that have the potential to be major money makers for airlines.   Two years ago, American Airlines bid to fly a route from DFW airport to China and ultimately had to amend their proposal because the pilot’s union refused to give a work rule variance for the 18+ hour flight.  American Airlines lost the bid as a result. 

In Part 2, I’ll discuss the opportunities to make a real change in this problem that could benefit both pilots and airlines. 

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Deregulation by ajax
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Last week an extended family of Muslim Indians were removed from an Airtran flight from Washington D.C. to Orlando.  It made the news in several places but here is an LA Times / Associated Press version of the events.  Scroll down to read the story.

I take issue with several details of this story actually.  First, this happened to US born US Citizens of this country.  That in itself is highly objectionable to me because it is clear that this issue formed as a function of their appearance and the assumed religious identification of these folks.  That is xenophobia. 

Second, the conversation they had which prompted the reaction by passengers was a conversation that I have personally heard  spoken on many flights and that includes a conversation between myself and my wife the last time we flew together to New York state.  It’s a conversation that many people have because the infrequent traveler wants to feel safe on an airplane.  Now, when my wife asked me about the “safest” part of an airplane to sit in, my own response was that I couldn’t imagine a “safe” place to sit on an airplane traveling hundreds of miles an hour about to hit the ground.  I also said that it’s foolish, in my opinion, to believe such a place exists on airplane that is going to crash.  No one objected to that conversation or many of the others I’ve overheard on airplanes since 2001.

Third, even if I concede it might have been something worth checking out, at the least, the FBI cleared this family to travel after speaking with them and the TSA cleared *all* of the luggage traveling on the airplane.   The FBI actually encouraged Airtran to carry on and, still, they were kept back.  Why?  Because airlines have decided to leave such a decision in the hands of the captain of an airplane and, at the same time, encourage pilots to *always* take the path that is most “sure” in such situations.  In other words, captains are simply encouraged to deny boarding to the suspect passengers on that immediate flight because it keeps everyone settled.

I take objection to that.  I would like to see a captain and his crew show some moral courage and simply indicate that such passengers, after being fully checked out, were OK to fly and they therefore were going to continue on the flight as every other paying passenger would expect to do so if it were them.   There was absolutely nothing to be afraid of whatsoever. 

Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, religious denominations and physical appearances.  For us to accept that it is morally correct to seize upon someone as a potential terrorist simply because they are of the same race or religion as those terrorists of September 11, 2001 is stupid and ignorant of the way the world works. 

Want more proof?  The two people who initiated this concern with the flight crew were teenage girls.  I have a teenage girl of my own and I assure you that teenagers are *not* capable of making a credible judgement about someone who might be strange to them.  They are still kids, not adults and they certainly do not possess the life experience necessary to make such judgements.  That is why they are under the custody of adults, their parents. 

Airtran has most likely lost this Muslim Indian family as a set of customers for life.  By my count, that probably cost them about nine airfares to a destination that many families repeatedly visit.   All in favor of two teenage girls.   That was a foolish business decision. 

I have said it before and I will say it here.  The likelihood that a group of terrorists could take over an airplane, pilot it to a city such as New York City and crash one or more aircraft into a building after the tragedy of September 11, 2001 is so small that you have a far bigger risk of getting killed by lightening.   Do you wander out everyday wondering if this is your day to be killed by lightening?  The reason that attack was successful was because airlines have for years trained their staff to cooperate with a hijacker to get the plane to the ground where almost always the situation is resolved without deaths.  It was, until September 11, 2001, a very rational and very reasonable strategy.

Now it isn’t.  No plane will ever let someone or a group hijack an airplane in that manner ever again.  Not the passengers and not the flight crew.  Think I’m wrong?  Take a long look at how every other incident of someone losing control on an airplane or of someone attempting to breach a cockpit door has ended since flying began again in the post September 11 world.  Every person has been met with overwhelming force from passengers and flight crew and ultimately restrained. 

No, the next big attack won’t be by airplane.  It will be by another strategy that someone will use to take advantage of a security weakness either in another transportation mode (did you know that trains didn’t screen passengers and luggage like the airlines until the last year) or through a delivery method that is simply unpredictable at this time.  And it won’t necessarily be by Muslim terrorist either.  If you think I’m wrong, let me point you to the Oklahoma City bombing by a white Irish Catholic man named Timothy McVeigh.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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USA Today’s Today in the Sky Blog is reporting that Australian news outlets are now writing about an imminent announcement that Delta will begin flying from Los Angeles to destinations in Australia.  Such destinations likely begin with Sydney and add Melbourne and/or Brisbane. 

If true, this will mean that Delta will be the first airline to fly regular scheduled routes to all 6 inhabited continents in the world since Pan American Airlines.  More important, it means competition for QANTAS, V Australia and United Airlines.  

Currently, QANTAS is by far the main leader in that market flying Boeing 747-400 and Airbus A-380 aircraft.  It has been said that about 1/5 of their net profit comes from such routes.  V Australia, an international arm of Australia’s Virgin Blue, was originally scheduled to begin flying Boeing 777-300ER’s in December but had to slip the start to February 2009 due to Boeing’s labor strike this past fall.  United Airlines flies the same routes regularly with 747-400 aircraft that by many accounts are worn and tired and certainly not offering the service options the other two do.

It seems that Delta, if it does fly the route, is planning to use 777-200LR aircraft that are very capable of flying the distances as well as carrying a full load of cargo while doing it.  Ironically, the 777 was originally designed with QANTAS in mind although they never ordered any of the aircraft.  Indeed, with optional fuel tanks and a light cargo load, it is said that the 777-200LR might be capable of flying from Atlanta to Sydney regularly although it is highly unlikely that this will happen.  A more likely choice might be a late build 787-800 which Delta will be receiving as a function of purchasing Northwest Airlines.

This kind of competition is not want any legacy carriers on this route want.  Delta is operating with relatively low labor costs, new aircraft that are the most efficient available for long haul routes and they have a new network (from their merger with Northwest Airlines) that will feed the aircraft to capacity loads.    If Delta does launch this service, look for United Airlines to withdraw from the market.  They are the airline that lacks both the service product and fresh aircraft to compete.  

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service by ajax
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