At 9:30 AM, about an hour into our flight to Philadelphia, our plane abruptly veered back toward Seattle. There was no terrorist threat, no elderly passenger suffering a heart attack, no engine blowout or sudden loss of cabin pressure or anything dramatic like that. No… the three rear toilets had malfunctioned, leaking an oddly sweet-smelling, bluish effluent into the aisles and, the pilots worried, into God knows what else… and it was this mundane mechanical failure that temporarily grounded the weekend plans of me, my daughter and a couple hundred other frustrated passengers.
A broken toilet. A fitting metaphor for an industry that has long been circling the drain.
It’s been four decades since I first took flight, and while the five-year-old me’s sense of wonder and delight has never quite faded, the allure of flying certainly has. Sure, domestic air travel has generally become quite a bit more affordable in this post-deregulation world, but it would be imprecise to describe it as merely inexpensive. Cheap, that is what air travel has become, and in every sense of the word.
Of course, at it’s core, flying isn’t all that different now than it was back in 1968, for despite all the technical advances during the decades since, there really isn’t that much of a difference between this leaky 757 and the idealized 727 of my youth. Both are essentially long, hollow, pressurized, stuffy tubes, packed with dehydrated people, hurtling through the sky at globe-shrinking speeds. And both manage to get their passengers and cargo from one place to another. Usually.
But long gone are the days when service was king, and the airlines treated passengers as more than just those things they cram into the space above the cargo hold. Gone are the skycaps, the uniforms, the hot meals, and the justifiable obsession with beverage service. (Not to mention the free beverages.) Gone are the days when a missed connection would automatically be rebooked on the next available flight, even on a competing airline. Flying has never been comfortable per se, especially for those of us packed into coach, but the attentive service airlines once lavished on their customers served as a calculated distraction from the noise, the cramp, the stink and the tedium inherent in air travel.
Take a road trip and you can pull over from time to time and break up the monotony by enjoying a meal, a walk, or a little sightseeing. Ride the train and you can comfortably stretch your legs, stroll the aisles or relax in the Club Car. But once they seal that cabin door behind you, the air traveler is confined to a tiny, upholstered cubby where even air and light is miserly rationed. We are at the mercy of the airline for our smallest needs, a mercy that, after decades of contract givebacks, layoffs, and mergers, has finally been extinguished from the hearts of flight attendants, perhaps the last airline employees to abandon their long held role as passenger advocates.
In the days before deregulation, when the airlines were all but guaranteed a profit but were prohibited from competing on price, they competed on service, and it showed. And so it is hard to imagine the old Pan Am treating its customers the way US Airways did Friday morning, refusing to rebook tickets while mechanics inspected the plane, and forcing passengers to check back at the gate every half hour for useless updates. And when, five hours late, after mechanics concluded there was no safety hazard, we finally reboarded the same plane, we discovered the carpets still soggy and the toilets still leaking, but with thick wads of paper towels shoved up against the walls as a temporary dike.
If this is the sort of stunning lack of pride the airlines now show in the most visible sections of their aircraft, how can we trust them to maintain the parts we can’t see?
I’m not suggesting we totally abandon competition for the days of tariffed fares and regulated monopolies, but perhaps there’s something that lies in between, something that restores a level of confidence and competence to the system, while returning stability to an industry that has collectively lost $15 billion since deregulation?
Another thing — without deregulation airline fares would undoubtedly be much higher, meaning much less flying both for business and personal reasons. If regulation had stayed in place, then, there would have been a profound effect on people’s travel habits and even their life choices. So, perhaps more would have been invested in railroad infrastructure and less in airports. Perhaps people wouldn’t have moved so far from family members and others they need to visit personally from time to time. perhaps businesses wouldn’t have become so dependent of travel and meetings that require travel. perhaps so many of these junky hotels wouldn’t have been built.
So, simply maintaining airline regulation may well have led to better choices, both environmentally and economically. This conclusion is not in line with free market theory, but I think it is accurate. Hopefully we can finally have a discussion now about the important role that appropriate regulation has.
Thankfully I just used up a major portion of frequent flyer miles on a trip to Europe. I have enough left for a free US flight, but it is increasingly doubtful that the airline will be able to make good on that when I am ready for that trip.
The worst experience I’ve had recently was when a Northwest flight loaded us up, taxied to the runway, and then had to go back to the gate because the pilot’s seat broke somewhere along the way. We had to switch planes and I think the net of it was a 3-hour delay.
Until Goldy’s story, I thought Northwest was the worst airline: out-dated and noisy aircraft, most uncomfortable coach section, long slow lines in airports, special fees for every imaginable thing, unhappy staff, a drain on public money in Minnesota while stabbing its home state in the back every chance it gets.
But I guess this is the industry standard now.
Although Alaska has a less than stellar safety record, my best experiences, in terms of service, with airlines lately have been with Alaska and Air Canada.
Where the hell was “Joe the Plumber” when you needed him?
Goldy, your problem is you never flew in the military, which gives you a clear sense of your place in the flying scheme — you’re cargo. And low-priority cargo, at that, less important than the ammo cases on board. To become important cargo, you have to be in a body bag.
Stories like this are becoming quite commonplace. Many of them sound strangely like what we were being told years ago about what it was like to travel on Aeroflot, frequently offered as evidence of how horrible communism was, and how much better capitalism was making our lives.
What happened?
@5 “What happened?”
Republicans turned out to be Trotskyites, they won the Cold War, and their cronies run the FAA.
Goldy,
If you yearn for the days of expensive air travel with top-notch service, it still exists. It’s called first class. Use it.
Airlines around the world are being shuttered or propped up via their national governments, or are being merged into other airlines. Increasingly, you’re seeing fewer of the large airlines and a handful, per region, of smaller, allegedly more nimble competitors (though whether most are financially sound enough to survive the present credit crunch is open to question). Sometimes it will work (as Northwest and Delta’s merger might, and as Southwest continues to do well) and sometimes it won’t (your personal experience with US Airways, which was US Air merged with America West a short while ago, and a lot of small airlines on the brink or just plain gone).
One change that I’m hoping for is that foreign ownership of American-based airlines will be allowed to increase to a level that will provide more capital so that they can get their aircraft and service back to acceptable levels, without allowing for majority foreign ownership. The number I’ve heard tossed around is 35%-45%, and I think presently it’s allowed to be no more than between 15%-20%.
Martin @7,
Actually, domestic first class sucks. It’s coach level service from 15 years ago, but with wider seats and free drinks. And you’re still stuck on the same late, leaking plane as everybody else. A total waste of money.
Martin H. Dumbshit @7,
So you are saying that the First Class cabin went on to Philadelphia while the Coach Class went back to Seattle. Yeah, right.
9/10 I’ll second that. In fact, I managed to get a preview of all this in the early 90’s when I had a job which entailed a lot of travel, working for a company that had a “special arrangement” with Eastern Airlines while Eastern spiralled from Chapter 11 bankruptcy into ultimate oblivion.
They still served something claiming to be food in those days, but it was fairly commonplace to be served a part of a chicken not normally considered appropriate for human consumption. The planes were falling apart–it wasn’t unusual to see one airplane repaired with parts “cannibalized” from another at an adjacent gate. Sometimes, this would be done after the passengers had boarded the aircraft. Needless to say, schedules didn’t mean a lot.
Since their mechanics’ union had been on strike/locked out for years, it was anybody’s guess as to whether the guy swapping the parts really knew what he was doing. I and my co-workers witnessed all sorts of in-flight mechanical problems ranging from the ventilation system pouring out some sort of foul-smelling vapor to engine failures and loss of cabin pressure.
Don’t even ask about the restrooms.
The airline’s remaining emplyees were doing their darndest to do the best job they could, but the resources weren’t there to run things in a comfortable, or even a safe manner.
Some time before the FAA finally closed them down, my company changed its travel policy, apparently after receiving several notices from the attorneys of employees’ next of kin detailing the liability the company might face if someone was killed while travelling on an unsafe airline as an implied condition of their employment.
Most of the problems can be traced to allowing airlines to go into bankruptcy (multiple times for some) for long periods of time and continue to run as if they aren’t. They are then able to avoid payments to creditors, undercut the competition with low fairs, and then come out of bankruptcy with barely enough working capital to keep their planes in the air.
IF they need bankruptcy protection, it should be short and sweet; sell them or close them.
See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17858408/
“When did bankruptcy become a deliberate management strategy for the airline industry?…”
NEWS FLASH!!
O-blah-blah asks for Senate Investigation into the KLOWNstein allegations of a right-wing conspiracy behind the toilet caper!
Goldy didn’t tell anyone that because he is sooooooo full of sh*t lately, the dam finally burst for him and he clogged the sucker.
Typical Goldy…only part of the story.
13 Cynical, that’s really lame…even for you.
Compare what you pay now and what you paid then.
Now AF…admit it, you chuckled a little bit.
Just like you must have chuckled when that idiot Biden said:
ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe Reports:
Can you believe Biden would say that?
He is telling the whole Country that he guarantees if Obama is elected we will be attacked within 6 months!
It’s an open invitation to McCain to use this to ask the question:
With Senator Biden’s GUARANTEE and the fact we have not been attacked on American Soil since 9/11/01, why in the world would anyone vote for Barrack Obama???
@14 No, it just gets worse with his every post. At least he’s dropped the bragging about the 38 hapless chickens he’s fucked.
This isn’t just true for the airlines. Look at electricity deregulation… higher prices in deregulated areas without any sort of increases in the quality of service. Heck, deregulation of energy industries led to Enron’s manipulation of energy markets during the crisis in California in 2000-2001.
You really are a fucking moron. There’s a difference between being tested by a major international incident, and being attacked by terrorists.
Of course, when Bush was first tested with an international incident, it was when that spy plane was forced down in China. He pretty much showed himself to be remarkably incompetent then.
17. Steve spews:
@14 No, it just gets worse with his every post. At least he’s dropped the bragging about the 38 hapless chickens he’s fucked
17 Hmph….I hope one of ’em didn’t end up on my dinner tray when I was flying on Eastern.
I’ve seen the decline of the domestic airline industry firsthand, as I work in the general industry (no, I won’t be more specific).
In general, the domestic airline industry has had a significant lack of capital investment going back for the better part of twenty years, which has accelerated in the last decade. In the late 1990’s the airlines were on the ropes due to price competition between them and frequent forays into Chapter 11 (discussed earlier). They were just beginning to get healthy again when 9/11 struck. It took several years for them to start to see daylight again, and then last year’s tripling of jet fuel prices struck.
So they’ve put off capital expenditures for a long time. Although low-cost carriers (Southwest) and those that compete with them (Alaska) have been buying next-generation 737’s out of Boeing/Renton, if you go up to Boeing/Everett you will see a flight line at Paine Field without any domestic carriers. Instead, you will see Japanese, Chinese, German, Australian, Singapore, and other foreign carriers with their livery proudly displayed as they come out of the paint hanger.
It’s been that way for a long time. And unless it changes very quickly, it will be the death knell of the domestic airline industry.
Here’s the problem. Sure, you can fly an airplane for thirty years or so. But like a car, it gets a lot more expensive to maintain it as it gets older. And it gets less fuel efficient. And unlike a car, if it breaks down you can’t just pull off to the side of the car and have it towed. You have to be pro-active and as the plane gets older, have “C” checks which involve gutting the interior of the plane and removing all it’s paint so it can be inspected and repaired of any hairline cracks which might be signs of metal fatigue. That kind of maintenance is expensive.
So the U.S. carriers are becoming less and less efficient in competition on international routes than foreign carriers, who as a rule are operating newer airplanes. The U.S. aircraft simply cost more money to operate than the foreign-owned aircraft. To my knowledge, only American Airlines has even placed an order for Boeing’s new 787, and the first delivery won’t be until 2016. It will be interesting to see if the Airline is even around at that time to accept delivery.
Now add to that the problem that the U.S. carriers have attempted to pinch every penny, taking away service levels. You see it at every level. Agents at the gateway don’t arrive until a few minutes before the flight, and hurry through the proceedures without time to handle special queries from passengers. Flight crews are tired and harried as the airline is working them to the absolute limit of FAA regulations. Ticketing agents are in the process of disapearing, being replaced by “automated check-in”, which works okay as long as there’s no problem, but God only can help you if it doesn’t work for one reason or another.
In contrast, fly on Singapore, JAL, or ANA, or some of the other carriers. The flight attendants who work those airlines are highly paid and considered among an elite and respected professionals. Ticketing and gate agents are happy to help you in any way they can, and are given the time and resources to do so, and have discretion to do whatever reasonably needs to be done to satisfy the customer. The meals are quite nice, even in coach. They offer “super economy” seats which are on the level of domestic business-class seats, and their business-class seats are better than U.S. domestic first-class seats. As for first class – that’s not even a subject worthy of comparison.
The cost of the flight is about 20% higher on the foreign carriers, but they usually have no problem filling the seats. Travelers outside the U.S. are usually willing to pay additional for the higher level of service, and resort to flying on a U.S. carrier only when their options are limited.
So in this context, you have to understand that the U.S. carriers are trying to compete with one hand tied behind their back. They are going to lose that battle over the long run. Even now, U.S. carriers are negotiating with their foreign code-share partners to surrender more of the international flights to the foreign carriers. The departure of even more revenue from the always-more-profitable international flights is only going to hurt the profit picture of the U.S. carriers in the long run.
So why can the foreign carriers compete, and the U.S. carriers can’t? Well, some foreign carriers can’t compete either – Italy’s flagship airline is on the ropes. But for many others, they are doing much better than their U.S. counterparts. In part its’ because of an increased level of regulation of prices, landing slots, etc. Or more government subsidy of airport fees or other costs born by U.S. airlines.
But I think the most convincing difference is one of management. Airline managers have sought to nickel-and-dime employees at every level, but issued large management bonuses even while the airline was in Chapter 11. United Airlines probably takes the cake in this regard, angering pilot and flight attendant unions after cancelling their pensions and forcing wage concessions “for the good of the troubled airline”, only to award huge bonuses to the executives only a few weeks later. Having earned the eternal distrust of their own employees, they are surprised to learn that the employees don’t want to cooperate when they ask for yet another round of cuts. Alaska also out-sourced it’s maintenance and baggage-handling, but brought on some bigger problems at the same time. Employees who were members of gangs were leaving gang graffiti in the cargo holds, raising the question of whether the airline was being used for smuggling operations. My last experience on Alaska was a disaster, as they managed to lose my one checked bag on a DIRECT FLIGHT from San Francisco to Seattle – luggage from five different flights was being unloaded on six different luggage belts, and passengers were being told to check all six to find their bags because the Menzies Aviation people were dumping them wherever it was convenient for them to do so.
The really sad thing is, that the domestic airline industry is pretty much a metaphor for the U.S. as a whole. Except for aerospace, our manufacturing capacity is a hollow core, most of it surrendered overseas within this past decade. Highways and bridges have obvious problems. It juts gets worse from there.
If you want flight perks you can always charter a plane. All deregulation does is let the consumer set the priorities. In the case of air travel the priority is price, not service or working bathrooms, good food etc. You can get that stuff if you want it, but you need to pay more. I recently flew on the airline out of Bellingham, it was very cheap, and I thought it was great. No food, no reserved seating, but a fine experience.
23 You mean Skybus? They went tits up months ago.
22 You’re absolutely right about the “metaphorical relationship”. The airlines, the financial industry, Detroit, the military–the entire fabric of our society has been fraying and unraveling for years, and now it’s on the verge of completely falling apart.
We’re now living in a nation dominated by authoritarian control freaks and cheap-labor conservatives, who all know in deep in their hearts that the whole thing isn’t sustainable and are putting their time and energy into stealing everything they can while the stealin’s good. All the while they’re laughing themselves silly at the rubes they’ve mesmerized into believing their rhetorical claptrap.
If anyone needs a refresher about where all this could be heading, they’d be advised to watch Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil.
Maybe if we’re lucky, Joe the Plumber will yet morph into Archibald Tuttle.
Is it me, or are our ‘domestic’ airlines going the way of the domestic auto industry? Out of date, out of touch, and possibly out of time…..
And if you budget your time properly, driving is still cheaper in the long run. And airline food has gotten to the point where McD starts to look pretty good.
26 Well, lessee…if you drive a late-model small car that gets 35MPG, that comes to around $85 just for the gas to get from here to Los Angeles. If you’re old enough not to play ironman you’re going to want to stop over halfway, and even Motel 6 now charges about $100 for a room. You’d be better off taking the train.
If you’re playing “Daddy-are-we-there-yet?” in a mini-van or an SUV, you’re probably looking at something like $150, once again just for the gas–but once again you’re going to be spending the night somewhere and buying lots of Mickey-D’s to fill the little tummies.
That’s not figuring gas going back up well over $4.00 a gallon after the election–which it will, no matter who wins.
Basically, it costs more to travel than it used to, and it’s going to keep costing more. The airline industry has been figuring on humongous growth to somehow break out of the mess it’s in, and it’s not likely to work. Think about that when you drive past that silly third runway at Sea-Tac.
To paraphrase Richard Nixon, some of us are going to have to adjust to staying home a little more.
Art @ 27: I’m not sure it’s growth that the U.S. carriers are counting upon. Everyone seems to be convinced that two or more major legacy carriers are going to go under, going out of buisiness entirely or being merged into another airline. They are just hoping that if they hang on long enough, it will be the other airline that goes out of busines first. Then, perhaps, they can raise fares which might (might) be enough for them to operate in the black – but only at more or less the same level of service and capital investment we now see.
It’s similar to the old joke. Two hikers round the turn and come face-to-face with a huge bear. The bear roars and charges them. Both hikers run as fast as they can, but the bear is gaining ground. One hiker turns to the other, and gasps: “This is ridiculous. We can’t outrun a bear!” The other hiker responds: “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you!”
27:
I drive for a living, either driving to gigs (recently I was in Florence, OR for a four-nighter) or as an overnight courier. Therefore, I know myself, and I know the unwritten rules of driving long-distance. Gas prices are trending way down, already below the $3 mark in most of Nevada, and likely to fall further with the Obama administration likely to look hard at the gouging of America by the oil companies. And if you’re paying $100 for a hotel room, there ought to be free oral sex from the hotel staff as part of the deal. And since we all know that ain’t happening, why bother paying that much? I can get cheaper rooms than that without even thinking about it. I find the cheapest hotels possible, well in advance, not caring a whit about quality as long as I’m out of the cold and the bed ain’t too lumpy.
And after doing some checking, it’s 460 miles from Reno to LA (remember, I moved there a year and a half ago?). My little Ford Ranger (which gets about 32mpg on the highway) can do that on less than one tank of gas, about 14.375g. And at the current lowest price in Reno ($3.05/g), that’s $43.85. When I make long trips like that, I usually pack my own food for the trip, usually only stopping for a bathroom break along the way, or refilling my giant mug o’ Coke ($1.50 max). And if by some chance I need to sleep somewhere along the way, I’ve budgeted my time very poorly. And there’s no room up front in my Ranger for anything other than me and the missus, and she’s as ready for anything as I am, though a ThermalCare wrap for her back would be nice (add $5). And I have no kids to worry about. If there were, I wouldn’t be making the trip in the first place. The only rig I have that can carry me, the missus and the grandbabies gets barely more than half the mileage of my Ranger.
Amtrak would actually be a bit cheaper than you suggested (Reno – LA for $94 per person), but it’d take 14 hours compared to 8, and that would include a three-hour bus ride into LA from Bakersfield. Or it’d be $71 per person with two bus rides (Reno-Sacramento and Bako-LA). The only advantage for the train would be the chance that I could sleep on a train/bus. But I know that’s not happening. I know, I’ve tried. And since I’d more likely that not be traveling to LA for business, I’ll take the mileage deduction (460 miles at 58.5 cents per mile equals a tax write-off of $269.10, $538.20 round-trip) over anything else.
And I have a 13-hour trip from Reno to a gig in Gallup, NM likely coming up next month. That’s a wee bit out of my one-day range (11 hours is my limit), so my bandleader will go in halvsies with me to pick up a 2-bedroom WorldMark condo (sleeps 6) in Las Vegas (been an owner since ’95) on Bonus Time for about $40-50/night each way. By the way, gas genrally gets cheaper the further away you get from the Coast ($2.89/g in Vegas, $2.63/g in Gallup, according to the latest reports). And given that prices have been falling at a rate anywhere from $.45 – .75/g a month depending on what state you’re in, and down over $1/g or so from peak prices this summer, this trip is only gonna get cheaper.