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Travelers love to hate on airlines. Airlines sometimes do bad things to their customers, dinging them with add-on fees, penalizing them when plans change, squeezing them into shrinking seats and bathrooms and occasionally leaving them stranded for a couple of days.
So if you could wave a magic wand and improve air travel, what would you do?
We’re not talking about fantasies like first-class seats for $10. Airlines need to be able to pay their bills. But are there practical fixes that could make flying better for people who don’t have superelite status or the cash to buy flying beds?
The question is a serious one for airlines. Airline loyalty is in decline. Henry Harteveldt, founder and analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, says his surveys show only 21% of U.S. airline passengers considered themselves loyal to any one airline last year. In 2000, that number exceeded 40%, he says.
This is an excerpt from WSJ
Southwest Airlines Co. and air-safety regulators are scrambling to complete work that would allow the carrier to begin service between California and Hawaii, scheduling eight government-supervised flights but the shutdown was looming
The unusually tight timeline, spelled out in federal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, partly reflects the desire to minimize the impact from a possible second partial federal government shutdown by the middle of the month. The White House and congressional negotiators are working under a Feb. 15 funding deadline, though industry and government officials said some of the flights are slated to occur a few days past that date.
Under the most optimistic scenario, these officials said, Southwest could start regular service for passengers across the Pacific from the West Coast by April. The timing depends on whether the designated flights without passengers are completed successfully and on time, as well as when the low-fare carrier opts to put tickets on sale.
Limited service flown by senior pilots or managers could begin in March, according to industry officials.
This is an excerpt from the Wall St. Journal
Furlough of FAA inspectors also slows airline’s introduction of new Airbus planes
Delta Air Lines Inc. forecast sluggish revenue growth for early this year in part because of business lost to the federal government shutdown.
The Atlanta-based carrier said Tuesday that it expects first-quarter unit revenue—a key industry metric—to be flat or rise at most by 2% as federal workers travel less during the spending fight between the Trump administration and Congress.
Chief Executive Ed Bastian said the shutdown would cost Delta this month about $25 million in revenue from government travel. The airline also attributed its tempered outlook to a stronger U.S. dollar and to the timing of this year’s Easter holiday in April, which pushes a busy travel period beyond the first quarter.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Rate of planes coming too close to each other hasn’t changed, but air-traffic controllers’ resources ‘are starting to run thin,’ union official says
U.S. aviation officials have compiled data that statistically support, for the first time, Trump administration statements that the partial government shutdown hasn’t jeopardized air-traffic-control safety.
The data, according to one person briefed on the details, indicate that serious traffic-control deviations—incidents of planes coming dangerously close to each other in the air or on the ground—have remained flat from levels a year ago. Such incidents are typically captured by computers and other automated means.
The statistical summary, covering the duration of the shutdown through the end of last week, also shows a 4% overall drop across a broader range of air-traffic-control deviations, this person said.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Move aims to help reduce its shipping costs, reliance on carriers such as UPS and FedEx
An Amazon-branded Boeing 767 freighter flies over Lake Washington during the Seattle Seafair Air Show in August 2016.
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.56% on Friday said it would lease another 10 freighter aircraft from Air Transport Services Group Inc., ATSG -1.42% as the online retail giant expands its air cargo operation.
The expanded deal also gives Amazon the ability to buy up to a 39.9% stake in the Wilmington, Ohio, air-cargo transportation company and includes multiyear extensions of the current aircraft leases between the companies.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners are overtaking the once celebrated giant of the sky; crammed seats and fewer perks<br>
About a year ago, a Boeing BA 0.41% 747 operated by Delta Air Lines took off from Atlanta for a three-hour flight to Pinal Airpark, a boneyard for unwanted aircraft in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.<p>
The once celebrated giant of the sky, which had transformed international travel with its size and range, had flown its last flight for a U.S. airline.
Delta has replaced its fleet of jumbo jets with Airbus A350s, one of a new breed of smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners. Nearly every other airline in the world is doing a version of the same thing, replacing huge jets with smaller ones.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Boeing Co. BA -is facing unusually public criticism from a major customer, Lion Air, as the two try to minimize fallout from a fatal crash.
Accident investigators are months away from determining the precise cause of the Oct. 29 crash that killed 189 people when the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea. Lion Air on Monday said it had reached a deal with a Dutch marine company to resume searching for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.
Initial information pointing to potential maintenance, operation and design issues, however, has escalated a spat that exceeds typically private finger-pointing following a major airliner accident.
“I’m very disappointed with the way Boeing has behaved,” Lion Air co-founder Rusdi Kirana said in a recent interview.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
LONDON—More than 100 flights at one of Europe’s busiest airports were grounded Thursday by drone operations that authorities say were a deliberate attempt to disrupt travel.
Police and military forces were involved in the response, Britain’s aviation minister Liz Sugg said. Sussex police said the drones were of an “industrial specification,” rather than a toy or amateur unmanned aircraft.
The incident, at Gatwick Airport—Britain’s busiest after London’s Heathrow—amplifies concerns about the threat to commercial flights from unmanned aircraft.
The drone flights near the airport began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday, the airport operator said. Some flights, including to the U.S., were grounded and others diverted to land at other airports, stranding, diverting or delaying tens of thousands of passengers in the run-up to the busy holiday travel period.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.