Cockpit Confidential (39 page)

• Asiana Airlines (South Korea)
  
• Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong)
  
• Hainan Airlines (China)
  
• Malaysia Airlines
  
• Qatar Airways
  
• Singapore Airlines
  

Dropping down a notch, thirty-two carriers manage to hit four-star status. This is where you'll find most of the mainstay Asians and Europeans: Air France, Emirates, British Airways, Lufthansa, JAL, Korean, Qantas, Thai, Turkish, and South African Airways. Plus a few surprises, such as Kazakhstan's Air Astana, Oman Air, and Canada's tiny Porter Airlines. The sole U.S. finisher is jetBlue (that's a stretch if you ask me, but for some reason, jetBlue always winds up getting its tails kissed).

The rest of the Americans are found in the three-star category, having achieved “a satisfactory standard of core product across most travel categories, but poor or less consistent standards of staff service/product quality in selected onboard or airport features.” This is the biggest group by far. Delta, United, Southwest, and American join the likes of Ethiopian Airlines, Aeroflot, Aerolineas Argentinas, Pakistan International, and China Eastern.

It could be worse. There are no Americans among the twenty-five or so names on the two-star list. Here you'll find Cubana, Sudan Airways, TAAG Angola, and Biman Bangladesh. And Ryanair.

The one-star list contains but a solitary finisher, the mysterious Air Koryo of North Korea.

In spite of what most people think, airlines do not, as policy, intentionally lie or mislead. What passengers take to be lies are better described as garbles, caused by the faulty transfer of information. Such is the rigidly compartmentalized structure of airlines, where specifics of a circumstance are passed along from department to department, each with its own priorities, vernacular, and expertise. There's plenty to lose in translation, and it's not unlike that game you played in grade school, where a short anecdote is whispered around the room, growing more and more scrambled each step of the way. At the airport, the person in charge of picking up a microphone and announcing that your plane is delayed often has limited understanding of what the problem actually is.

And the various personnel can be mighty territorial. Several years ago I was the captain of a commuter plane victimized by a snowstorm. Our twenty or so passengers were confused, and the gate staff did little to make things clear. So, there in the boarding lounge, I asked for people's attention and began to explain what was happening. Maybe I got too in-depth with definitions of things like “wheels-up time,” but a few seconds later came some loud footsteps and a voice booming behind me, asking, “What the hell is this asshole doing?” It was the station manager, and he didn't take kindly to a pilot usurping the role of airport customer service.

No matter the reasons, time and time again, and against their best interests, airlines fail at getting the truth out, and that's a problem. Not only does it violate the common sense protocols of customer service, it also allows rumors, myths, and conspiracy theories to flourish unchecked. It stokes anger and distrust, and it aids and abets the fears of anxious flyers. Airlines have a terrible habit of responding to anomalies—be it a minor schedule disruption or something more serious—in one of two ways: either with total silence or, perhaps worse, resorting to hideous oversimplifications. The result is nearly total lack of respect from the public. People dislike airlines and don't believe anything they say—partly because they never actually say anything. Or, when they do, it's condescending or even terrifying:

A flight is cancelled because “it's too hot to fly.” A crew aborts a landing because “a plane crossed in front of us.” In Flagstaff, Arizona, one day, counter staff informed a group of delayed passengers that volunteers were needed to give up their seats. When passengers asked why, they were told, “We need to lighten the load. The plane has been having problems and we're afraid one of the engines might cut out.”

Of all front-line employees, pilots are potentially the most valuable for soothing anxieties and explaining the nuances of abnormal situations. Unfortunately, thanks to fears over liability, much of this potential is squandered. Pilots are wary of saying the wrong thing, of being blamed, punished, or otherwise called to the carpet should something be misconstrued or taken from context. It's true that people write letters and threaten lawsuits over the damnedest things, but really this is an airline culture and training problem. Too often the emphasis is on how
not
to communicate—which phrases never to say, which terms and scary-sounding buzzwords to avoid. The result is a tendency to say as little as possible—a default policy of evasive simplification.

This is obviously counterproductive, and never more so than those times when minor abnormalities are made to sound harrowing: One time I was riding in economy class on a flight into Boston. Just before landing, the pilots aborted the landing and went around. There was no reason to believe anything remotely serious had occurred, but the sense of fright emanating from those around me was palpable. Eventually, one of the pilots gave an explanation. “Ah, well, sorry about that,” he began. “Another plane cut in front of us on the runway, so we needed to break off the landing. We're circling back and will be landing in a few minutes.”

Nothing else was offered. I sat there in silent anguish. “Please, say more,” I thought. “You
need
to say more.” But he didn't, and rather than quell the passengers' anxieties, he had made them worse. “A plane
cut in front of us
?” came a raised voice from a few rows down, followed by nervous laughter. A college kid sitting diagonally from me was visibly shaken. Later that evening, no doubt, he'd be regaling friends with the harrowing tale of his “near miss.” Which it was not. The go-around (
see aborted landings
) was the result of a simple spacing issue—not a near miss at all, but a maneuver performed well in advance of one; indeed, to
avoid
a near miss.

“Carriers in general could do a better job of communicating,” admits one airline spokesperson. “In fact, you might say it's difficult to
over
communicate.” Admittedly, however, there's the proverbial can of worms when it comes to full disclosure; lawsuits can arise from what appear to be harmless, even helpful, remarks or actions. And there's little benefit to overwhelming people with the arcana of aircraft operations. Layering things in technical mumbo-jumbo can leave people suspicious and shaking their heads. “If you try to get too technical about something,” adds the spokesperson, “it can come across as serious when it's actually routine. My sense is that most customers would like to have timely updates about a delay, and a general, honest sense of what caused it. Beyond that, I don't think drilling down into a lot of details adds much.”

He may have a point. When those aboard jetBlue flight 292 were faced with a stuck undercarriage and an impending emergency landing back in 2005 (
see jetBlue incident
), the crew made every effort to let customers know they were in very little danger. Yet rather than accept this, according to some who were there, many passengers assumed the pilots were lying. I receive letters all the time from people accusing airline staff of falsifying the “truth” of supposedly life-threatening situations. However wrong, it's a notion that's deeply ingrained.

Perhaps at the heart of the matter, though, is the simple fact that carriers pay little penalty for acting as their own worst enemies. Fostering and reinforcing skewed perceptions of air travel has little effect on their balance sheets. Profitability is another issue altogether, but planes remain full, and a majority of people, intellectually if not emotionally, grasp that flying is safe. Why stir the pot?

It depends how you measure it. The easiest method is just to tally up the number of passengers carried in a year. The trouble is, this neglects the scope of an airline's network—the number of cities it serves, how far it flies, etc.

A second calculation uses what are known as available seat-kilometers (ASK). This is the total number of seats an airline has for sale, multiplied by the total number of kilometers it flies. (ASKs are often called ASMs, using miles in lieu of kilometers.) A 777 flying from New York to London is good for approximately 1,200,000 ASKs; a 757 going from LAX to Chicago is worth about 450,000. Larger planes on longer routes, in other words, are worth more than shorter planes on shorter routes—though an airline can make up the difference by operating more flights. The problem with ASKs is that they include empty seats. A four-hundred-seat 747 scores more ASKs than a two-hundred-seat 767 over the same route, but what if the latter is full while the 747 is empty?

A third metric is the revenue passenger-kilometer, or RPK. These are basically ASKs corrected for occupancy, or “load factor” as it's called in the business. One passenger traveling one kilometer equals one RPK. To me, this is the most accurate and equitable gauge, as it takes in everything: distances flown (network size), available seats (aircraft size and fleet size), as well as the actual occupancy of those seats (passenger totals).

At the moment, Delta is the world's largest carrier in terms of both passengers boarded (164 million annually) and RPKs (310 billion). Once its merger with US Airways is complete, American Airlines will sit second, knocking United to third. As we go down the list, those measuring techniques can make a big difference. Emirates is now the world's fifth biggest carrier in RPKs, yet fails to crack the top twenty in passengers. Ryanair holds sixth place in passengers but doesn't make the top twenty-five in RPKs.

1. Delta Air Lines

2. American Airlines (includes US Airways)

3. United Airlines

4. Southwest Airlines

5. Emirates

6. Lufthansa

7. Air France

8. China Southern

9. Qantas

10. Cathay Pacific

 

Looking up there at Southwest, is it not amazing that the number-four airline—number three in passengers—is one without a single widebody jet or a single route beyond U.S. borders?

Carriers swap places year to year, and by the time you're reading this, it's not out of the question that another merger will have occurred. Nevertheless, the list above is apt to look
roughly
the same for the foreseeable future. (Note: the list deducts KLM's data from that of Air France. The companies merged in 2004 but have kept separate operational structures, with independent fleets and employee groups.)

It's tempting to think of the biggest airline as the one with the most aircraft, but capacity differences make this unreasonable. American Eagle has more planes than half the names on that top-ten list, but every one of them is an RJ. For the record, the American/US Airways combo places first, with about 960 jetliners, followed by Delta at 715. China Southern's 368 aircraft represent the largest fleet outside the United States. (The numbers change as planes are bought, sold, mothballed, and retired, but as with RPKs, the field looks pretty much the same year to year.) The largest all-widebody carriers are Emirates, Cathay Pacific, and Singapore Airlines. The
smallest
plane in these airlines' fleets is the Airbus A330.

Currently, fewer than a dozen airlines worldwide are able to claim membership in what I call the “Six Continent Club”—providing scheduled service to at least one destination in each of North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. At the moment, Delta and United are the U.S. representatives, alongside Emirates, British Airways, South African Airways, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Korean Air, and Etihad Airways. In terms of total number of countries served, Turkish Airlines is the winner. Turkish is a much bigger player than people realize. Its service is top-notch, and its network now extends to ninety-five countries—more than any other airline in the world.

Size is one thing, profitability something else. Here are the ten best-performing airlines as of publication time, measured in net profit:

 

1. Japan Airlines

2. Air China

3. China Southern

4. Delta Air Lines

5. United

6. China Eastern

7. Ryanair

8. Cathay Pacific

9. Aeroflot

10. Emirates

 

Plenty of stars on that list, but not many stars and stripes. To be fair, American carriers
do
earn periodic profits, but we seem to have a much harder and inconsistent time of it. The reasons for this would require an entire book of its own to conclusively discuss. Competitive environment, state ownership and subsidies, and the price of labor all play a role.