"Rough Summer Is on the Way for U.S. Air Travel"

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Rough Summer Is on the Way for Air Travel 
By JEFF BAILEY
The New York (NY) Times


CHICAGO, — Brace yourself for a summer of miserable air travel.

Planes are expected to be packed fuller than at anytime since World War II,
when the airlines helped transport troops. Fares are rising. Service frills
are disappearing.

Logjams at airport security checkpoints loom as the federal government
strains to keep screener jobs filled. The usual violent summer storms are
expected to send the air traffic control system into chaos at times, with
flight delays and cancellations cascading across the country.

And many airline employees, after years of pay cuts and added work, say they
are dreading the season ahead. Those workers — and there are about 70,000
fewer of them than in 2002 — will be handling more than 100 million more
passengers this year than they did four years ago. 

The friendly skies, indeed.

"Everybody's stressed. Everybody's feeling it," said Bryan Hutchinson, a
former baggage handler at United Airlines who now works in a joint
airline-union program to counsel workers suffering from stress or other
emotional problems.

Above gate B-22 at Denver International Airport, with smells from the
Quiznos sandwich stand below filling his office, Mr. Hutchinson receives a
steady stream of burned-out looking United employees. 

Easy days are rare. An arriving plane is delayed. United shifts an outbound
flight to a smaller plane. Thirty passengers are bumped. Some become irate. 

And at the end of the shift, a gate agent "shows up in my office and says,
'I'm whacked out,' " Mr. Hutchinson said. He refers some workers to mental
health professionals, and offers others strategies for coping: Take a couple
of deep breaths; go vent to a co-worker. 

Passengers feel the stress, too. For some, the best coping strategy is to
avoid flying. Randy McCroskey, a consultant who lives in Maryville, Tenn.,
grew weary of sliding his 6-foot-4, 300-pound body into the seats of the
smaller regional jets that increasingly serve Knoxville's airport. 

He says that he now drives to see clients as far away as 500 miles. His
former limit was 100 miles. That cuts his air travel by more than half. 

"Rather than fight through security, not know if I'll get a seat on a
flight, get bumped, it's easier to just get in my car," Mr. McCroskey said.
"When I pull into rest stops, I see the same guys in the bathroom I'd see at
hub airports."

But the airports are still busier, as traffic has risen along with the
stronger economy and the recovery from the sharp downturn that followed the
9/11 terror attacks in 2001. About 207 million passengers are expected this
summer, the Air Transport Association said, roughly 2 million more than a
year ago.

And the effects of that seemingly modest 1 percent jump are magnified by the
fact that there will be 4 percent fewer flights this summer, according to
American Express.

Domestic flights are running at about 80 percent full, and that means that
flights on popular routes are often fully booked. Tim Winship, publisher of
FrequentFlier.com, said that advanced bookings suggest that planes, on
average, should be close to 90 percent full this summer.

"It means flights will be sold out," he said. "They're downgrading aircraft
types, from wide to narrow bodies, narrow bodies to regional jets." 

Airline executives say they try to prepare for the always-busy summer
season. "Look, load factors are higher than they've ever been, and
thunderstorms occur," said Peter D. McDonald, executive vice president and
chief operating officer at United. But United has spread out arrivals more
evenly to avoid logjams, he said, and more flight crews will be standing by
on reserve in the summer to handle scheduling mishaps.

Mr. McDonald said that despite the many sacrifices employees at United have
made to keep the airline in business, including steep pay cuts, "there's no
reason to believe they've lost focus here."

After 9/11, airlines parked hundreds of planes to cut costs. Financial
problems mounted, leading several major airlines to file for
bankruptcy-court protection. They laid off workers, cut frills and switched
to smaller planes on many routes. 

Six big airlines cut their fleets by about 700 planes, or close to 20
percent, since the peak in June 2001, the Air Transport Association said.

Airlines also shifted larger planes from domestic to international routes.
With scant competition from low-cost competitors internationally, airlines
can charge higher fares on such routes.

Last summer, for instance, Delta Air Lines operated four big Boeing 767
jets, with 252 seats each, on routes across the country. 

This July, those four 767's, reconfigured with 204 seats — including
business class seats with elaborate entertainment systems — are flying to
Edinburgh; Düsseldorf, Germany; Kiev, Ukraine; and Budapest. 

Replacing the 767's on domestic routes are smaller 757's, seating 183 each.
And that draws still smaller planes onto routes once flown by the 757's.

Over all, Delta will have 81,692 fewer domestic seats to sell each day this
July compared to the same month in 2005. That represents a drop of about 18
percent. But while the airlines were shrinking their fleets, business came
roaring back, resulting in packed planes. "Travelers longing for an empty
middle seat are recommended to buy one," said Jamie Baker, an analyst at
J.P. Morgan Securities. 

Airlines, still struggling because of high fuel prices, have been able to
raise fares because of the tight capacity. David Strine, an analyst at Bear
Stearns, said that he expected fares to rise about 8 percent this year.
Fares are still not as high as they were in the late-1990's, though.

Free rides are increasingly hard to come by. "Using frequent-flier mileage
is virtually impossible today," said Julius Maldutis, an industry
consultant.

Indeed, Mr. McCroskey, the Tennessee consultant, recently gave in and bought
two $600 tickets for a Las Vegas vacation with his wife, leaving his pile of
Delta frequent-flier miles untouched. "You can't use them," he said. "August
was the first thing they were showing."

As air traffic increases, the security screening system becomes taxed, too,
and those jobs become more stressful. The Transportation Security
Administration is hustling to fill screener jobs for the summer crunch.
Turnover runs about 20 percent a year.

Los Angeles International Airport's screening staff is about 10 percent
below a target of roughly 2,000 screeners. The New York area's three big
airports have an aggregate screener crew of about 3,800, but even fully
staffed that is "inadequate" to handle traffic, said Marc Lavorgna, a
spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "They do a good
job," he said, "with what they have."

Still, Kip Hawley, the security agency's administrator, said in an interview
that, approaching summer, "we are going to be ready in terms of our work
force." Local managers have hiring authority to speed the staff buildup.

New procedures are likely to slow some travelers. The agency says it plans
to conduct more secondary screenings to check for traces of explosives. 

Last month, at Atlanta's airport, a computer-generated image suggesting an
explosive— not from an actual bag being screened — was flashed to test a
screener's alertness.

The screener, after identifying the threat, is supposed to be told it was
only a test. This time, that didn't happen, and a frantic search ensued for
a bag that did not exist.

The terminal was shut down for about two hours, Mr. Hawley said, and the
bomb squad was called. The glitch that caused the panic has been fixed, he
said. 

"We do recognize the economic damage" of shutting a terminal down, he added.
"That won't happen again."

It's impossible to measure air rage accurately, but most experts think there
is more of it these days. Joyce A. Hunter, a former Delta marketing official
who is now an assistant professor at Saint Xavier University in Chicago,
started researching air rage in 2001 with the hypothesis that it is caused
by poor customer service, such as a lack of communication about delays and
other problems. While that contributes to it, she said, she has concluded
that alcohol is the main culprit.

Bars, of course, line airport terminals and drinks aloft can potentially
send an already angry flier into a fit.

Front-line workers — flight attendants and gate agents — usually bear the
brunt of problems. Sara Nelson Dela Cruz, a United flight attendant and
union official, said a lot of senior flight attendants schedule vacations
"so they don't have to work the summer crowds."

Onboard this summer, people are likely to feel "kind of like sardines," said
Reenie Prine, a customer service supervisor for Southwest Airlines at Midway
Airport in Chicago. Angry passengers are just part of the job, she said. "I
don't let it get to me," she explained. "An apology goes a long way: 'I'm so
sorry for your difficulty.' "

With airlines generally not expanding and traffic rising, is "fully loaded"
the new normal in a business that for decades flew planes at 60 to 70
percent capacity? The ability to compare fares easily on the Internet has
driven down ticket costs but also helped airlines to sell the very last
seat. 

For now, it seems that only rising prices could dampen demand. Some
travelers, particularly business managers who are not paying for the seats
out of their own pockets, may even find it a relief to be charged more if it
would lead to less-crowded planes.

"The thing that's starting to bother travelers more than anything else is
the comfort factor, not the fare factor," said Kevin Maguire, the in-house
travel manager for Applied Materials, a technology company based in Santa
Clara, Calif. "The airlines, federal government, general public need to sit
down collectively and find a way to get the transportation system back in
order," he said. "I've never seen it this bad."

Attached Photo/Graphic:

Passengers in Denver underwent screening on Friday. Airport security
checkpoints are increasingly jammed.

Graphic: Fewer empty seats

A Delta representative in Denver talked with an unhappy customer, Sharon
Duguid, who was having trouble with a connecting flight.

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