Flying Sucks Anymore

Scott en Aztlán wrote:

Flew Continental last night from IAH to SNA. Across the aisle was a
skinny little punk with a big carry-on bag and a laptop case. He
managed to fit his bag into the overhead bin, but there was no space
for his laptop - poetically, there were already two other laptop bags
in the overhead bin (and before you ask, mine was safely esconced at
my feet). He eventually found a space for it several rows forward.
Placing his bag underneath the seat in front of him was never even a
consideration.

After takeoff, he got up, took down his laptop, and proceeded to watch
a DVD - without headphones. He spent the entire time adjusting the
volume on his laptop up and down, up and down, up and down, - and
every time he pressed a volume button, the computer would emit a loud
"PEEP!" that was clearly audible by everyone.

As if flying weren't miserable enough with everyone stacked together
like cordwood into too-small seats with no legroom, you have
inconsiderate little pricks like these to make things even worse.



Yup, it's NO LIE, Scott:


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/bu...AIRTRAVEL.html

May 21, 2006

Rough Summer Is On the Way for Air Travel

By JEFF BAILEY

CHICAGO, May 20 - 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."

Jane L. Levere contributed reporting from New York for this article.

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