Winging It

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The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is conducting a hearing today in Washington to look into airline industry consolidation, a topic that could have a profound effect on travelers who use Philadelphia International Aiurport. Among the issues: How would service and fares at PHL be affected were US Airways to acquire Delta, and the surviving entity "rationalizes" its route structture in a way that cuts the number of flights or airplane seats available ?

Nerws releases and the text of US Airways CEO Doug Parker's testimony at the hearing can be found at the airline's Website, usairways.com. Another view, from Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein, can be found on delta.com, (search for Newsroom on the Delta site).

One group of passengers who are mad as hell at the airline industry is using the hearing to issue a call for a passengers' Bill of Rights. These folks are angry because on Dec. 29,. they were among hundreds of American Airlines passengers stranded aboard planes that sat on the ground for as long as nine hours at the Austin (Tex.) Bergstrom International Airport. The travelers, whose flights were diverted to Austin by bad weather elsewhere, had no water, food or sanitary restroom facilities during their ordeal. And they're not happy with the airline's response to their treatment, offering little in the way of compensation, the group says.

The movement that this group of travelers could start has been brewing for awhile, with complaints about airline service growing. We will keep up with it and report further developments as they happen.

US Airways reoported today that it made money in the fourth quarter and for all of 2006. Airline execs used a news release and conference call with analysts and reporters to tout the progress they said had been made in improving baggage service at PHL.

Read the full story here.

US Airways announced this morning that it was giving up on its dream of mergeing with its larger East Coast rival, Delta Air Lines.

Local broadcast coverage of the aftermath of last week's snow and ice would lead one to believe that there's a repeat going on of US Airways' infamous baggage-service meltdown during the 2004 Christmas holidays. That's not true. Then, as now, this is an easy story for TV stations to do because it's a visual about the airport they can capture on tape without going through security, or in fact doing much work at all. Here's the way we look at the "story."

When it snows, especially when mixed with ice, airports and airlines slow down. If they didn't, safety could easily be compromised. US Airways ramp workers who load bags and direct planes in and out know this: There were several broken bones and cuts requiiring stiches for workers who slipped and fell last week. Of course, flights are going to be delayed and many cancelled. Bags are going to miss connections. Some will take days to find their owners. The bag-tracing phone lines at US Airways and other airlines will be jammed, and you may be cut off. In the end, only a tiny handful of bags will be truly lost. On average more than 99 percent of all checked bags are delivered when they're supposed to be, at the end of a flight.

But is the number of bags that piled up over the weekend at PHL unusual for US Airways or any airline? The answer is no. About 700 bags were in the US Airways bag-claim area yesterday. By this morning, when the story was still being broadcast, there were betrween 300 and 400 bags still waiting to be reunited with their owners. US Airways carries about 60 percent of the 31-million-plus passengers who use the airport annually. If each passenger checks one bag, which is average, US Airways handles close to 20 million bags a year -- just at PHL.

We had a story in print and online this morning about a beef the Interational Association of Machinists, which represents merchanics and baggage handlers at US Airways, is having with the airline. If you missed it you can link to it here

US Airways has had success in using PHL as its main international hub, but all the routes go south or east, to the Caribbean, Latin America or Europe. Now the airline says it wants to do something completely different here: Nonstops to China. Read more about it: here

US Airways CEO Duog Parker was in Philadelphia yesterday, appearing at City Hall to formally announce, as we reported, that the airline wants PHL-to-China route authority. But the most interesting comment he made was that flights to Shanghai could also lead to US Airways flying nonstop to Tokyo, since the airline would need to buy or lease long-range jets. Read more here

If you're planning to fly US Airways from Sunday on next week, you may want to hold your breath for this: The airline this weekend switches to a single computer reservations system, integrating what have been separate US Airways and America West systems.The airline says it's been testing the new combined system for weeks, and it chose to do the switch on a weekend when the fewest number of passengers could be affected. Let's hope for the best, but US Airways warned in its weekly newsletter to employees today that "a migration from one reservations system to another, no matter how carefully planned and tested, is a complex task and may have hiccups."

US Airways warned Friday that there could be "hiccups" when it integrated the old America West and US Airways computer reservations systems into a single new one. Now it looks like it was more like loud belching and severe indigestion. An independent flight-data monitoring service, FlightStats, reported last night that just 14 percent of US Airways flights departed yesterday within 15 minutes of schedule, and two out of five flights left the gate more then 45 minutes late. US Airways said this morning that about half its flights arrived on time yesterday.
Travelers also reported difficulty accessing usairways.com but the Website appears to be working OK now. If you're traveling on US Airways, let us know about your experience. And we will update you later today.

We're reporting today from US Airways annual media day at its Tempe, AZ, headquatrters, and one of the first words out of CEO Doug Parker's mouth were: "We're not running as good an airline as we'd like or thought we would be. The key to that is fixing Philadelphia." The day promises more briefings on just what the airline's senior executives are going to do to improve its PHL operations. Parker and president Scott Kirby also were out front on the messy switchover to an integrated US Airways-America West reservations system that caused so many long lines and delayed flights last week.

Many of you have posted comments here, sent us e-mail or called regarding the last four days at PHL and US Airways performance. At about 2 p.m. today, there were still about 1,000 misplaced bags (we counted) in US Airways B-C bag-claim area. There are scattered reports of piles of bags in other airports also, waiting to be reunited with their owners. We spoke yesterday to a local leader of the customer-service agents' union, for a print and online story. Read what she says the problem is. here.

One way business journalists learn what airlines are doing is listening to Webcasts of their presentations to industry analysts. You can listen to one of these by US Airways earlier today by clicking here. It may take a few hours for the sponsor, JP Morgan, to get the US Airways presentation up on the site.

These kind of presentations to investment companies are archived on the "investor relations" portion of the US Airways Website, allowing you to listen at your convenience. Other major airlines also are presenting at the JP Morgan conference, and you can usually find their executives' remarks in the same way, by going to the investor relations portions of their Websites.

In the early 1990s, the U.S. Department of Transportation identified a phenomenon it called "the Southwest effect," to show what happens when the airline starts service in a new city: fares drop and traffic goes up. Today, there's no better example of the effect than traffic at Philadelphia International. Read details in our report on PHL traffic in 2006 here

Don't be surprised if US Airways' employee unions have some comment next week on a document the airline filed late today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Form 8-K, which can be found on the investor relations portion of usairways.com, outlines the company's executive compensation plan. Once you plow through the verbiage, you see what the bosses get if the company meets certain financial performance targets. This is a normal exercise in corporate America, including at companies where the employees have taken pay cuts while they were operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Happy reading!

You may have seen a story in print today about the Airline Quality Rating, an annual recounting of satistics about the airlines that are kept by the federal government. If you missed it you can find it here.

This yearly exercise has its fans, because it is a good roundup of data and it's an easy way for the media to report on the airlines. But Mike Boyd, a longtime aviation consultant in Evergreen, Colo., is not among them. Read what he has to say, in great detail, here

The Federal Aviation Administration is in the midst of deciding whether to raise, from 60 to 65, the age at which commercial airline pilots must retire. The thinking behind the proposed change is that pilots are healthier and live longer today than they did in 1959, when the restriction was adopted. The FAA's deliberative process is expected to take until the end of the year. But that's not fast enough for a group of fliers who have formed the Senior Pilots Coalition. Three US Airways pilots affected by the retirement rule filed suit in federal court last week, demanding an immediate end to it. Read the Associated Press story on the pilots efforts here . And tell us what you think of the age-60 rule in a comment.

Mary Peters, the U.S. secretary of transporation, was in China this week to talk about loosening the limits on air service to one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Here's a link to the AP story from Beijing. The story doesn't include the name of US Airways, which as you may have read here, intends to apply for the right to fly nonstop between Philadelphia and Shanghai, starting next year. Today's development means the odds of US Airways getting a China route may have grown a little. But don't make plans just yet. American, Continental and Delta also would love to go nonstop from one of their hubs to China.

Read the latest on what US Airways CEO Doug Parker made last year, and what some representatives of the airline's employees say about it here

Another Congressional hearing today, this time in the House, on the passenger bill of rights legislation. As you will recall, the proposed regulations stemmed from the stranding of passengers on major airlines' planes during snowstorms over the winter. Opinions vary whether using federal law is the best way to make carriers behave better. Today it was the turn of the American Society of Travel Agents to weigh in, and they are in favor. Read the testimony it presented to a House committee here

US Airways reported a $66 million first-quarter profit this morning. Of more interest to passengers: The airline announced that it would hire more airport employees and take other steps to improve the US Airways "experience." News releases on the earnings and the customer-service initiative can be found at US Airways.com. Go to "About Us" and then "press room." Click here for our story from Friday's paper.

More than 100 US Airways pilots showed their displeasure with management yesterday at PHL. Read more here.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

"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!

Philadelphia has managed to do something that most U.S. cities have not since Sept. 11, 2001 -- draw more visitors from overseas than it did in 2000. As you've probably heard, since 9/11, this country has made it much harder for business and leisure travelers, including citizens of European countries that are allies, to enter the country. Travel industry organizations have been ciritical of the federal government's visa requirements and the tedious, time-consuming welcome visitors get at international airports.

Despite that, Philadelphia had 434,000 overseas visitors (those from Canada and Mexico don't count in this measure) in 2005, compared with 390,000 in 2000, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau says. Among major U.S. ports of entry, only New York, with about 12 times as many foreign visitors as there are here, also grew when 2000 is compared with 2005. For Philadelphia, US Airways increase in European service in recent years has helped draw more visitors here. But most of the credit for maintaining the market goes to the visitors bureau. It advertises the city and region in a vareity of ways in Europe, and several times a year, it hosts groups of European travel agents, tour operators and trave