"Southwest's SFO Departure A Sign of the Not-on-Times"

Sunday, February 11, 2001

Southwest's SFO Departure A Sign of the Not-on-Times
Biztravel.com also stung by tardiness on the tarmac
By Christopher Reynolds
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


If you ask the executives at Southwest Airlines or Biztravel.com, you may
get a more diplomatic explanation of what happened last month. But the
bottom line is this: Those companies each bet that air travel's on-time
performance would get better - or at least not get worse.

They bet wrong. And now they're both beating strategic retreats.

At Southwest Airlines, which has been admired for its timeliness since its
birth in 1971, the problem is San Francisco. Southwest, which began its
service to San Francisco International Airport in 1982, announced late last
month that beginning March 5, it would pull out of SFO. That airport's
cheek- by-jowl runway alignment, coupled with frequent fog and tight
scheduling, historically contribute to unusually high delay rates.

Southwest says that delays among its 14 daily SFO departures have been
"rippling across our system," costing the carrier money and reputation. Data
for November show Southwest's flights on time 75.1 percent overall, its San
Francisco departures 65.3 percent on time.

The SFO pullout leaves United as the dominant carrier on the heavily
traveled paths between Los Angeles International Airport and SFO.
Southwest's service to Oakland, a favorite alternate airport for many San
Francisco Bay Area travelers, will gain eight daily flights, bringing the
carrier's total to 115 daily arrivals (and the same number of daily
departures) at Oakland. The carrier also has 71 daily departures from San
Jose.

Southwest said it would contact ticketholders for San Francisco flights
between March 5 and June 8 to help with alternate arrangements.

At the same time, Biztravel.com has decided to stop betting as heavily on
the promptness of several other major airlines.

The online ticket-booking agency, owned by Philadelphia-based Rosenbluth
International, one of the largest and oldest travel agencies in the United
States, astonished many in the travel industry last May when it pledged
refunds of $100 and up to customers whose flights were delayed on American,
Continental, US Airways, British Airways and Air France. (Japan Airlines was
later added.)

The offers covered delays for any reason, from air-traffic-control issues to
weather, excluding mechanical issues.

The refunds were not automatic; a customer had to complain. Still, they
added up. In the

past nine months, which includ-ed a stormy summer in the Midwest, ongoing
air-traffic-control problems and several performance-impairing labor actions
among airlines, Biztravel.com found itself paying out more than projected.

Hal Rosenbluth, the chief executive of Rosenbluth International, said he
expected to pay $600,000 between May and late January. Instead, he said, the
tab was $1.6 million.

On Jan. 23, Rosenbluth and Biztravel.com announced a retrenchment: In
conjunction with the opening of new guarantee programs covering selected
hotels and rental-car agencies (with refunds of $20 to $50), the Web site is
cutting back its payoffs for late or canceled flights.

Under the new scale, travelers who bought tickets through Biztravel.com
beginning Jan. 23 receive $25 (instead of $100) for verified complaints over
flights delayed 30 minutes; $50 (instead of $200) for flights an hour late
and $100 (instead of a full refund) for flights that are canceled or are
more than two hours late.

Thinking of the money lost and attention gained, Rosenbluth also said this
of the original offer: "It was like a mackerel in the moonlight. It stunk
and it shined at the same time."


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