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Airport News, "Price, not safety records, sells plane seats"
Saturday, November 27, 1999
Price, not safety records, sells plane seats
By Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Connecticut residents tend to look for good deals
rather than good safety records when it comes to choosing an airline,
according to a new poll.
However, the Courant/Connecticut Poll released Saturday shows seven in 10
people believe that maintaining safety will be a major challenge as air
traffic rises sharply in the near future.
Ninety-one percent of those polled earlier this month say price is an
important factor in making air travel plans. By comparison, 83 percent see
an airline's safety record as important. Ten percent say safety records are
not a factor for them, and for another 5 percent, they are a minor
consideration.
''Despite the recent attention to air safety, on balance the public tends to
feel there has been little change and no deterioration of this important
dimension over the last years,'' said poll director G. Donald Ferree Jr.
''The price of the ticket is clearly paramount.''
The telephone poll of 504 state residents was conducted Nov. 11-17 by the
Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut. It
has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Annual air passenger volume is projected to grow by more than 50 percent
worldwide from 1.3 billion to 2 billion by the year 2010. Projections call
for a 12 percent increase next year at Bradley International Airport.
Twenty-three percent of poll respondents say they believe commercial flights
in the United States are safer now than they were ''a few years ago,'' and
another 57 percent say flying is ''about as safe.'' Only 17 percent worry
that it is less safe.
U.S. Department of Transportation statistics show that air travel is the
safest mode of travel.
Ferree cautioned against concluding that, when buying airline tickets,
''people care about money more than about safety in the abstract.'' The
greater reliance on price may in part result because it is much easier
especially with the aid of a travel agent to research and compare prices
than it is to compare safety records.
Andre Libert, director of marketing for the state Department of
Transportation's bureau of aviation and ports, said the 70 percent who
identified coping with burgeoning air traffic as a ''major challenge'' for
the future have cause for concern.
In the deregulated industry created by Congress 21 years ago, the profit
motive drives decisions, and airlines have incentive to squeeze as many
flights as possible out of every aircraft in their fleets.
The poll found that 54 percent of state residents have flown overseas.
Nearly 60 percent said that if they were traveling abroad they would rather
take a U.S. airline than one owned by a foreign company. Thirty-two percent
said they would feel ''somewhat less safe'' on a foreign airline, while 20
percent said they would feel ''much less safe'' than on an American-owned
airline.
About two-thirds of those polled said they think the U.S. government should
''have stricter control over foreign airlines that fly into the United
States.''
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