I AM not in the business of dispensing advice, but here is some nevertheless:
Last week, I was on a flight to Newark from Houston that landed around 9 p.m., about 45 minutes late, and then sat for nearly a half-hour while the crew tried to round up somebody to operate the jetway so that the door could be opened and people could get off. In the aisle, some passengers were crying because they had now missed connections, including international flights.
“Make sure they give you a hotel voucher,” I said, trying to be helpful, to a woman near me whose connecting flight to Bangor, Me., the last that night, had already departed. “The least they can do is buy you a night in Newark.”
She glared at me silently through damp eyes.
Missed connections aside (and I had missed one in Houston from Tucson just a day earlier, causing me to postpone my return trip), that experience wasn’t so bad, though I did sympathize with the tears of the damned.
That same day, for example, passengers on a United flight from Salt Lake City to Denver found themselves in a jam after the pilot announced from the cockpit that he was “too upset to fly,” according to reports in USA Today and in some broadcast media, based on passengers’ accounts that United did not dispute.
Evidently, the pilot had gotten into a disagreement with other pilots about wearing his hat. Many United pilots are not wearing their hats in a union protest over what they call generous management compensation while jobs are being cut.
Pilot stress is also brewing at US Airways. The US Airline Pilots Association, the union that represents pilots for US Airways, which merged with America West in 2005, recently filed a lawsuit accusing fellow pilots — all from the former America West — of “racketeering.” The union said the pilots were seeking to undermine the union with tricks like “a deluge of frivolous calls” that tied up the union’s toll-free hot line.
Meanwhile, flight attendants are feeling extra pressure as they deal with growing passenger stress.
Here’s an example from last week. A JetBlue flight attendant was subject to a physical attack and racial slurs during a flight from New York to San Francisco after he removed a lighted cigarette from the mouth of an intoxicated female passenger who had refused to put it out.
The flight was diverted to Denver and the woman, who said she had been drinking vodka and did not remember lighting up, was arrested. Back in New York, a friend of hers blamed the vodka. “When she drinks beer, she’s O.K.,” the friend told The Daily News.
Seriously, folks, the only way to get through this summer is to grin and bear it — because the fall is going to be even more stressful. All the indicators, prominent among them the untenable cost of fuel for airlines, are awful.
I asked Kevin Mitchell, the chairman of the Business Travel Coalition and a man who always has some insight into the state of travel, if he had any advice for the summer and the fall. Starting in October, most major airlines are planning further cuts in seating capacity and reduced flights to some markets.
“I can’t think of any,” Mr. Mitchell said, uncharacteristically. “We’re in a real fix.”
Mr. Mitchell says his major concern is that one or even two domestic airlines may collapse in bankruptcy this fall, with dire implications for that significant segment of the national economy that is based on reliable air transportation. He described air service as “the primary source of intercity transportation.”
On Monday, Mr. Mitchell released a detailed report on the crisis called “Beyond the Airlines’ $2 Can of Coke: Catastrophic Impact on the U.S. Economy From Oil-Price Trauma in the Airline Industry.”
With soaring fuel costs and a persistent credit crisis, “multiple failures of major U.S. airlines are not a remote prospect,” says the report, which can be found at the Business Travel Coalition Web site, www.businesstravelcoalition.com.
And there’s nothing funny in it at all.
