Cockpit Confidential (40 page)

Of the airlines above, not all of them are privately run, which brings up the issue of governments providing tax breaks, subsidies, and other favors for airlines they sometimes own outright. Consider the words of Tim Clark, president of Dubai-based Emirates, which has quickly become one of the fastest-growing and most profitable airlines in the world: “The Dubai government's progressive and unrelenting policy support for aviation is at the heart of this steady, long-term growth,” Clark said at an industry luncheon in 2012. The U.S. government, for its part, does much to hinder and handicap its own commercial aviation infrastructure. But we're foolish to go searching overseas for answers. The real problem isn't between U.S. airlines and those in other countries; it's between the U.S. airlines themselves.

Even before September 11, the largest U.S. carriers were suffering from the effects of overcapacity and a dragging economy. Then came the toxic ramifications of terrorism and war, unprecedented spikes in the price of fuel, and a pummeling recession. Between 2001 and 2012, United, Delta, Northwest, American, and US Airways all declared bankruptcy—the latter twice. Losses were in the billions, layoffs in the tens of thousands.

For the most part, that bleeding has stopped, but while the entrenched old-timers were left to shed costs, reshape their business models, and return to profitability—a decade-long process that ultimately resulted in three mega-mergers—opportunistic low-cost carriers (LCCs) like jetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and AirTran seized the opportunity. Unencumbered by high labor costs or the need to support complex fleets and decades-old infrastructures, these adaptable youngsters were able to offer streamlined service and irresistibly cheap tickets, rapidly winning over a huge segment of the domestic U.S. market. The proliferation of the LCC, more than any other factor, has radically transformed the competitive dynamic.

And this isn't just a U.S. phenomenon. See Europe, where LCCs like Ryanair and easyJet are giving mainstay carriers a literal run for their money. The Brazilian airline Gol now carries more people annually than British Airways. The ever-expanding AirAsia carries more people than Singapore Airlines, Thai, or Korean Air. Other LCCs have sprung up in Australia, Kuwait, Hungary, Mexico, Canada, and Slovakia, just to name a few.

For the legacies, one survival tactic has been the outsourcing of routes to regional jet operators. RJs today are responsible for a whopping 53 percent of all domestic departures in the United States. At first, their deployment tended to mirror that of their predecessor turboprops—“commuter planes” we used to call them—going hub-and-spoke on routes 300 miles or shorter. But larger, second-generation RJs proved able to capitalize on longer runs previously the sole domain of Airbuses and Boeings. Whether Chicago–Peoria or Chicago–New York, regional planes are profitable across a wide swath of markets.

At any large airport today, legacy jets sit tethered to the gate looking wounded and worried. All around them maneuver nimble packs of RJs and LCCs, either circling voraciously or going happily about their business, depending how you see it.

Passengers have reaped the benefit of dirt-cheap tickets, for one. As I mentioned in this book's introduction, in 1939, it cost the equivalent of over $6,000 for a round-trip ticket between New York and France. As recently as the 1970s, flying from New York to Hawaii cost nearly $3,000. On my bookshelf at home is an old American Airlines ticket receipt. It's a flea market find dating from 1946. That year, somebody named James Connors paid $334 to fly each direction between Ireland and New York. That's equal to $3,690 today—
one way
. In 2013, you can pick up an off-season round-trip on that route for less than $600.

The real cost of air travel—the price of a ticket adjusted for inflation—has fallen sharply in the years since deregulation, despite tremendous surges in the cost of oil. Between 2005 and 2010, with airlines struggling and fuel prices soaring, the average economy class fare was the cheapest it had ever been. Things have changed little as we move into the next decade, even when factoring in those add-on fees passengers so despise (
see next question
). Amenities and customer service aren't what they used to be, but what do you expect when profit margins come down to a few pennies per passenger? Airlines sell what their customers want. And more than anything else, they want rock-bottom fares.

If flying
seems
expensive, one factor might be the myriad of taxes added to your fare. There's a domestic flight segment tax, a security surcharge, a passenger facility charge, a jet fuel tax, international departure and arrival taxes, customs fees—and those are just some of them. The U.S. government adds seventeen unique taxes and fees to airline tickets, accounting for a quarter or more of the total cost of a ticket, depending on fare. (On a $300 round trip, they add up to about $60.) Percentage-wise, these taxes are often more than double those carried by tobacco, firearms, or alcohol—products carrying so-called sin taxes meant to
dissuade
use.

In addition to affordable fares, another seldom-acknowledged benefit of modern-day air travel can be seen in the airlines' route networks. One can travel between almost any two airports in America with, at worst, a single stopover. A few decades ago, flying even halfway across the country often entailed awkward transfers through two or more cities. Traveling to Europe or Asia once meant having to depart from one of a small handful of U.S. gateway cities; today, you can fly directly from many smaller hubs (Pittsburgh, Portland, Charlotte), saving considerable amounts of time.

As everyone knows, airlines are resorting to the practice known as “unbundling” as a means of increasing revenue. Flying has gone à la carte: $50 for a second piece of luggage; $20 for a take-home fleece blanket and hypoallergenic pillow; that old beef-or-chicken entrée is now a $6 sandwich wrap.

But these ancillaries were never “free.” They were included in the price of your ticket. And that price used to be higher. It's impossible to have a rational discussion about unbundling without first acknowledging that fares are as low as they are. It's amusing to hear a passenger whine about the cost of checking in a bag after paying $159 to fly cross-country. And although unbundling can leave customers feeling nickel-and-dimed, it's a smart idea in that those looking for perks can have them, absorbing a higher share of the cost. Is it not better to charge a premium for specific items, not all of which everybody wants, rather than raise prices across the board?

Nonetheless, it's a practice that should only be taken so far. In 2010, in a move that ignited controversy, Fort Lauderdale–based Spirit Airlines began charging up to $45 for
carry-on bags
. This pushes the concept to the edge of the envelope—beyond it, really, and against the spirit (pardon the pun) of unbundling. Let's be realistic: a carry-on bag is not an optional item, not when the airline already charges for checked bags.

How far will airlines go to maximize revenue? The same month that Spirit unveiled its carry-on fees, Europe's Ryanair announced it would start charging 1 euro for the use of a lavatory. (The company eventually backed off, but Ryanair's cost-saving gimmicks are legendary and not to be underestimated.) I once joked that airlines would soon be selling advertising space on their overhead bins and tray tables. No sooner had I opened my mouth when, riding on a US Airways jet, I folded down my tray table and discovered a cell phone ad staring me in the face. Call me a romantic, but perhaps airlines wouldn't have so much trouble earning respect if they weren't so willing to sell their souls.

Marathon tarmac strandings receive tremendous attention and are great for stoking the public's implacable hatred for airlines. In the grand scheme of things, they are extremely uncommon. Annually, around 1,500 flights in the United States face delays exceeding three hours; that seems like a lot until you remember there are close to ten million departures each year, 85 percent of which arrive on time or earlier. Even so, there are no good excuses as to why the simple act of getting people off a plane and into a terminal, or getting food and water out to a stranded aircraft, has been, at times, such an ordeal. In 2007, after a midwinter snow and ice storm slammed the Northeastern United States, hundreds of jetBlue passengers in New York were stranded aboard grounded planes for as long as ten hours. A few months earlier, an American Airlines jet sat on the ground in Austin, Texas, for more than eight hours. And most memorable of all, in 2000, thousands were stuck aboard Northwest Airlines planes for up to eleven hours during a New Year's weekend blizzard in Detroit.

These public relations disasters were symptomatic of, among other problems, airlines' general reluctance to think outside the box, and a failure to adequately empower their employees—captains, station managers, and others in the chain of command—to make critical operational decisions. Get a stairway. Get a bus. Let people deplane on the apron if you have to.

You could say they had it coming, and since 2010, U.S. airlines are now legally beholden to a maximum three-hour constraint for departure delays, or a maximum of ninety minutes for arrival delays. Passengers
must
be allowed to deplane before exceeding those limits. Failure to comply means fines up to $27,000 per passenger. The rule, a key component of what is sometimes referred to as the Passenger Bill of Rights, is exactly the sort of get-tough measure that people have been screaming for. But was it necessary, and will it work? And beware of unintended consequences:

Picture yourself on a delayed airplane going from New York to San Francisco. Parked out on the taxiway in a snowstorm, your assigned ATC wheels-up time is only twenty minutes away. But because the three-hour tarmac limit is about to elapse, the plane is compelled to return to the gate. After docking, several passengers, having missed their connections, choose to get off and go home. This means their luggage too needs to come off. And because going back and forth to the terminal burned a substantial amount of fuel, the jet also must be refueled. Coordinating all of this will involve a large number of personnel—most of whom are, at the moment, dealing with other flights—and a whole new flight plan will need to be worked up and printed. Let's be conservative and say that everything takes an hour. You're now a minimum of thirty minutes later than you would have been
without
returning to the gate. Throw in the need to de-ice, or the possibility of crew replacement because of duty time regulations, and it's substantially worse. And missing that wheels-up time means you'll be assigned a new one, and lo and behold it's another two hours away. Your three-hour delay just became a five-hour delay.

What the better solution might be, I don't know. But I do know that airline delays are complex and fickle—the types of situations that don't respond well to regulation based on arbitrary time limits. Like the mandatory sentencing guidelines so despised by many judges and public defenders, these rules can cause more problems than they solve.

Cynical flyers sometimes contend that pilots and cabin attendants actually delight in long delays because we're able to collect overtime pay. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of how crews are (or aren't) compensated, this is nonsense. If you're envisioning a pair of pilots up there in the cockpit, rubbing their hands and making that annoying cash register sound, believe me, that's not what's happening. We don't enjoy these situations any more than you do. Unfortunately, we are more or less at the mercy of staff overseeing and coordinating things, often from afar. Short of declaring an emergency, something for which he'd need to answer both to the FAA and his superiors, the captain cannot unilaterally decide to let people off the airplane and out onto a taxiway or an icy apron. Neither can he simply drive the plane up to the terminal and open the doors.

As for the idea of passengers taking matters into their own hands and initiating their own evacuation, as is sometimes suggested, I reckon that half of them would wind up breaking their legs or clobbering themselves with their carry-ons as they plummet down the escape slides. Those slides can be two stories tall, and they are
very
steep. They are not designed with convenience in mind. They are there to get a planeload of people out of and away from the aircraft as quickly as possible during an emergency—without their belongings.

Southwest is the most perennially profitable U.S. airline, and the last of a nearly vanished breed: an airline with a true personality that large numbers of flyers have a genuine fondness for. Returning the favor, Southwest's logo features a winged heart, and its three-letter stock ticker code is LUV (taken from its home base of Love Field, Dallas). This is an airline whose founder, Herb Kelleher, rode a Harley, swigged whiskey from a flask, and once took on a rival in an arm-wrestling match (he lost). LUV them or hate them, we owe Southwest a toast—something domestic, cheap, and served in aluminum.

It's easy to say that Southwest owes its success to the fact that people don't expect much of them. The airline is nothing if not unpretentious, having mastered the art of get-what-you-pay-for satisfaction. But of the things people
do
expect, the airline delivers almost every time, and that, more than anything, is what wins them such loyalty. Specifically, customers appreciate its first-come, first-serve seating policy, the upbeat tenor of its staff, and its flexible ticketing and refund policies. To describe Southwest's mojo in three words, you might go with these: easy, friendly, and above all else, predictable. On that last point, its competitors can be all over the place; one flight is pleasant, the next is awful.