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Posts Tagged ‘Airlines’

Finally, I Was Right About Something

Seven years ago, I blogged about how nonsensical many airline rules and regulations seemed to be.

At the very top of my list was the prohibition on the use of electronics before takeoff and landing. The FAA finally gave into logic on this one, and airlines have been remarkably speedy in instituting the change.

(If you go back and look at the post, you will see that another thing I railed against was the announcement about “in the unlikely event of a water landing.”  There is no doubt this announcement is a complete waste of time, but not long after the post went up, Captain Sullenberger pulled off a water landing.  Thanks for nothing, Sully!)


Fighting Over the Width of Airline Seats

From Reuters:

Airbus this week called for an industry standard that would provide for a seat at least 18 inches wide in economy cabins, but its U.S. arch-rival Boeing says it should be for airlines to decide.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of money at stake here:

Boeing says its revamped “777X” will hold 406 people based on economy seats over 17 inches wide and set out 10 in each row.

Airbus says the competing version of its A350 will carry 350 people in 18-inch-wide economy seat laid out 9 abreast.

But it’s more than a battle between two companies. It’s a battle between the past and the present:


The Price of Air Travel

The cost of air travel is going up, and airlines are counting on us not to notice.

I’m not talking about airfares, which have actually declined in real terms over the past decade, despite inching up in the past few years. And I don’t mean the ancillary fees to check a bag, check in at the airport, speak to a live agent, or pick your seat, though these, too, are going up. Instead, I’m talking about the cost of delays and schedule disruptions that waste travelers’ time and force them to travel earlier to their destinations or risk missing important meetings and events. 

Air travel in the U.S. is becoming less reliable and less resilient to shocks like isolated storms that can ripple through the system and impact passengers thousands of miles away. If anti-trust authorities approve the merger between American and US Airways, we should expect things to get worse.


One Thought About the Two Deaths in Asiana Airlines Flight 214

The crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214 in San Francisco on Saturday killed two people. Given the circumstances, it could have been much, much worse.

The last fatal commercial flight in the U.S. was on Feb. 12, 2009, when 50 people were killed in the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, N.Y.

The last fatal flight of a major U.S. airline was on Nov. 12, 2001, when 265 people were killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

Number of people killed in U.S. traffic accidents since the last fatal commercial crash in the U.S.: approximately 143,200.*

Number of people killed in U.S. traffic accidents since the last fatal major U.S. airline crash in the U.S.: approximately 442,600.**

Number of U.S. newspapers, TV networks, etc., that did not feature Asiana Airlines flight 214 crash as its top story: approximately zero.


Pay Your Weight to Fly

Our recent Freakonomics Radio podcast “100 Ways to Fight Obesity” looked at some of the social costs of America’s increasing rate of obesity. One airline in Samoa is experimenting with defraying some of those costs. It will soon start charging passengers by the kilogram. From The Sydney Morning Herald: 

Samoa Air has become the world’s first airline to implement “pay as you weigh” flights, meaning overweight passengers pay more for their seats.

“This is the fairest way of travelling,” chief executive of Samoa Air, Chris Langton, told ABC Radio. “There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything – it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo.”


The Quants and the Airlines Versus the Public

Baggage fees are a small part of the misery of American air travel. There’s also connecting flights, which, to paraphrase the Nuremberg judgment, contain within themselves the accumulated evil of the whole. For if air travel were pleasant, who would mind changing planes and spending more time in the system?

Instead, the airlines make us pay to avoid the extra hours — giving airlines an incentive to make air travel less pleasant. But once in a while you can beat the system.

For a memorial service at short notice, I once had to fly with my 2-year-old daughter to New York (and throw away our return flight to Boston). The price of a nonstop, one-way flight from Phoenix, Arizona to Newark, New Jersey: $1200 (for two people).

But what if I flew slightly farther, allegedly changed planes in Newark, but just left the airport? So I went back to airline’s website and asked for a one-way flight to Manchester, New Hampshire. It was only $400 (for two people). Not only did the flight connect in Newark, but the Phoenix–Newark leg was the same flight that cost $1200 nonstop!


The Absurdity of U.S. Air Travel: Baggage Fees

On the way home from visiting my brother-in-law’s family in Ohio, we changed planes in Chicago. To avoid the baggage fees, we, like most of our fellow passengers, schlepped our luggage through the airport to the gate in Dayton.  Of course, we had to gate-check it because the overhead bins were long-full by the time we could board (boarding group: infinity). The plane arrived in Chicago late, we waited 20 minutes for our baggage to be unloaded, and then we sprinted to (and barely caught) our connecting flight to Boston.  Naturally, we had to gate-check the luggage for that flight as well.

Baggage fees brought U.S. airlines in 2011 a total of $3.4 billion. That amount is almost one-half of the industry’s 2011 profits of $7 billion. To double the airlines’ profits, the social benefit of which is highly unclear, society incurs many costs:


Markets in the Air

I stumbled on this nifty business idea, Nanny in the Clouds, to create a market in the air for nannies. Think match.com, but for wanna-be-nannies and parents on airplanes.

A clear market failure: people on flights with kids want some help; other people on flights want to make some money taking care of kids. Social norms don’t really allow for instantaneous markets to appear (“hey, for $10 I’ll watch your kid for the next two hours so that you can take a nap” is unlikely to get many takers, I suspect). But prearranged, where the norm adheres to our expectations in the babysitter market, and we have a market helping make trades otherwise not made.  

Here is how it works: Sign up on the website, put in the flight you’re going to take, and see if any parents (nannies) signed up and are looking for a nanny (parent who wants a nanny) on the same flight. Negotiate your rates directly, and pay Nanny in the Clouds $10 if the match is made.


Cockpit Confidential: Debunking the Autopilot Myth

This is a guest post by commercial airline pilot Patrick Smith, who writes about the hidden side of the airline industry. You can read his writing for Salon.com here.

Cockpit Confidential: The Autopilot Myth
By Patrick Smith

One evening I was sitting in economy class when our jet came in for an unusually smooth landing. “Nice job, autopilot!” yelled some knucklehead sitting behind me. Several people laughed. I winced. It was amusing, maybe, but was also wrong. The touchdown had been a fully manual one, as the vast majority of touchdowns are.

I’ve been writing about commercial aviation for nine years – a job that entails a fair bit of myth-busting. Air travel is a mysterious realm, rife with conspiracy theories, urban legends, wives’ tales and other ridiculous notions. I’ve heard it all, from “chemtrails” to the 9/11 “truthers.” Nothing, however, gets under my skin more than myths and exaggerations about cockpit automation — this pervasive idea that modern aircraft are flown by computers, with pilots on hand as little more than a backup in case of trouble. And in some not-too-distant future, we’re repeatedly told, pilots will be engineered out of the picture entirely.


Flight Status

If you are in the least bit an airplane junkie, you should follow the advice of Jason Kottke (no relation to Daniel, or Leo, fwiw) and search for “planes overhead” on the Wolfram Alpha search engine. It returns a list of airplanes above your geographical location, including carrier, origin/destination, altitude, angle, type, slant distance, as well as a sky map so you can find the actual planes in the sky:


Cockpit Confidential: How Difficult Was That Landing in Poland?

In the past, we’ve brought you the airline expertise of Captain Steve. Now, in a new feature we’re calling “Cockpit Confidential,” commercial airline pilot Patrick Smith writes about the hidden side of the airline industry. First up, Smith takes you behind the scenes of the recent belly-landing of a Polish Airlines 767, looking at what the media got wrong and what was likely going on inside the cockpit as the crew scrambled to deal with an almost unprecedented situation.


Dollar Coins for Airline Miles? Bon Voyage!

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the Fed’s $1 billion stash of unwanted coins, and the Federal government’s seemingly failed experiment to get us to trade in our dollar bills for dollar coins. The folks over at NPR’s Planet Money got inside access to see the pile of coins, which so far has cost $300 million to manufacture. Despite the clear failure to create demand, the program, authorized by Congress in 2005, won’t end until 2016.
Now it seems some folks have found an easy way to profit from all those unwanted coins. Planet Money reports that people have started buying the coins with their credit cards, thereby earning lots of airline reward miles. The coins are sent to them by the government for free. The buyers then deposit the coins in their bank accounts, pay off their credit card bill… et voila, a free plane ticket to Paris. While the U.S. Mint is a bit miffed by the scheme, a spokesman admits that there’s nothing illegal about it.


FREAK-est Links

This week: Why is our vision getting worse? Could an airline-style loyalty program work for public transportation? Why rich people are bad at reading the emotions of strangers, and a Cornell study uncovers corruption among Amazon’s top reviewers.


Why Do Airlines Always Lose Money? Hint: It's Not Due to Taxes or Fuel Costs

It’s been more than 30 years since the airline industry was deregulated in 1978. Since then it’s lost nearly $60 billion on U.S. operations, though most of the losses have come since 9/11. The airlines were already in trouble before the attacks happened. The plunge in demand and resulting liquidity crisis led to billions in government cash and loan guarantees– the first true bailout of the 21st century, and certainly a sign of things to come in the next decade.
In a paper published last month, (Abstract here; full version here) Berkeley economist and overall airline guru Severin Borenstein examines some of the most common explanations for the airline industry’s dismal performance, and why experts and deregulation advocates failed so badly to predict what would happen after deregulation 30 years ago.


An Offshore Airport for New York? Bring Your Airline Questions for Captain Steve

For some time now, Captain Steve, a pilot with a major U.S. airline (and one of the nicest humans you’ll ever meet), has been answering your questions about flying. He has commented on everything from cabin air to maintenance problems and ticket prices. It’s been a while since we had him here, however, and since there’s no shortage of airline headlines — including an eventful winter for weather interruptions — we thought it was time to bring him back for another round of questions.


Market Failure in Auctions?

As did its recent acquisition, Northwest Airlines, Delta is doing on-line auctions of seats that must be vacated if the plane is overbooked.


Who Pays to Train Pilots?

A recent Buffalo News article discusses how the airlines are lobbying to rescind a new provision requiring commercial pilots to obtain 1,500 hours of flight training before they are certified (a Congressional response to last year’s fatal crash in Buffalo). The companies believe that this will cause pilots’ wages to rise (to pay for the increased training costs the pilots must incur), causing average total costs to increase, increasing industry prices and reducing output and profits.


Prepare for Landing: The Friendly Skies Competition Winner

There is a dark side to the popular Freakonomics contest: the allure of Freakonomics schwag can turn otherwise rational, law-abiding people into animals willing to violate any norm of civilized behavior. As a result, there has been skullduggery in our competition in which we asked for your best (or worst) air travel stories. More in a bit.
But first, a couple of entries that are too late for prize consideration but quite amusing nevertheless.


A Freakonomics Contest: The Friendly Skies

I just flew down to LA from Seattle, and aside from a vicious battle of wills with my neighbor over possession of the armrest (ultimately won by me: a foolhardy reach for his drink was his Waterloo), I was pretty satisfied with my trip. However, for most of us, air travel represents anything but a positive experience. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the airlines rank second-to-last in customer service out of 47 industry sectors.


The Odds of Surviving a Plane Crash

The Book of Odds takes a look at a question that flashes through the minds of many people the moment they board an airplane: what are your odds of surviving a plane crash? They found that “[t]he general survival rate for a casualty-inducing airline incident is about 38% or, in our parlance: your odds of survival are about 1 in 2.63.”


A Good Reason to Fly Southwest

I earned two free one-way coupons on Southwest Airlines. I tried to redeem them for a round-trip flight in March, but there were no coupon seats on the return flight. So I redeemed one coupon, and have one left over. That’s a clever strategy by Southwest, as I will now use the other coupon as part of a second round trip.


A Great Answer From a Flight Attendant

A while back, I wondered why flight attendants don’t get tipped. Here’s a nice response from a reader named Barb, who retired after 36 years as a flight attendant with US Airways. Her suggestion sounds pretty perfect to me. I particularly liked her “schmuck” observation:


Captain Steve Answers More of Your Airline Questions

For a few months now, we’ve been soliciting reader questions for Captain Steve, a pilot with a major U.S. airline. You can find his first few batches of answers here, and he’s back now with another round. You can leave new questions for him in the comments section below.