Winging It

This is an update from yesterday's post on last night's meeting held by the Federal Aviation Adminstration on its airspace redesign plan. Residents of some areas of Philadephia and its suburbs west and south of the airport let the FAA know how they think they'll be affected by changing takeoff patterns from PHL. Find our report in print and online here. For detail on the airspace plan, click here

United Airlines raised its highest-priced tickets, the type used by business travelers who can't plan far in advance, by $25 to $50 one way, JP Morgan Securities analyst Jamie Baker reported this morning. Unrestricted walk-up fares were up $50, while the next price teir down, tickets that require advance purchase and are on a limited number of seats, were up $25. Baker said in a note to investors there's only a "fair probability" that other carriers will match, which means United would back down.

Surely travelers who plan on flying out of the country this year and need a new or renewed passport have heard: It's taking forever. Or is it? We have reason to believe the situation is improving. The State Department and everyone else in the travel business has been warning that it can take up to 10 weeks to renew by mail. Here's the surprise: We received a new passport in less than four weeks from the time it was mailed (first class). Perhaps it helped that it was mailed to a P.O. box in Philadephia. So let's hope the passport folks are clearing the backlog, which was caused primarily by new rules, requiring all travelers entering the country by air to have a passport.

Here's another surprise: New passports are beautifully illustrated with American icons and landscapes. A line from the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution, an eagle, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, mountains, farmers, herds of longhorn cattle and a Native American totem pole, it's all there and more. Just looking at it the first time is fun.

If you live in or near Philadephia or a few other large cities, you can go to a passport service center for same-day service. The Philadelphia center is in the U.S. Customs House, 200 Chestnut St. in Center City, but you need to make an appointment Here's a link to the State Department passport home page And please tell us what your experience with getting a passport has been.

US Airways plans to keep flying throughout next winter between Philadelphia and Dublin. The service has only been seasonal before. Read a little more here

Repercussions can occur when companies give big bonuses to senior executives soon after they've asked for sacrifices from the rank-and-file. A week ago, US Airways pilots set up informational picket lines at PHL, demanding management give back to employees some of the pay and benefits they gave up, twice in three years, to help get the airline out of bankruptcy. American Airlines pilots now are taking a turn, seeking raises to make up for concessions when the carrier was losing money. Read what the piolts and American's management have to say in an AP story

There is intrerest in Philly's suburbs to create a regional authority to run PHL and other airports in the region, as a way to try to ease congestion and spread out traffic more. Legislation has been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature by Rep. Bryan Lentz from Delaware County. In the meantime, New Jersey is already part of just such an agency, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the three big airports in the New York area. Now the Port Authority is expanding its reach to an upsate New York airport. Read an AP story about it here.

Look for some news in the next couple of weeks from US Airways and Southwest, PHL’s two largest airlines in numbers of passengers.

Southwest will be up first, with chief executive Gary Kelly in town Wednesday night and Thursday at the invitation of the Temple University School of Tourism and Hospitality Management. Perhaps the airline will take the opportunity to reveal plans for the additional flights from PHL that it says it wants to start.

On May 15, US Airways will hold its annual shareholders meeting at the Radisson Warwick Hotel in Center City. Look for some pilots in uniform and few of the airline’s other 5,600 PHL-based employees to show a keen interest.

Many Delaware County residents have made it clear how much they despise the Federal Aviation Administration's proposal to change the way airplanes take off from Philadelphia International Airport. Far less has been heard from those who may benefit from the Philadelphia-New York-New Jersey airspace redesign plan. They would be the 31.5 million travelers who flew in or out of the airport last year, as well as the 34,000 folks, many of whom live in Delaware County, whose jobs depend on the airport

The airspace plan calls for directing some flights to make turns just after takeoff, carrying them over residential areas on both sides of the Delaware River. Political leaders in Delaware County have stayed on their message of opposition, using experts who dispute the FAA's determination that the "environmental impact" of the flights -- mostly the noise of jets overhead -- won't be too severe.

In an unusual move, the FAA revised the airspace plan in the last two months, cutting in half the number of flight paths over populated areas. The FAA also notes that any change in the paths means some people will hear less noise than they do now, a benefit pretty much lost in the cacophony. The revisions haven’t diminished the opposition, based on the number of citizens booing and vilifying FAA officials at last week's public meeting on the plan in Tinicum Township.(Read about the meeting here.

The point of creating more pathways in the sky, of course, is to reduce flight delays at Philadelphia and four New York-area airports. Between them, PHL, Kennedy, Newark and LaGuardia usually finish in the bottom five for U.S. airport on-time performance. So the FAA had a dilemma when it started working on this almost a decade ago: Ignore projections that even more people will be flying in the future, or look at a variety of ways to move traffic more efficiently.

Building new runways or using satellite navigation to replace World War II-era radar for air-traffic control may help speed up takeoffs, but those solutions are years away. So in its slow, bureaucratic way, the FAA carried out its national mandate: find ways to accommodate the demands of airlines and air travelers. It was inevitable that the noise would be heard in someone’s backyard.

Perhaps, though, the notion of our backyard needs to be enlarged to include a region whose economy depends in good measure on the quality of its air service. Philadelphia’s tourism trade and other industries can’t thrive without dependable airlines and a decent airport. And low-fare airlines that have saved Philadelphia travelers millions of dollars through competition simply would not be here without the freedom to schedule as many flights as their customers want.

Several other airlines do it, but until now, US Airways had resisted the urge. PHL's biggest player is testing a $2 per-bag charge for curbside check-in at three Florida airports, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. No decision has been made yet on whether to extend it to PHL and other larger stations in the US Airways system. The charge is cash only and does not include a tip to the skycap, who also can issue a boarding pass. We always tip the skycap and will continue to do it, even if we're in an airport, or on an airline that charges. But if the self-service check-in kiosks are working, and the lines aren't long, even $2 per bag could make us consider schlepping them inside.

We're curious what you think of this kind of charge by airlines. We haven't found a good Website that rounds up all the airlines' charges for things that used to be free. Please tell us if you know of one. The best way to make sure you're getting policies directly from the airline is to go to the carrier's Website and use the search function, or drill down until you find them. Also let us know of anything that has cost extra but has been rescinded, such as US Airways dropping the $25 charge for a pasenger with a confirmed ticket to stand by for an earlier flight.

Look for some heavy promotion in coming days of restricted advance-purchase fares to Columbus, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Providence and Raleigh/Durham -- as in $29 or $49 one-way plus taxes. As usual, the deep discounts came from Southwest first, with US Airways and others matching.

In the same vein, AirTran announced one of its two-day sales, this one for its busines-class service, with one-way fares starting at $109 plus taxes. Tickets have to be bought by the end of the day Friday.

Yes, we know JetBlue Airways doesn't serve PHL. But it is a pacesetter airline, having raised the standards for in-flight service and is very popular with its customers. David Neelman, the founder and CEO for nine years, was replaced today by Dave Barger, the president and experienced airline operations guy. Opinions vary whether the move is directly related to the widely reported service meltdown JetBlue had Feb. 14 at its Kennedy hub. Read what Neelman and others say in an AP story.

Planning a trip to Europe in a few years? Southwest Airlines CEO Gary C. Kelly was in the city this week and had a comment that may interest you. See what he had to say about the airline's plans for PHL in our Inquirer story

Delta is taking a turn at raising fares, revealing that it raised many of its domestic prices $5 each way last night. One of the older legacy carriers or another has tried seven times this year to raise fares but has succeeded in getting the rest of the industry to go along only twice. Southwest says it won't match this one, which increases the chances it won't stick,

One of the great frustrations of many travelers flying from PHLis finding a place to park a car. Especially at school-vacation time, both the economy lot and the daily-fee garages can be full, forcing the panicked driver to roam the roads around the airport looking for a private lot. Leaving the car at home and using public transportation is an option, but isn’t practical for most people.

The best way we’ve found to deal with the problem is to use one of more than a dozen off-airport lots that surround PHL, on Route 291 (Industrial Highway) and on Bartram, Essington, Island and Passyunk avenues. These privately operated lots always seem to have space available, and they have the great advantage of taking advance reservations. Unlike PHL’s on-airport lots and garages, the off-sites can be booked and the fees paid in advance on the Web using a credit card.

Rates for off-airport lots are competitive with the $9 a day in PHL’s economy lot. The daily fee can range from about $6.50 to $15 a day, but if you make a reservation online, there’s usually a one-time service fee of $5.

The most comprehensive airport parking Web site we’ve found is — what else — www.airportparkingreservations.com. Another one is www.parkrideflyusa.com. They have long lists of U.S. and Canadian airports that are part of their networks. When you do a Google search for “airport parking reservations,” you will find those two, and other sites with different addresses that link to the first.

You can also find Web sites for individual parking-lot operators at PHL and elsewhere — if you know their names. We have been unsuccessful in navigating to airport-parking sites from the larger online travel sites, including Expedia and Orbitz. But that may just be our lack of time and patience to keep drilling until we find them.

Tom Lombardi, the Suffield, Conn., entrepreneur who runs airportparkingreservations.com, says his site has 200 parking lots at 65 airports in its database, including eight near PHL. Business has boomed at PHL since Southwest started three years ago and parking became tighter. Travelers tend to use off-airport lots regularly after one experience of “going to the economy lot, and it’s full, and the sweat starts,” Lombardi says.

The off-airport lots may be a little farther from the PHL terminals than the airport economy lot, including some that are a mile or two away. But they have another advantage: service. Some parking operators have valet service, driving you in your own car back and forth. Most have shuttle buses that in our experience pull up behind your car, and not to a bus stop a hundred yards away, within a few minutes of your arrival.

Every time we’ve used one of the lots and have more than one bag, the shuttle-bus driver has hopped off and helped us. We always carry $1 bills for tips to encourage the practice.

Last week’s post “Our air service backyard,” prompted as many comments as any topic we’ve put on the blog. Most of them attacked the point we made. We’re glad someone cares and invite you to keep ’em coming.

US Airways’ dismal March performance, in contrast, elicited no response. Was it a case of “So what else is new?” The late-winter weather and US Airways’ bungled switch to a new computer system caused so many delays it pushed PHL near the bottom of the list of the 32 largest airports for on-time flights. Systemwide, the airline finished the month with the worst on-time performance and the greatest numbers of misplaced bags and complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation among major carriers.

A traveler reported exceptionally long lines at Terminal D security at PHL this morning. Turns out, the lines were longer than normal at all the terminals, according to airport and TSA officials. At D, the problem was one of the four X-ray machines was out of order. Elsewhere, the only explanation offered was it was a Monday, when the number of business travelers is usually the greatest, and many students at the region's numerous colleges also were flying home for the summer. TSA says it had a full staff. You can always tell us about your experience by posting a comment.

US Airways held its annual meeting in Philadelphia this morning, providing CEO Doug Parker another opportunity to apologize for the lousy planning management did before turning on a new computer reservations-and-ticketing system on March 4. Anyone remember what happened? The meeting was sparsely attended, with the only questions coming from two union officers who represent airport ticket agents, and, as usual, Evelyn Y. Davis, the investor-gadfly who goes to dozens of annual meetings to challenge certain corporate governance practices. Read the early version of our story here.

The University of Michigan's annual survey of customer satisfaction with several industries, including airlines, was released today. It had some results that may be a surprise to PHL-centric fliers. Airlines finished next-to-last, while cable and satellite TV providers came in last, but overall, the industry improved nicely in the 2007 ratings compared with last year. The airlines had a score of 63 out of 100. Here's how the major carriers finished: Southwest, 76; Continental, 69; US Airways and Northwest, 61; American, 60, Delta,59; and United, 56. More information about the survey is in a U of Michigan news release.

Amtrak continues to set records for the number of passengers it carries. In the first seven months of the its fiscal year, since Oct. 1, ridership was up 5 percent over the same period of 2006. Trains that run in the Boston-to-Washington Northeast Corridor gained but the biggest increases were in other routes under 500 miles. The company news release can be found here

If flights are delayed in good weather this summer, here's one explanation: The number of domestic and international flights and the number of seats airlines have for sale will be up. Last summer, the same stats were down compared with 2005, mostly because airlines in Chapter 11 or just coming out of it were trimming service. Remember how much fares increased last spring and summer? That was a function of fewer seats for sale.

The eSkyGuide, an American Express publication, says that the number of domestic flights will be up 2.1 percent and international flights will increase by 2.4 percent. Low-cost carriers will be responsible for much of the growth -- they will be offering 8.7 percent more flights this summer compared with 2006. The guide says the low-cost airlines now account for 19 percent of all flights and 27 percent of all available seats.

This may appear to be more inside-the-airline-industry information than you really need, but we think it's worthy of a minute of your time. Southwest Airlines has signed a 10-year agreement with Galileo, a British company that operates one of the world's largest airline reservations systems. The deal will put Southwest's fares on the computers of thousands of travel agents in North America. Southwest has had a more limited agreement with Sabre, a U.S. company that is another of the other major operators of a "global distribution system," or GDS, for agents.

As Web-savvy travelers know, Southwest's fares and schedules aren't in the other big online travel services for consumers, including Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. Southwest has never thought it was worth the fees those services charge. What's more, Southwest.com is one of the most popular Web sites of any kind. It accounts for 70 percent of Southwest's ticket sales, and ranks not far behind the big three sites that serve multiple carriers in the number of visitors it gets. A deal with Galileo will put the great majority of Southwest's fares in front of agents who use its GDS. And Road Warriors may really benefit. Travel agents still sell half of all airline tickets, and about half of all business travel is managed by corporate travel departments that use agents. Despite the flocking of airline customers to the Web to book and plan their own travel over the last decade, thousands of companies continue to use agents in one way or another, either having them book trips or serving as monitors of travel policies.

Federal regulators are considering rules that would more accurately reflect delays of flights stranded on runways after they leave an airport gate. Read a Bloomberg News story about the plans here.

Tell us if this sounds all too familiar: Employees at several of the largest U.S. airlines are sharply at odds with the men who run their companies over how much money both groups should be making. Now that most carriers are profitable again, after four years of losing billions, the workers say it’s time they got back some of the billions in pay and benefits they gave up to help their companies survive after 9/11. The execs disagree, of course, saying that despite some managers getting fat bonuses, their financial condition remains too fragile to give everyone a raise.

The odds are low that the workers will get what they want any time soon. Most of the airlines’ concessionary labor contracts — signed under the threat of destitute carriers saying “do this or we’ll all be out of jobs” — aren’t due to expire for several years. And the process of signing new contracts in the airline and railroad industries is tedious and time-consuming. (You may have seen The Inquirer's May 13 story on Amtrak workers who who have been without a contract for seven years.

But what’s going on is what Kevin P. Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, the Radnor group that represents corporate travel managers, calls “a big storm brewing.” Across the land, there are large knots of unhappy airline employees who aren’t comforted by the fact that they still have jobs while more than 100,000 of their former colleagues don’t. On Thursday, thousands of union members from the airlines and other transportation trades staged a rally in Washington, protesting a long list of complaints about management and Bush administration policies. Among their gripes is the dismantling of defined-benefit pension plans allowed by bankruptcy courts when airlines have been in Chapter 11.

For months, pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers and others have put up informational picket lines at PHL, other airports and wherever airline executives gather. In the last week, employees have spoken out at shareholders’ meetings of US Airways Group Inc. in Philadelphia and AMR Inc., American’s parent, in Fort Worth, Tex. Jack Stephan, the pilots’ union chairman at US Airways, saw it this way after the gathering: “We wouldn’t have a US Airways, and we wouldn’t be having an annual meeting today, without the pilots’ investment.” At American’s meeting, the Transport Workers Union presented an online petition with 17,000 signatures objecting to the company’s executive pay pratices in light of concessions the rank-and-file have made.

Naturally, airline executives say that the unions are making unrealistic demands for a return, all at once, of the concessions they made. US Airways and American’s CEOs noted at the meetings how much employees received in profit sharing last year. And independent observers point out how much debt most carriers have.“The big concern is the airlines’ balance sheets are still a disaster this far into an economic recovery,” Mitchell said. “If wages go back up now, in the next downturn, some carriers may not make it.”

Should airline customers care about these issues? What we know is that in any business, disgruntled employees eventually mean poor service.

As always, tell us what you think.

Do you recall when a free breakfast, continental or otherwise, became standard for many mid-priced and even lower-priced hotel chains? In Europe, some offering of food in the morning has been expected of hotels for decades. In this country, we first recall Hampton Inns started the trend in the mid-1990s, although we're sure those in the hotel business will correct us if we're wrong. What was first just cofee and doughnuts has, fortunately, morphed into decent spreads in most chains.

So who can be surprised by the results of the YPB&R/Yankelovich Partners 2007 National Travel Monitor, an annual study by a longtime collector of travel industry data. The survey found getting breakfast included in the room rate influences the choice of hotel for 49 percent of leisure travelers and 53 percent of business travelers. In a different question, almost two-thirds of the Road Warriors found a hotel that includes breakfast in the rate was very or extremely desirable. If you stay in four- or five-star hotels, chances are breakfast won't be included but corporate travel managers with lots of business under their control often are able to negotiate rates that do include it. Coffee anyone?

J.D. Power and Associates, best-known for its consumer-satisfaction surveys on autos, does the same for airports and airlines. The 2007 results for PHL were released this morning and they may surprise -- perhaps even shock -- some travelers. PHL baggage service received a score of "better than most," the second-to-the-highest ranking, putting it in a tie with baggage service at Atlanta, Chicago O'Hare and Detroit, and a notch below Dallas/Fort Worth and Newark. Overall, PHL had the same score of "better than most," or four on a one-to-five scale. Just as curious, three airports that often get good reviews in other surveys, Denver, Minneapolis//St. Paul and Toronto, finished in last place among the largest airports (those with 30 million or more passengers a year).PHL had one "among the best" rating, for its food-and-beverage offerings.

All of J.D. Power's satisfaction scores can be found on its Web site.. Airports and airlines are under the Travel tab. More than 10,000 travelers participated in the study. Please let us know what you think of this survey (just the airline and airport stuff, not your car, please!) and other simiilar consumer research about airlines and airports.

From an Inquirer news in brief item this morning: US Airways will begin testing a $2-per-bag charge for using curbside check-in at Philadelphia International Airport in June, the airline is telling customers. The airline, Philadelphia's largest with more than 60 percent of the passengers, already is experimenting with the $2 charge at airports in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa, Fla. Members of US Airways' frequent-flier program were alerted to the test in a newsletter, which said the experiment was being expanded to Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Only cash will be accepted for the curbside service, and tips are not included. Other airlines already have similar curbside check-in policies. US Airways does not charge for checking bags at ticket counters or self-service kiosks.

The U.S. and Chinese governments say they want to open up the air-travel market between the countries. You may recall US Airways would like a PHL-Shanghai route, and this development greatly improves the airline's chances for a once-daily roundtrip, starting in 2009. Read the AP story here

Read the warnings about what to expect this holiday weekend and all summer on the roads and at PHL in today's Inquirer story

We suspect that most of the readers of this space have been through the TSA security process at PHL so many times you've lost count. For those who needed a reminder about what not to bring on an airplane these days, the TSA did a briefing this week. What TSA said may help explain some of the long security lines at PHL recently. Read more in today's Inquirer story.

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." That notable line, attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois in reference to the Pentagon budget, also can be applied to the capital investment needs of airports, according to the folks who run them.

Airports Council International-North America, which represents the governing bodies of U.S. and Canadian airports, including the City of Philadelphia, estimates that its members must invest real money - $87.4 billion from 2007 through 2011 - to keep pace with the projected growth in passenger demand. Without putting money into new runways, terminals and gates, the busiest airports are going to get more congested and more flights will be delayed, the group said in a study. Travelers may understand the needs better after this summer. If thunderstorms delay many flights, 2007 could be worse than 2000, which the group said in a statement "had the dubious distinction of being the peak year for air-travel delays." Weather is the principal cause of flight delays, which averaged 51 minutes last year and are expected to be 53 minutes this year.

Philadelphia International Airport's capital-investment plans are a small slice of the $87.4 billion. The airport expects to spend between $600 million and $1 billion on projects from the start of fiscal 2008 on June 30 through fiscal 2011. Among improvements already under way are enlarging Terminals D and E with new ticketing lobbies, security checkpoints, retail shops and a food court, and lengthening the north-south runway to accommodate larger airplanes.

The vast majority of money spent on operations and capital improvements at Philadelphia and most other airports comes directly or indirectly from airline customers. The $4.50 charge for each departure that's part of the price of your ticket is one source of the airport's revenue. Another source is the federal tax on each airline ticket, which goes into a trust fund to pay for runways, taxiways and air-traffic control. But most of the money to keep the lights on and build new facilities comes from the airlines and other airport businesses in the form of rent, landing fees and other charges. So it's baked into price of a ticket or any other product or service you pay for at the airport.

US Airways changes .... US Airways has had a hard time keeping many of you happy this year, mostly because of its botched switch to a new computer reservations system in March that caused delays and cancellations. Recently, the airline has used its every public utterance - news releases, interviews with senior executives, employee newsletters - to ask for forgiveness and patience as it tries to improve things. Here are some examples of what the company says is under way:

For all travelers, US Airways is installing new software on its self-service airport kiosks, which didn't work well, or at all, after the computer switchover. Look for that work to be finished by the end of June. For its most frequent fliers, those with Preferred status in the Dividend Miles program, US Airways dropped a $25 fee that had been charged to change a reservation on the day of departure. Software was upgraded, too, so that three times a day a sweep is done of all passengers' records. The program looks for Preferred members who have reserved coach seats on flights that also have open first-class or business-class seats, and sends the members an e-mail after each sweep, telling them if they get to move to the front of the plane.

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Advertising messages aimed at business travelers are so ubiquitous that they often escape our view without us even realizing they were there. Now US Airways is testing a new way to reach you, using the seatback tray table on some of its jets to feature columns from BusinessWeek magazine. The columns will run down the left side of the tray table, with the rest of the surface in this first phase covered by a US Airways Vacations ad. The campaign comes from a New York agency, Brand Connections, which teamed up with BusinessWeek to reach travelers at a time they have few other distractions -- and can't talk on the phone or send text messages, says agency CEO Brian Martin. US Airways is the first airline to buy the idea and is using them on 20 of its planes

The tray table has become a popular place to advertise, and Martin says the vast majority of people who pull down the table in flight remember the ad message. But when Brand Connections used focus groups to test a BusinessWeek column next to a traditional ad, consumers said they looked at them 3.4 times longer than those without a column. And to think, we heard a rumor that print media was dead!

International airline traffic has been growing at a faster rate this year than U.S. domestic traffic, particularly for carriers serving the Middle East and Africa. Read a news release from the International Air Transport Association about results for the first four months of 2007 here.

The widely reported story of a case of a rare form of tuberculosis has an airline connection. Read an updated AP story published Thursday (5-31) here . Air France reponded to the situation, saying it is contacting passengers who were on its flight with the man infected, from Atlanta to Paris on May 12. The airline's statement is on its Web site www.airfrance.com .

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed an airline and the FAA in determining the cause of a Chalk's Ocean Airways crash in 2005 that killed 20 people. Here's the news story from today's Inquirer.