Airline Woes

Excerpt from an article in

The New York Times

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Manifestos for Travelers, Not Just Airlines - On the Road

By JOE SHARKEY

AS they say in the Navy when seas get rough, stand by for heavy rolls. If you think that airplanes are crowded now, if you worry about service to smaller and midsize cities, if you’re alarmed by rising airfares, just wait.

“I don’t think people realize what’s coming,” said Michael Boyd, the president of the airline forecaster Boyd Group International. “Airlines are going to do O.K., but doing O.K. means they’re going to be dropping a lot of places they now fly. Air travel is going to get accessed by fewer and fewer people,” as airlines continue to reduce service to many markets to cut costs, he said.

“This is a mixed metaphor, but it’s going to be a sea change in air travel patterns,” he said.

For over a year, most airlines have been reducing capacity in the domestic air travel system while concentrating on the major routes that provide the most revenue and feed their international routes. Still, they are clearly worried about the future, with fuel now accounting for about 35 percent of costs, and travelers starting to push back against steady increases in fares. Domestic airlines collectively earned $390 million last year, and $2.7 billion in 2010, after a decade in which they collectively lost $53 billion, according to Airlines for America, the industry trade group.

Last week, the trade group issued a detailed “Case for a U.S. National Airline Policy,” calling on the federal government to reduce aviation taxes and regulations, assist the industry in facing more aggressive global competition, curb fuel prices and volatility and spend more money on improving the national air traffic control system and other federal services.

The trade group, in its manifesto, said the airlines wanted “a cohesive policy supporting the integral role of the U.S. airline industry in our economy,” and argued that without help, “domestic service levels will suffer,” especially at smaller cities and rural communities.