P.R. brouhahas regarding our airlines are now legend. First, most of them instituted a fee on domestic flights if we checked more than one bag and then, having gotten away with that, doubled the ante in only a few months by charging for the first bag as well. Soon after, US Airways made us cough up two dollars for soft drinks (that's without alcohol, folks), although most of the airlines didn't have the guts to go along.
But it didn't stop there. US Airways and others started charging for blankets and pillows. Movies, which had become free if you owned a headset, now cost several dollars when the airline offers a selection instead of the standard fare. I was told "This is what the passengers prefer" by one flight attendant, though she didn't elaborate if the preference for a greater selection would have prevailed if the passengers were forewarned there would be a cost.
And that isn't the end. Free flights based on mileage which are so hard to get unless booked many, many months in advance, now cost twenty per cent more on Delta if you travel to Europe. Until last fall, it was 50,000 miles for such a trip and it now requires 60,000. United, too, has bumped up the mileage from 50,000 to 55,000. Plus, one of the added benefits of an award trip -- flexibility in changing your flight dates without charge if you don't modify your itinerary -- has disappeared and it now costs $75 to $100 to do so on some airlines if you notify them within twenty days of travel. Delta charges $100 even if you give them six months notice. American Airlines doesn't charge such a fee and I hope this piece doesn't give them any ideas.
The main benefit remaining in award issued international trips is that you are still entitled to a free stopover, meaning you can fly to London and stop in New York on the way over or on the way back for the same mileage cost. And for the moment all international travel (paid or award) still includes a free meal and two pieces of luggage up to fifty pounds apiece. However, many of you may recall that not too long ago there were no luggage weight requirements traveling within or to and from the United States.
The air carriers have attributed these changes to dwindling profits, in particular due to the spiraling costs of fuel. To be fair, when free domestic baggage ended last spring gas was well over three dollars a gallon and by mid-summer it was close to five dollars. But guess what? Something happened and the price of gas started to plummet. In my case, the high of $4.59 per gallon last July fell to $1.79 on January 1.
But did the airlines reciprocate? No, they started charging special rates for certain parts of their coach cabin. Some are talking about higher costs for aisle or window seats, presumably leaving the most economical rate for the poor sucker stuck in the middle. Pity the tall or portly guy or woman, who will either suffer or pay through the nose. Not to mention the guy or woman who paid more to sit on the aisle when they're pushed way into the aisle by very large bargain seeking passengers fighting for room on the armrest.
Why haven't these horrendous so-called cost conscious changes been rescinded as the gas prices have come down? Or better yet, as I suggested in a column last year just charge a few dollars more to return service to what it was before and no one would really notice the boost. Most people know fares go up and down like the stock market, and the person sitting next to you rarely pays the same fare.
The increase in revenue would pay for the meals we've been denied for years on long domestic flights -- except for Continental, which for some strange reason still serves them. It would also cause US Airways to stop the ridiculous charge for soft drinks. Oh, wait, on Tuesday I overheard a flight attendant telling a passenger on one of my flights back from Florida that the soft drink policy was ending in a few days, but they were still ordered to collect the charge until then.
Memo to US Airways CEO Doug Parker: Have you cut back on P.R. as well as pillows, luggage, meals and drinks? If you're going to suspend a much-hated policy, one that the flight attendants themselves condemn even as they are forced to put forth the evil plan, why not get rid of it when you announced it? Yes, you might wring a few more dollars by waiting the four days, but at what eventual cost when such an expedient decision reveals the level of idiocy and greed of your executive team?
Flying used to be classy. Remember the scene in Catch Me if You Can when Leo DiCaprio had all those glamorous stewardesses on his arms?
Look around you the next time you fly, and with the dearth of service you'll see it's more like riding a Greyhound bus. And it's not the flight attendants' fault. Plus, the pilots are mostly great, witness US Airways' own Captain Sully. But Doug Parker can't take credit for the heroic US Airways crew, who all did their jobs incredibly as the jet miraculously landed safely in the Hudson. No, for Parker and the other overpaid airline corporate geniuses it would be more correct to impute the increased denigration of air travel in our nation.
Michael Russnow's website is www.ramproductionsinternational.com
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You get absolutely zero sympathy from me.
The flying public has proven that they will not pay an extra dime for quality.
Remember the airline of choice?
Well that was way back when Captain Sully still had a pension and a future.
And Yes, The price of fuel has dropped, But that is not what the company pays. Have you heard of fuel hedges? Well the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of them that US Airways bought are now worthless.
The American flying public is getting exactly what it wants and deserves . So don't expect any sympathy from airline employees like myself.
The flying public are not to be entirely excused. I have had compensation demands and threats for legitimate flight interruptions and cancellations. I had a problem with compensating whining passengers for not taking off in a blizzard. Imagine the compensation if we did take off in a blizzard and something happened. Yes flying is more affordable, First Class is now a joke, just a wider seat and a free cocktail. In spite of deregulation the airlines are still very much regulated....except for upper management compensation. I worked for a non union airline and we took the biggest pay cuts. Yet in good times, our pay was the highest to keep unions out. more to come
fly Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific.
1) prices were higher
2) prices were set so no competition.
3) not affordable for everyone. exclusivity. read 1) again.
now anyone can fly. of course it will be greyhound. if you are not happy, just drive.
I don't expect first class service when I fly coach and I appreciate that flight travel is enormously cheaper than it was years ago if you factor in cost of living.
However, the "class" time to which I referred was not really the "Catch Me if You Can" era, but only a few years ago when they took away our meals in coach. Took away free drinks in coach on international flights and more recently the nonsense of charging us for baggage on domestic flights -- not to mention US Airways policy of putting a price tag on soft drinks, which will fortunately end soon.
All that plus the higher mileage cost for award travel, the ridiculous fee for pillows and blankets and soon to be instituted higher fares for aisle or window seats.
Your sharp responses make me seriously wonder if either of you have stock in the airline business.
I have stock in a lot of companies but any airline company is not among them. as a matter of personal investment policy i avoid these sectors over the past decade.
airlines, auto, retail.
why? too much competition and too little pricing power !!
btw, I hate additional price tags as much as the next person. however, airline is basically a HORRIBLE business. Warren Buffett even quoted as a joke "someone would have done investors over the world a huge favor if they shot the wright brothers". airlines have returned negative over the past 100 years !! thats how horrible this industry is!!
Things since then have become increasingly monty pythonish in attempt to board any plane, domestic or international.
All the charges and fees and surprises are just the airline's way of distracting us from the absurd routines of air travel these days, and give us something to fume about besides our loss of freedom and privacy (love those machines that take a picture of your naked body under your skin!).
The first airline that runs a PR campaign announcing that it's ending all of those "fuel crisis" fees and at least attempts to achieve the mediocre level of service that followed 9-11 will find itself well rewarded, and the inevitable copycatting by the rest of the airlines will look like what it is - caring about customers only when absolutely forced to do so.
ALL domestic airlines suck and deserve to fail, which would happen if airport exclusivity and subsidies were removed. Must be nice to have a government-enforced and funded lack of competition enabling the airlines to casually screw their customers at will. I'm guessing that's payback for the airlines not objecting to the scare tactics and propaganda we're subjected to at airports. Shake down little old ladies and toddlers for juice boxes or nail files? Check. Actually search, screen and investigate the 90,000+ people who flash a pass at a gate and walk up to airplanes with wrenches and baggage? Not so much.
Apparently, the airlines are too instrumental in the fear campaign to be allowed to succumb to their own stupidity. Lucky us.
QUESTION: Does American have some sort of anti-gay policies? There were no steward on these flights, none. Not from IAD to DFW or DFW to SNA or SNA to DFW or DFW to DCA? Also, the flight attendants all seemed to be 50 year old women? What's with that?
There is no anti-gay policy. In fact, I agree with more with JoethePauper. Since you were flying on AA, you were flying on an old airline that has done a lot of layoffs and where the flight attendants have lots of seniority. 20 years ago, what do you think men applied for at an airline, pilot or flight attendant? They applied to be a pilot . The social thinking at the time was a man was a pilot, a woman was a stewardess. So the odds are great that if you have an older crew, the pilots will be men and the flight attendants will be women.
American appears to serve five-course meals in first class but in steerage nada. They will sell you a sandwich or a cheese/cracker package for $6 and a tiny bag of chips or a small cookie for $3. As far as I could tell this food for sale actually increased the work of the flight attendants. Instead of handing out sandwiches as they went, they were now running back and forth retrieving extra cookies, etc. and then having to deel with money and credit card transactions.
Flying was classy in the pre-deregulated days. Who's reponsible for the shoddy service? You, Me and all that wanted to make flying available to the masses. So now, the airlines ARE Greyhound, because that demographic can now fly. If you want the service and all the charm and amenities that we used to have, be ready to re-regulate, let the government set the fares at a level sustainable for profitablity, everyone will pay the same regardless of what airline you fly. Then you can eat your inflight prime rib and sip your drink with a smile, Until then, the traveling public needs to just except that all the airlines are offering now is transportation, point A to point B period! If you can't live with that, DRIVE!
From restrictions in packing my travel shampoo to taking off my shoes, belt, and jewelry and going through 2-3 security checkpoints, the entire plane trip has almost doubled in time. Then, once crammed onto the plane (like cattle in a boxcar), you pray that the plane doesn't crash. (Most of the planes lately look like they should have been retired years ago, that is if the FAA did proper inspections).
Finally, your destination arrives, then it's off to retrieve your luggage that looks like somebody did a Samsonite commercial for testing durability with it.
So, anyone who has the money to NOT fly commercial does so. The ultra rich of the country have purchased private or company planes to avoid traveling on the substandard, decrepit airlines that we now have.
Our crappy airlines of today are yet another Bush legacy from the last eight years.
From fallout, intercity bus companies in Canada have started their long walk towards airline style security, building new security facilities and obeying new regulations.
Once they have us signing in, searched and questioned to move by bus, train, boat, and plane, can check points on the highway be the way they monitor us on automobile, oh, right, we'll all have to have transponders on our automobiles... that leaves foot or balloon.
Feel more secure?