bocastephen

The US airline industry will never make money in the long term - it's a zero-sum game because the product has been commoditized and there is too much competition. There are up years, and there are crash years - over the long term, the business will always fail to make money.

There are too many airlines, too much capacity and a public that will not pay $600 for a 14 day advance ticket from New York to Chicago or LA.

Even when UA goes under and is absorbed into CO, the competition will add capacity either in the form of added legacy seats to compete, or a new startup.

denCSA

CO's (and every other airline's) cheerleaders want this more than anything; all the benefits, just as long as they aren't going to have to pay for it...

RNE

Thanks. I'm so stupid I didn't realize that difference until you pointed it out.

While not an outright emergency, humanitarian concerns are the basis of this ("arbitrary" ) rule. Planes should offload passengers at any open gate and then pushed back, if necessary, to let the next plane unload. Jefferret is just begging the FAA to add a fine for cancelling a boarded flight on the ground, unless the crew expires or legitimate weather/mechanical problems arise. And while I'm on this rant, let me add that the FAA should require all planes flying in, to or from the U.S. to have a minimum of 36" pitch between seats. Again, for humanitarian reasons. Yeah, it'll raise ticket prices 10%. Big deal. And if the FAA further requires my suggested stripper poles in the back galley, the airlines will be able to entertain passengers for those three long hours on the tarmac. ^ Again, this is purely for humanitarian reasons.

trm2

Then why would anyone want to get off the plane after only three hours unless they run out of beer?

uanj

Good one, but perhaps wishful thinking in the end!

The airline industry is competely to blame and needs to get their act together. First they cause the problem. Then Congress makes a lot of noise over this issue and the airline industry does not react other than to point the finger of blame in the direction of Air Traffic Control. So Congress does something. Is it the best? Probably not, but at least they made a move towards respecting passenger rights which the airlines on their own were not willing to do.

I am shocked and disappointed at Continental's statement, Smisek seems to think that the best solution is to turn over our time in our lives to his airline so at their discretion they can decide to hold us in a plane for nine hours or not went things go awry. With or without water or food or toilets. Wrong. If we want off in 3-4 hours, that is a basic right that needs to be respected.

Get a reality check, Smisek. And starting considering your customers' needs and perspectives.

belynch

Agreed, to a point.

No, I don't like to pay $600 to fly between NY and CHI or LA (but I routinely do) for the simple reason that I don't think I'm being offered a product that equates to that value. The airlines made themselves a commodity. They set the prices and the product delivered.

Give me a reason to spend that $600 and I will. Hint: subsidizing 3 other people on that flight is not a good reason. :-:

By airline logic no one would drive BMW's and Mercedes when we should all be content with our Daewoos and Kias. Look out your window and you'll see why that logic is very wrong.

Airlines have conditioned the public to have price as the largest purchase motivator (schedules are secondary), which is why we're seeing so much with a la carte fees. They obfuscate the true full cost of air travel so they are the lowest price on that matrix.

Eos and MaxJet failed at trying to offer a premium product that would let them sell seats at a profit. There's reasons for those failures and I still think there's a legitimate business case to be made for a premium airline that offers some sort of value proposition for charging higher than (commodity) market fares.

Of course, I also think that there's a sound business case for E+.

morerainplease

Airlines have had years to address this and other issues. There was significant momentum behind a passengers bill of rights 10 years ago (championed by a former Republican presidential nominee) and then a horrible day changed the landscape forever. Airlines got a pass for a while, but the problems aren't new and they aren't fixing themselves.

trm2

If DoT really wanted to do something for passengers, it wouldn't be a $27,500 fine, it would be $10,000 compensation TO THE PASSENGER.

carsonheim

And now that you've posted this for the CO contingent to see, they will be sure to do so

pptp

Co ain't the only ones doing this, ALL of them are/will be. Unfair to single out CO for making a forced business decision to save MILLIONS.
That's good, make airlines pay for unavoidable bad weather, after all, they are God and can control it. Makes perfect sense.
Bravo! If not for small planes, your home town might not be profitable to service...let alone multiple times a day. Hey, I love wide bodies but would you love them so much if it meant only one flight per day? Customers need/demand frequency which allows for flexibility.
Yeah, they could have easily absorbed 2.7 BILLION!
Um...that was to alleviate PAX inconvenience! In case you don't know, CO has a h**d-on for completing flights. It doesn't matter how long it takes. For them to cancel that many flights means that they thought the airport was going to be unusable. They got bit bad by this before and I applaud them for making the hard decision to pre-cancel flights. Better that sitting at the airport all day and then going home mad.
Yep, screw all the other PAX who are willing to sit it out for that extra hour, or maybe just another 5 minutes. But that's OK, let's go back to the gate to drop off two PAX (God know what they are planning to do once back in the airport) and send the other 150 PAX to the back of the line when they might have been airborne by now. That's the problem, the airlines are at the mercy of ATC's constantly changing orders. One minute it's 3 hours, the next it's 'let's go now'.


The main problem with these regs is that you can't second guess weather, ATC or other unforeseen circumstances, therefore any law that tries to address these problems is going to fail miserably and unfairly penalize wrong parties. The way the airline industry runs on a day to day basis is something that is in constant flux and, on a good day, is like a child behaving well -- predictable, obedient and no skinned knees. On a bad day, you're chasing the kid around, cleaning up spills, apologizing for them and pulling your hair out...then that one person who's never had children and knows nothing about taking care of them says "can't you control your kid" or "here's what you should do"...grrrrrr.

The airlines are doing the best they can, and while they sometimes make mistakes, overall they do what's best for the PAX because, after all, that's what makes them money.

dmunz

I'm not really sure how I feel about the new direction. I was more put off by Smisek's harsh language. I don't think it puts the CEO of a service company in a very good light to (basically) say we'll screw the pax.

The government is pushing us into a corner, so we'll dump the passangers on the runway.

And, IMHO, that is the exact tone of his message.

FWIW
DLM

koc1723

I think we are all taking the comments a bit to far. I think all he is stating is that they will be making the decision to cancel flights sooner than they currently do. They need to do this in order to not risk breaking the rule. This will mean more cancellations than we currently have, because flights that eventually get there will end up being canceled.

I have been stuck on many planes for many hours that ended up making it to my final destination that under the new rules I would not have.

The main reason is that if you account for crew legalities and boarding of an airplane that could make the 'waiting at the gate' a very difficult thing.

I will simply provide a recent scenario I had on CO, really ExpressJet.
We where scheduled to depart MSP at 6pm and the inbound flight was delayed (EWR, big surprise). After the plane landed (6:30pm-ish) they told us that we had a ATC delay that had us at a 11pm wheels up time.
They choose to wait to have us board until 7:30pm-ish and then push back. The main reason for this was that if we did not push back from the gate by 8pm the crew was going to go illegal. They told us as we where boarding that we would wait.
We ended up waiting on the plane and departing at about 10pm.
Now think about this from an airlines Ops center. Would they take that gamble under the new rules?

This the type of scenario that Jeff was speaking too. Which I think will be the same thinking across ALL airlines.
Look at Jetblue and DL looking for waivers to the rule for JFK! They are saying it is because of construction. I can't wait for UA and AA to ask for the same at ORD.

I am a huge fan of taking the last flight of the evening to get a full day's of work in before traveling. This rule will change my thinking and get on the earlier flight. (b\c delays pile up over the course of a day)

Kevin

sbm12

No it isn't and no it doesn't.
I think you missed my point.

I - unfortunately - must agree with the airlines at this point that they have to cancel the flights rather than risk the obscene fines that the DoT (not Congress, for those of you keeping score at home) has chosen to impose. But the number of passengers affected by these instances was so low to begin with, especially in the past 5 months, that I don't think it was worth it at all for the rule to be established in the first place.

There are so many reasons that this isn't practical.

bocastephen

You can't have it both ways. The industry is running a losing game now - in order to make money, they need to reduce 6-7 flights into 3-4 using higher capacity aircraft and cut service to/from unprofitable cities.

If you want frequent service to multiple destinations, you're going to be running at a loss long-term. No way around that.

pptp

Gotcha