Be of good cheer. Relief might be in sight for those of you who must, absolutely must, subject yourselves to the tender mercies of our airlines.
This year has been the worst for delays since the Department of Transportation began keeping records 13 years ago. Carriers canceled 90,000 flights and racked up delays of more than 15 minutes on 900,000 others.
In June, 462 flights sat on the tarmac for more than three hours after leaving the gate. Stories of filthy conditions on planes marooned on the runway for more than six hours fill America’s media with consequences too gruesome to be reported in a newspaper read by many of you who have had time for breakfast, or are looking forward to a snack en route to the office.
Passengers pressing Congress to enact an “Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights” want the right to deplane after being trapped on the tarmac for three hours. As usual, private sector arrogance begets demands for more government regulation.
The carriers profess distress at these service lapses, the result of a massive increase in passengers moving through airports operating at levels for which they were not designed, and planes moving through air traffic control systems designed years ago to handle far fewer planes.
Privately, however, the airlines, operating at 90 percent of capacity, are crying all the way to the bank. Tom Van Riper had it right when he reported on Forbes.com that for the airlines, “having a lot of rankled customers beats having a handful of happy ones.”
The blame game is under way. The carriers and Marion Blakely, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, blame the antiquated radar-based traffic control system. They want Congress to approve a $30 billion-$40 billion satellite-based system that would allow precision tracking of aircraft and denser use of air lanes.
About half of that sum is required by the carriers to upgrade their equipment, and the other half to finance the new satellite-based system — costs that will find their way to you in the form of higher fares and new taxes.
The carriers, however, are stalling until allegedly undercharged private corporate jets agree to come up with more than the 10 percent of the costs they now shoulder. Meanwhile, they continue to overcrowd the air lanes by substituting frequent flights by smaller aircraft for less frequent service by jumbo jets.
Into this chaos flies a confident Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur who has built his various Virgin enterprises into an empire. (So far as I can recall, his only failed venture was a chain of Virgin bridal shops, which closed for lack of customers fitting the description.)
He plans to operate from major airports in the U.S., not the minor ones favored by low-fare and successful Southwest Airlines. Virgin America’s New York flights operate out of JFK — the maiden flight of this Virgin was delayed for almost an hour because of storms in the New York area.
But Branson retains his aplomb and has plans to expand operations to Dulles. On Sept. 26, Virgin America will begin twice-daily service to San Francisco, offering amenities that Branson is convinced will turn delays — which he admits he can’t control — into opportunities for passengers to enjoy a variety of in-flight entertainment, leather seats in all classes of service, satellite television, edible food and in-flight personnel who emulate the perpetually smiling Branson rather than the stony-faced, deprived-of-pay-and-benefits crew members of most other carriers.
Can Virgin America’s emphasis on customer service enable it to succeed in a business in which trips to the bankruptcy courts are often quicker than most flights? A slowing economy resulting from recent turmoil in financial markets will cut into load factors, high fuel costs will squeeze margins even for VA’s modern fuel-efficient fleet,and competitors are already matching and undercutting Virgin America fares, although not his service amenities.
None of this scares Branson. He points out that when he launched his first aircraft across the Atlantic, he had 12 U.S. competitors, all of which went bankrupt. Branson can’t improve the air traffic control system, or do much about the long lines at airports.
But he can give customers what he calls “the most comfortable economy cabin in the world” and toys with which to while away the time on the runways of New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Washington. So far, so good: The maiden flights out of Dulles are already fully booked in first class.
Examiner columnist Irwin Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Policy.
