Escalator Crash
February 7, 2010 on 9:36 am | In Trivia | No CommentsThis was brought to my attention this morning.
see more Epic Fails
Yeah. Probably not the best choice for an airline.
This was brought to my attention this morning.
see more Epic Fails
Yeah. Probably not the best choice for an airline.
It would appear to me that a few airlines are heading for a second set of problems just as their economic situation is improving a bit. Several legacy airlines have employed a strategy of delaying negotiations and keeping the dialogue open without really resolving things among their employees. American Airlines and United Airlines have been particularly bad at this.
Southwest, on the other hand, recognized a need to continue to have settled relationships with its employees and made quality of life as much as pay a big issue. The same is true of a few other, newer airlines.
I really believe that offering better quality of life possibilities is the way to get these conflicts resolved. Everyone focuses on pay but the issues such as health care, time off, flight benefits and even fatigue are the things that can be resolved to the benefit of both sides and lead to more productivity and less conflict (which leads to distractions in running the business.)
Healthcare is a big one. It’s expensive and among airline crew, very much needed. While companies see it as expensive, in many respects, it isn’t. $10,000 worth of healthcare per employee can be worth $20,000 in salary and lead to much better loyalty, happiness and productivity. While it is difficult to tie this to direct savings elsewhere, there is no doubt in my mind that relieving employees of this worry would lead to much better labor relations.
Think about how tired *you* are after flying just one long trip in a day. Imagine how it must feel if you’re “working” 2 or 3 trips in one day.
Time off is important too. All too often, airline crew are seen as having lots of time off because of their schedules. What isn’t often observed is just how much recovery is required after flying 2, 3 or even 4 very long days in a row. It takes a few days to recover from the kind of grueling schedules that are required to stay profitable. Restructuring trips so that employees can maximize their pay while working and, at the same time, have enough time off to recover and be ready for their next set of trips will lead to better quality of life.
Flight perks are a very demoralizing area for many airline employees now. Yes, they get to fly free . . . when there is space available and, let’s face it, there isn’t much space available these days. That makes people feel as if those perks’ value has been greatly diminished and, in many respects, it has. Airlines would be better off to scrap unlimited “free” travel and, instead, offer a limited set of guaranteed positive space benefits. There would be a great deal more value in the employee being able to count on being able to use those benefits *when* they wanted to use them as opposed to having to live in a state of uncertainty as to their plans. Modest guarantees have much more value than unlimited perks dependent upon space being available.
Why not allow an airline employee accrue a guaranteed space ticket much like most of us accrue vacation time? Work so many flight hours, get a guaranteed space ticket. Let them carry the benefit on the books as long as they like so they might “earn” enough benefits to take their family someplace. Award them a business class seat at various anniversaries but not at 5, 10, 15 and so on years. Do it every 3 years of service.
Pay is important and its time for airlines to start looking for a different way to pay their crew. The pay for most airlines has become too complex and, frankly, rewards seniority far more than the work provided. 30 years ago, flight attendants weren’t expected to make a 30 or 40 year career out of flying. They generally flew as much as 10 or even 15 years and then quit. That allowed a great deal of turnover in seniority that became arrested in the late 1970’s.
The truth is, a senior flight attendant for a legacy airline (and by senior I mean 20+ years) is generally able to hold schedule in a city he or she wants to be domiciled in and fly a relatively easy schedule while making a good salary.
By easy, I mean that flight attendant might fly one or two legs a day, maybe spend one night away from home and fly another one or two legs before being off for 3 or 4 days. A junior flight attendant may be flying 3 to 5 legs a day, staying away from home as much as 3 or 4 nights and have just 1 or 2 days off before doing it again to earn a salary that, frankly, isn’t very much a living wage.
Pay and productivity aren’t matched very well. Airlines need to pay not by the mile and size of aircraft but, rather, by something like the number of legs they fly in a day and the number of nights away from home they endure. Airlines want more productivity but there is a disconnect from that with the current seniority system.
Keep the seniority systems for allowing a flight attendant to choose their schedule. But make the pay for a grueling schedule rewarding and the pay for a light schedule less rewarding. You’ll find senior flight attendants taking on the hard, difficult trips to earn that pay and you’ll find them doing a great job of handling it by virtue of their experience *and* their reward for hard work.
Most of all, take care of your employees. Make it easy for them to get something to eat and drink between trips. Make it easy for the gate agent to have a brief respite between serving 2 flights. Find ways to allow more cross-functionality between jobs at the airline so that employees want to help each other get through the day faster and happier as opposed to protecting their jobs.
I don’t see airlines like American and United trying to take care of their employees. I see them looking at their employee base with contempt and hostility. After 30 years of this, it’s time for everyone to take a breath and work out something that works for both sides.
If this isn’t done, legacy airlines will find themselves being held hostage via strikes just as their situations have improved. The worst thing you can do is to starve a person and then when you have all the food, fight them for it. At that point, the starving person has nothing to lose by fighting and everything to gain.
Frontier has announced some new flights recently but there is one that caught my eye for two reasons. One, I know and use the Newport News / Williamsburg Airport and, two, that’s one strange route.
Now, the Newport News / Williamsburg airport is a secondary airport for the Norfolk area but it is really only convenient to a small portion of Norfolk and those living on the peninsula between Norfolk and Williamsburg. (Anything much past Williamsburg is more conveniently served by Richmond International Airport (RIC).
Understand, I think Republic/Frontier clearly saw something to the route because they’re putting an E-190 jet on it first and plan to upgrade it to an A318 later. However, it puzzles me as to what they saw since there are exactly ZERO non-stop flights between those two areas at present. Sure, I would imagine there is some connecting traffic via AA and United Airlines through both DFW and ORD but there just can’t be much or one of those two airlines would have something working on that route by now.
This one just doesn’t make much sense to me. There are no obvious business ties between the two cities and even the military contractors that have offices in both cities don’t have much business that is shared between the services in those two cities.* Yes, Norfolk is a big military area but it is primarily a Navy/Marines area where Colorado is primarily Air Force. Newport News / Williamsburg is a nice airport to fly into if you’re going to that side of Norfolk or anywhere on that side of the bay. I like it because I visit family in Williamsburg and its just a 15 minute drive from there to the airport compared to nearly an hour to Norfolk (ORF) or an hour or more to Richmond (RIC). I’m glad for Airtran serving it but while I do see the connection for Airtran, I don’t see it for Frontier.
There are plenty of connections serving DEN-PHF but they all funnel to flights from Atlanta or Charlotte (Delta/Airtran and US Airways respectively). Those flights are all on small RJ’s and the fares, frankly, don’t seem to offer a whole lot of yield either. Prices for a late February flight with a Saturday overnight stay are as low as $205 ranging up to about $240 (for any flight someone would realistically take.) That doesn’t suggest a lot of yield available.
I’d love to know what Frontier saw that made it seem such a smart move.
* I work for a major first tier Defense contractor myself based in Richardson, Texas.
The Middle Seat Terminal Blog had THIS post today regarding schedules and schedule padding. The question was, are airlines cheating when they pad their schedules to improve their on-time rating?
From the point of view of a consumer looking at their on-time rating, it might be a cheat. Frankly, I think there is little value as a consumer to look at an airline’s overall on-time rating. Now, it does help to see what the rating is for a particular flight and/or similar flights through FlightStats.com. But even then I would take such information with a grain of salt.
There are too many variables involved to make your choice on the basis of an on-time rating. You have to consider the cities involved, the time of year and weather, the equipment being used and even what impact severe weather at another hub might be having on a route. For instance, Dallas might not be badly impacted by weather much at all at any time of the year but what if Chicago is and the equipment used for a Dallas originating flight comes from a flight between Chicago and Dallas? What is a flight was being served by equipment with a poor dispatch rate such as an ERJ-145 and suddenly gets replaced with newer and better CRJ-700’s?
Schedules should be evaluated for whether or not a particular flight will get you where you want to go at the time you want to go. Period. Smart consumers will now that leaving themselves 30 minutes connection time at a hub will result in lost baggage and/or missed connections.
But are the airlines cheating? No, not really. Frankly, airlines needed to adjust the block times for routes for years before it really got done. Block times, the time a flight leaves a gate to the time it arrives at its arrival gate, are important and they have grown considerably. Airports are busier than ever.
I can remember that a DFW to ORD flight in the mid 1970’s used to take right about 2 hours in block time. Today, it’s about 2 hours, 45 minutes. That reflects the arrival of hub operations, crowded airports and very old infrastructure in place. It’s amusing to me that some trans-continental flights are now calling for as much as 7 hours transit time. That’s as much time as the last prop airliners were doing it in the late 1950’s.
Rather than calling it cheating, I’d say that “padding” isn’t padding. It’s getting real with reality for the first time in quite a while and that means consumers can count on the airline doing what it said it would do which makes the entire experience more pleasant. However, that kind of reality scheduling will go on only as long as it receives some scrutiny so its good that someone such as journalists are reporting those rates on a regular basis.
The Dallas Morning News Aviation Biz Blog has THIS STORY on how American Airlines has notified the FAA that they may train management employees to serve as flight attendant crew in the event of a strike. This move is likely a response to the APFA statement recently stating that they’ll move to ask the NMB (National Mediation Board) to declare an impasse, the first real step towards a strike. I also consider it a move by AA to rattle its sabers just a little as well.
The airline did this once before in 1993 in anticipation of a strike by flight crew and while that strike ended somewhat disastrously for both parties and only with the intercession of the President, something did occur to me. It worked poorly last time for two reasons.
First, AA was unable to fly a full schedule resulting in lots of cancellations as well as congestion on other airlines. AA made preparations but it really didn’t put its heart into that attempt at strike breaking. Second, the service component was abysmal. Employees had been trained to serve in the more important safety roles but not the service roles.
It occurs to me that this time, it could work a lot better. There is very little service component compared to 1993 for one. Second, if they managed to keep their planes in the air, this could dramatically dampen labor unrest among the rest of the airline.
In addition, American’s operations are more diversified now and I kind of wonder if their operations aren’t modeling just how to combine flights and keep passengers moving for a while. A strike would still be a disaster for both parties, in my opinion, but I kind of doubt that either party is going to back down. AA’s flight attendants are notoriously militant and have been kind of spoiling for a strike for over 10 years but I don’t think there are many flight attendants who could withstand a very long strike financially.
Moreover, AA has pretty good liquidity but that will start disappearing in a large cloud of smoke if there is a strike. Their liquidity is what has kept financial analysts and investors off their backs. Lose that liquidity and you’ll be looking at regime change real quick.
Over the past few days, there have been a number of news stories about the trial that is to begin outside Paris, France against Continental, 2 former Continental employees and 3 French nationals ( an official with France’s civil aviation authoritythe DGAC and 2 former employees of Aerospatiale.) Any airline enthusiast knows the story of the Concorde crash July 25th, 2000 and the resulting aftermath of modifications, return to flight and then the permanent retirement of the Concorde in 2003.
What is tragic is that the five men and Continental (the corporation) are being tried for involuntary manslaughter and this entire trial bothers me quite a bit. First, the three Frenchmen being tried strike me as scapegoats put up for trial and the benefit of seeming to be “fair”. Second, to blame Continental or its employees for this tragedy just seems, well, so very French in attitude.
The two former Aerospatiale employees, Henri Perrier and Jacques Herubel, are both very old men and accused of failing to carry out modifications on Concorde after a series of tire blowouts in the 1970’s revealed design flaws that allowed debris from tires to penetrate the Concorde wings. There is the story of the Air France Concorde that suffered a blowout on take-off from Dulles airport in the late 1970’s that saw its wing tanks penetrated and it managed to leak tons of jet fuel before returning to land.
It is true enough that such flaws were known for a long time. It was a two part problem. Because Concorde took off at such higher speeds (as fast as 250mph), it was difficult to build a tire for it that would not catastrophically fail in the event of a blow-out. Mind you, blow outs just happened more often back then too.
The second problem was the wing. It was possible for a tire blow out to throw pieces of the tire up against and into the wing of the aircraft where fuel tanks existed. As you can imagine, it isn’t a good idea to penetrate fuel tanks ever and certainly not next to 2 afterburning engines on take-off.
Over time, the tires got better (but not fixed per se) and Concorde managed to fly successfully for 2 more decades before the tragic crash in France. A little historical context is necessary to understand everything at play here.
First, Aerospatiale is now a part of EADS/Airbus. And guess who owns a large chunk of EADS? Yup, the government of France. I should also mention that Aerospatiale was formed from the merger of several government owned aerospace companies in 1970 and continued to be owned by the government of France. Notice that they are not a part of this trial.
Second, guess who owned Air France in the 1970’s. . . yes, the government of France. Air France was a government owned entity in a variety of forms until privatization occured in 1999. However, the French government still owned a majority holding of shares as recently as 2002. Further, Air France has always been recognized as a national flag carrier in France and even despite privatization, it holds that kind of status throughout the nation even today. Notice that Air France is not on trial either.
If someone should be on trial for this tragedy, it should be Aerospatiale/EADS, Air France and, possibly, the DGAC (French civilian aviation authority). At least from the French perspective. However, it is much easier to lay blame at three elderly men who are old enough to not have any “patrons” in the government still and therefore leave them unprotected from what by all appearances is a failure on the part of the French government rather than these men.
I’ll also take note that France has studiously avoided dragging BAe Systems (formerly BAC and the co-builder of Concorde) as they are, wait for it . . . still a first tier vendor to EADS/Airbus although no longer a partner. No finger was pointed at the UK government for permitting design flaws to continue on for 2 decades and the UK was just as aware as the French. However, the French have to work with the UK and and business is business.
Frankly, I predict that the French court will likely lay the blame firmly at Continental’s feet and assign some to those 3 elder Frenchmen on trial.
But the real tragedy will be France failing to shine sunlight upon their own behaviour and complicency in this crash and that makes France a less safe place for all concerned.
Sadly, French arrogance when it comes to this kind of issue still rules today. When an Air France A-330 was lost over the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Brazil, the offer of US investigatory assistance was nearly ignored entirely. That is criminal in itself since the US has the best investigative force for airline crashes in the world. There is no one who comes close and that is why the US is asked to assist with investigations around the world. However, the US has the nasty habit of, more often than not, calling a spade a spade. Something that the French will not tolerate when it comes to their aerospace and aviation industries.
The Continental Airlines employees on trial will not be present. They will be represented and therefore they run almost no risk of imprisonment no matter what the outcome. However, I think that makes it just easier to blame them as a face saving gesture. I suspect that no matter how vigorously Continental Airlines defends itself they will be the ones to pay ultimately.
The three Frenchmen on trial may suffer some blame, again as a face saving gesture, but I wonder if they’ll take it. They have no reason to. An 80 year old man has little to lose in speaking out at what was going on in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.
If this post seems xenophobic, I can see why that might be the interpretation. However, I stand by my characterizations of both the French government and the French aerospace industry. I doubt seriously that anyone who has observed the aerospace industry would disagree with me either. My characterizations are based on their deeds and those deeds have been many over the past 50 years.
First, read this newstory HERE and this newstory HERE about a Continental Airlines flight to Bogota, Colombia that was diverted to Jacksonville, FL when someone apparently identified a person the passenger manifest as being on the “no fly” list.
First, how did someone manage to board the aircraft if their name was on the “no fly” list? That would seem to imply a breakdown either at Continental or the TSA itself. Just because the TSA seems intent on blowing it at every chance, I’ll speculate it was a problem on the TSA’s end.
Second, note this paragraph:
The situation was quite scary for the 75 passengers aboard Continental flight 881 in light of the Christmas day attempted bombing of a Detroit flight by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Really? They were all sitting there terrified? I think the journalist is engaging in a bit of fantasy here. I guarantee you that those passengers were kept in the dark about this and the reason given for a diversion wasn’t not “Ladies and Gentlemen, we might have a terrorist on board so please keep your seat belts fastened while we divert the aircraft so this person can be met by the FBI.”
More than likely, unspecified but routine reasons were given and there was no activity on board other than the loud sighs of passengers being inconvenienced again.
Shame on the journalists for writing such garbage.
CNN is reporting that the Transportation Security Administration is having to investigate a “Jeopardy Board” at an Air Marshal field office in Florida which ridicules gays, women and other minorities. Read the story HERE.
Once again, another huge slice of evidence that the TSA has no professional conduct ingrained in its organization. What is worse, not only is this evidence of a lack of professional conduct, it is evidence that, at least at one office, there is a complete lack of regard for treating people within their own organization without prejudice. And if they cannot treat people within their organization with fairness, how can we expect them to treat the public with fairness.
Furthermore, if their own agents and guards are engaged in childish, unprofessional behaviour, it is a sure sign they are also not engaged in doing their job. In a way, this should elevate security concerns far more than any unspecified threat offered by the government.
According to USA Today / AP in this story HERE, a resident of Brooklyn, NY recently photographed a TSA agent sleeping on the job at New York City’s La Guardia Airport and posted it online. You can see the photo at this LINK.
A spokesperson for the TSA said the guard was put on desk duty while the TSA investigated and speculated that she might have been on “break”. And judging from the photo, that chance exists . . . barely.
This is what I mean about the TSA having no appearance at all of being professional. It doesn’t matter if that woman sleeping was innocent or not, it does not come off as professional conduct. Furthermore, if she really is that sleepy, how good is she doing her job being on the alert for suspicious items and people? Probably not good.
It takes a long time to repair an image in the public’s eye. With this latest story as well as the antics I wrote about HERE as well as the poorly organized reaction to events on Christmas and afterwards, this leads to no confidence on the part of passengers. A lack of confidence makes the passengers rebellious and less willing to cooperate with security needs.
You know who is professional? The National Park Service. The FBI is professional.
The TSA is no more impressive than a knock knock joke.
Several airline journalists and bloggers have posted their reactions to Air New Zealand’s new coach seating that has the possiblity of becoming a kind of 2 or 2.5 person “couch”.
See The Cranky Flier and Middle Seat Terminal for a look.
I have to say that unlike all the other reactions I’ve read (very positive), I’m wholly unimpressed. Granted, I wasn’t there to “experience” it but from the photos the seat cushions themselves look awfully thin for true comfort. Despite the models looking like they’re luxuriating in comfort, that does not look like a comfortable way to relax even on an airplane.
Yea! Premium seating got even better for customers of New Zealand. (I’m being sarcastic) Economy customers got introduced to 10 across seating on their 777s. Bleagh. Economy purchasers can now spend even more money to lounge on something that, frankly, isn’t lie flat and doesn’t really look comfortable at least for taller, bigger or older people. I’d rather have more seat pitch and, yes, the real economy seating on the 777s will have 33 inches seat pitch (and let’s not get carried away celebrating) but I just don’t see the real advantage to the couch seating. I wish I did but I don’t.
What this airline world needs is a better seat for domestic 1 to 4 hour travel with a bit more than 31″ of pitch. Let’s celebrate and dance when we see that from a mainline carrier in the United States. Heck, Airtran has a comfortable en0ugh seat that with just 2 more inches of seat pitch, I’d be dancing in celebration of them. Same for Southwest.
I want to see some seating innovations for the typical customer actually get implemented.
I received an email pointing me to this video about the US Airways A320 recovery in the Hudson river. It’s a time lapse film of the A320 being pulled up from the river and it’s both well done and even a bit dramatic. Here it is:
Posted on Kontain.com – [Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.
CNN is reporting that an Ethiopian airliner carrying 92 people has been reported “down” after disappearing from radar screens about 30 minutes after departure from Beirut.
These three alliances have been forming, growing and shifting for some time now and it is almost fair to say that they’ve reached a certain maturity that lets us take a look at what the future might hold.
There will always be shifts between alliances as time goes by but the major structures are now in place and let’s be honest in that airlines are not equal partners in these alliances. There are bedrock airlines and there are airlines who are really more associate partners.
In the Star Alliance, US Airways has definitely been more of an associate member than, say, United, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines and with the recent addition of Continental and the close partnership its formed with United, US Airways is even more the redheaded step-child in this organization.
SkyTeam really has the strongest core though. Formed, in part, from the original Northwest / KLM alliance that began in the 90’s, it now has an extremely strong network that spans both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. If it has a weakness, it is in South America among South American carriers and I’m not sure if that is really a weakness right now.
The Star Alliance and SkyTeam have both managed to work among themselves in pretty close partnership and develop strong networks playing on each others’ strengths. Schedules between those partnership airlines are pretty rational and they do tend to treat affiliate partners as having value in the organizations.
Then there is Oneworld. Oneworld isn’t so much a partnership alliance as it is a looser affiliation of airlines. To be sure, at one time Oneworld’s members represented a very strong core of airlines who were profitable and very strong on a global level. To a degree, they still are but this has definitely become the weak alliance over time and with the fight over JAL taking place, its now fighting for its life.
Oneworld doesn’t know how to work well with each other. Partners American Airlines and British Airways have dominated that relationship and because of their obstinance over trans-Atlantic routes and slots at Heathrow, they haven’t been able to work closely together over time and develop those relationships that have been grown in other alliances. Because of their dominance, other potential strengths in their network, QANTAS, JAL and Cathay Pacific for instance, haven’t really been exploited fully either.
Oneworld is, for most intents and purposes, an old style Anglo-American relationship with AA, BA, QANTAS and Cathay Pacific dominating that alliance. (If you don’t think Cathay Pacific is Anglo, look up its history and its executive team.)
If Oneworld loses JAL, I’m not sure this alliance survives in the long run. It cannot afford to be an alliance with two dominant partners (AA and BA) and it cannot afford to lose even one trans-Pacific partner. If JAL moves over to SkyTeam, then I suspect over the next few years we’ll see one or more “majors” in that relationship find homes elsewhere.
No matter what Oneworld does, they lose a major network in Japan if JAL leaves the alliance and they have no hope of luring ANA over to their alliance either. The best they can hope to do is build their routes systems into Japan with more direct flights from outside Japan. That isn’t very satisfactory.
They already lack a major partner in China itself (Cathay Pacific isn’t quite that kind of partner) and lack a major partner centered in Korea and Southeast Asia/India.
I suspect we’ll see one or more core partners in Oneworld slip away to one of the other alliances. It wouldn’t be too hard to attract LAN away from Oneworld, for instance. Nor would it be difficult to perhaps walk Cathay Pacific away from Oneworld. That would leave three basic Anglo American core partners who have no harmonized strategy and not much to offer smaller affiliate partners either.
What’s more, JAL doesn’t need their money now that they’ve gone into bankruptcy. The Japanese government is financing them and will provide all the capital they need at this point since they have little choice to do anything else. That means JAL is free to consider a long term strategy and if it can get some real signal that anti-trust immunity would be granted to a partnership between Delta and JAL and the rest of SkyTeam, that’s their best deal.
It has occurred to me that the reason there hasn’t been more worry about the dominance such an anti-trust immunity would grant is that, maybe, Delta has signaled its willingness to draw down its legacy network to and inside of Japan that it gained in its Northwest Airlines purchase. Northwest Airlines not only had a strong system to Japan, it also had a strong network system of flights originating from Japan to regional Asian destinations.
If Delta is willing to let JAL fly that system on its behalf, that may well satisfy regulators in the United States.
So, the Dallas Morning News Aviation Blog has THIS entry about the United States telling Japan to slow down on their assumptions that all alliances applying for antitrust immunity in anticipation of a new Open Skies treaty between our two fine country will receive approval. Apparently the Japanese government has been presuming that any and all applications are a done deal and approval is just pro forma. So the United States went to Japan and essentially said “Yeah. Not so fast. Not only do we not choose the alliance for our companies, but we actually don’t just rubber stamp things either.”
With all the talk over the past two weeks about how it was all but announced that JAL would switch to an alliance with Delta and SkyTeam, I could not understand how everyone could regard that as a done deal. Such an alliance meant that 50% or more of the trans-Pacific traffic between the US and Japan would be owned by a cooperating alliance. In the airline world, that’s market power.
To put my puzzlement in perspective, the trans-Pacific BA/AA/Iberia alliance wouldn’t come to close to controlling that much of the UK/US traffic and, yet, the DoJ and DoT have *not* given blanket approval to that application. The DoJ asked for modifications and the DoT (which actually gives the approval and which is more friendly in general to airlines) is waiting for more comments.
So, as I’ve already written a couple of times, I didn’t see an anti-trust immunity agreement between JAL and Delta as necessarily anything genuinely possible. Frankly, I don’t know why Delta thinks it so doable either but from their perspective, there is no harm in trying to form the alliance.
This is the cultural difference that exists between Japan and the United States. In Japan, government still very much has a hand in the direction of businesses and, in particular, the airline industry. Japan, despite its size, remains essentially a two airline country where one of those airline (JAL) has been a government arm for its entire existence. From Japan’s point of view, if the US wants an Open Skies agreement and knows that granting immunity is essential to that agreement, then surely the US will make that happen regardless. Obviously, our government doesn’t work that way.
I suspect that was a rather stunning reveal for the Japanese government and the executives at JAL. I also suspect that the CEO of American Airlines, Gerard Arpey, smiled yesterday despite everything else slamming into AA this week. Now that I understand what was going on on this subject, I reaffirm my belief that, ultimately, JAL will stay with Oneworld if only because of anti-trust issues and the extreme difficulties and logistics of getting such an agreement to pass in Washington, DC.
No, seriously, they do. This column by Daniel Rubin on Philly.Com HERE has all the details but I’ll summarize.
It would seem that some TSA guard decided to search a woman’s luggage and then pulled out a small, clear plastic white baggie filled with white powder and then asked “OK, where did you get it?” He kept her going for a bit of time and then confessed it was a joke. The woman, a young college student, was, in the meantime, picturing her entire life crumbling around here and wondering just how someone got to her luggage. She was, quite literally, in tears as she walked away.
Yeah, the TSA investigated and then fired the guard. So what.
Seriously, so what. Firing that employee isn’t going to fix an endemic problem. It isn’t going to send the right message to the other poorly trained guards. So, so what? It doesn’t fix a thing.
This kind of behaviour, this lack of professional conduct is seen by travelers every day of the year. I have watched TSA guards verbally abuse passengers, shout at kids, act with retribution towards passengers who had the courage to question an behaviour and even attempt to steal from people. Yeah, that last item is something I personally experienced several years ago in the airport in Atlanta.
That’s the problem. We don’t have a well trained, professional group of agents capable of protecting us. We have an extremely irregular set of people who apparently are more interested in money, jokes or abuse than doing their job which is, quite literally, to prevent an air catastrophe.
And people wonder why we don’t feel safe in the air.
Southwest’s 4th quarter financials have been released and contrary to analysts expectations, Southwest not only made a profit in the 4th quarter, they’ve made a profit now for 37 years in a row. For details on the numbers, click HERE.
I’m sure many will attribute this entirely to Southwest’s “no baggage fees” campaign but I think that is doing a disservice to Southwest. I’m quite sure this has more to do with having an excellent service product, excellent staff and a new CEO who appears to have come into his own and really is a new SWA leader. Congratulations Southwest.
Southwest Airlines’ blog, Nuts About Southwest, had a post about their cabin interiors which you can view HERE.
If you think aircraft seat pitch hasn’t changed over the years, take a look at their photos. Particularly the first two photos of interiors. The seat pitch is dramatically more generous than the last two photos. The seat pitch shown in the first photo would, at a guess, exceed that of United’s Economy Plus on most aircraft.
And that isn’t exactly breaking news, is it? Everyone knew it was coming and now it has happened. Japan Air Lines must now face the music, reorganize and find a way to survive.
It isn’t as if they were a shining example of profitability over the years. Indeed, it was yet another airline formed as a national flag carrier that was ultimately privatized and which ultimately went into deeper and deeper debt. Its cousins are airlines like Alitalia and Olympic, not British Airways and American Airlines.
The blame lies in the company culture and by that I mean it went too long in a regulated and semi-regulated environment and then got set free into the competitive winds of the world with a crew of executives that never knew any real competition. Its one positive attribute was its service level which by most accounts was impeccable.
There has been a lot of criticism for the CEO, Haruka Nishimatsu, over the past few weeks. Particularly when it was announced that he was ultimately going to be replaced by Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Kyocera Group. I wrote about that announcement HERE. Tonight I remembered a video that was passed around among many airline enthusiasts as a kind of great example of what an airline CEO should be. Mr. Nishimatsu is shown riding a bus, eating in the general cafeteria of the company and generally being one of the people. I remember many people posting on other blogs about him earning just $90,000 in salary after cutting all his perks when he had to slash budgets and staff at JAL. (See below)
Let’s remember that this guy at least tried to do the right thing which is quite unlike many in this business at times.
So, what’s next? Well, JAL has to layoff thousands of employees, reduce costs at every level, probably purchase some new aircraft and find a way to claw itself back into profitability. That’s a tough thing to do even in good times.
I’ve some doubt about their choice of CEO to do it with. This is a man who plans to work for no salary and put in “3 or 4 days” a week as well as choose a second-in-command from the current airline ranks. Huh? Really?
What JAL needs is a seasoned airline executive who has extensive experience in competitive environments and who understands what it means to run both a national and international airline. There are plenty of those around in this world but, yes, it does potentially mean hiring someone who isn’t Japanese to run the airline. Or at least to lead the airline out of its current problems.
There is some precedent for this. Nissan’s CEO is Carlos Ghosn, a Lebanese-Brazilian man who came to Nissan from, of all places, Renault. He made enemies until he surprised everyone by bringing Nissan back to profitability. If they can’t stand to hire outside of Japan, then they would do well to find someone at ANA to take over.
If the Japanese government and JAL’s board want to be serious about recovery, they need someone who is the best, not someone who is politically safe.
JAL will likely rid itself of its 747 fleet in favor of a 777 / 787 fleet for its international operations. It is time for those Airbus A300 aircraft to go too. It will have to eliminate stupid routes like flying from New York City to Rio de Janeiro. Their focus on First Class and Business Class will have to be realigned. (An amazing portion of some of their international aircraft is dedicated to these two classes leaving only a small portion for Economy Class.)
But I have to say that I think this is going to turn much uglier before it gets better. I think JAL will flounder and I think the Japanese government will continue to pump money into it (and, in a way, they kind of have to since they provide the only competition to speak of for ANA.)
Speaking of ANA, I found this quote on the Dallas Morning News Aviation Blog from ANA:
“We believe it is important to secure customer convenience by the injection of public funding. However, we are also highly concerned that the fair and competitive environment would not be secured under the financial support and injection of public funding.”
That kind of criticism is rare in Japan but ANA has had to fight for its success since its inception. They have a point but strangely even I find such a statement a bit tacky on this day.
Everyone says it is Delta and SkyTeam who will lure JAL away from the Oneworld alliance. I must say, given all the talk, I’m beginning to be swayed. However, I remain skeptical that they can enter into the SkyTeam alliance, particularly with Delta, without their being some anti-trust issues on the part of both governments. If they are leaning that way, I believe it is because someone in the Japanese government is leading them to believe there will be no issues. I do not think that that will be the case in the United States, however. One look at the criticisms of the AA/BA/Iberia anti-trust case and you’ll see what I mean.
Azul turns 1 year old and has posted some pretty impressive numbers. According to THIS Wall Street Journal story, Azul has managed to carry over 2 million people in its first year of operation.
Flying with a fleet of 14 Embraer E190/E195 jets with a 106 and 118 seats respectively, Azul plans to grow their fleet considerably ending up with a fleet of 33 aircraft by 2011. Azul was, to date, the best financed airline venture yet at $200 million in start up capital and is an excellent example of how to start an airline properly.
Owned and controlled by David Neeleman, former founder of Morris Air and jetBlue (and who also assisted in the founding of WestJet in Canada), Azul shows great promise for stimulating air travel demand in Brazil.
Ordinarily, I’m not too keen to talk about completely foreign airlines but this is one I like to watch because I have a feeling that Mr. Neeleman will come back to the US again one day and start yet another airline. I presume he presently has a non-compete clause in force between himself and jetBlue but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s already looking at a map of the United States and making plans with himself for the future.
According to the Wall Street Journal Middle Seat blog, American Airlines has decided to match the bag fees recently implemented by Delta and Continental. You can read more HERE.
So, at present, Delta (including Northwest), American Airlines, Continental, United and US Airways are now all charging $25 for the first bag and $35 for the second bag with some of the airlines offering “discounts” if you perform your “bag fee purchase” online. That would imply that they each see this price for checked bags being a bit more elastic than one would have thought. Or, at the least, they see it as elastic as long as they all go for the same increases much as the case is with air fare increases.
So far, no low cost carrier has adopted this pricing model or even raised their checked bag fees. I suspect they won’t either as it gives them an opportunity to show themselves as the good guy while gaining some incremental revenue.
If this rise in fees sticks for the next 1 or 2 quarters, I do think it will put tremendous pressure on Southwest Airlines to institute their own version of bag fees, at least by institutional investors and analysts. So far, Southwest and its CEO Gary Kelly have resisted these calls to add checked bag fees and, so far, they believe it is resulting in incremental revenue from passengers switching to Southwest to avoid fees. Since CEO Kelly (and Southwest as a whole) is not one to shade the truth, I’ll continue to believe these claims.
However, with other LCC carriers such as Airtran and Virgin America and even jetBlue (on the 2nd bag) have added fees and do report significantly improved revenues from that, I would imagine that the call for Southwest to add these fees will be defeaning particularly when Southwest could implement a jetBlue or Airtran style program and see improvements to their quarterly results which haven’t been too impressive in the last year.
It is sad but I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of these increases. I do think that some airline will probe the upper limits of these fees just a bit more yet. I do think that Southwest will resist the call to add these fees for at least another 6 months but if there hasn’t been some kind of collapse in the price of these fees by then, I would not be surprised to learn that Southwest has begun to make changes to their infrastucture to implement them. I think the first sign will be the withdrawal of their “no fees for checked bags” advertising.
