LITTLE things bother me. A hamburger with too much ketchup. A desk that wobbles. Sitting on an airport tarmac for six hours. But this little thing is a bigger deal than many may think, and the grim airline situation needs to change, and change fast.
I had a pretty bad experience this past weekend with the airlines. After a trip back home to Connecticut, I got to New York's La Guardia Airport at noon on Monday, hoping to get back to Charlottesville via Cincinnati.
Of course, due to a snowstorm, my 1:30 flight to Cincinnati was cancelled. But then so was a 3:15 flight. Then a 5:30 flight. In the meantime, three flights to Richmond that I tried to get on, at 1:55, 2:15 and 4:30, were cancelled.
I decided to try my luck at John F. Kennedy International Airport, after hearing from a gate agent that "they were actually getting flights out over there."
Finally, after getting to JFK, I boarded a flight to Cincinnati at 4:55 p.m. After five hours of unsuccessfully trying to find a flight, I was finally on board an airplane.
Then there were a few "routine delays" that postponed the flight a half hour, then an hour as we still sat at the gate with our door closed. Finally, the pilot told us that the de-icing truck was backed up, and we were hoping to get out at 6:30.
At 6:30, we were told there were "a few more delays," and we could get off the plane if we wanted to. Only those who connected through JFK would be provided with hotel accommodations. Living an hour away with most of the roads in Connecticut not yet plowed, I knew that if I got out of the plane I'd be sleeping at JFK. Better to get to Cincinnati, I thought, and make some progress.
Over the next few hours, excuses were thrown at us. We heard that "we were next in line for the de-icing truck." Next "the de-icing truck ran out of fluid." Then that "our paperwork was still being processed." Interestingly enough, we were never told that the adverse weather conditions caused the delays, and we could even see planes taking off as we sat there. All this time, we were told that "we could leave any minute."
Finally, a few minutes past 11 o' clock, we took off, after more than six hours on the ground. The pilot thanked us for enduring what he called "the saga of flight 853."
Now, you can't really blame anyone for the weather. But there were a lot of things that could have been done to improve the situation.
The first airport I went to, La Guardia, accounts for 16 percent of all flight delays in the country. The problem isn't getting any better; they accounted for 30 percent of all delays due to increased flight volume ("Travelers Endured Record U.S. Air Delays in 2000," Reuters, Feb. 2).
While it has a convenient locale in New York City, La Guardia is plagued by short runways and high flight frequencies. Here, delays have become the norm, and not the exception.
The air traffic control system also shares the blame. Some say that the system never recovered since the 1980s when Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers. Others say the system is antiquated and needs to be replaced as soon as possible. At an airline summit in August 2000, former Federal Aviation Administration chief of staff Michael Goldfarb said, "Air traffic control has to be modernized. Congress has to give the monies to the agency to truly do that."
To their credit, Delta did their best to help everyone stuck on my flight. Everyone the passengers encountered was very friendly. The flight attendants put on a movie and let passengers use their cell phones. But six hours stuck in a plane on the ground is still six hours, regardless of how friendly and competent these people may be.
And not all crews may be friendly. In January 1999, a flight from Hawaii sat on the ground in Detroit for eight hours, with flight crews refusing to let passengers get off the plane. On my flight, the door was opened to people who wanted to get off. But there is a fundamental flaw in many of the airlines' policies that can trigger problems.
At many major airlines, flight attendants and pilots are on the clock not when they get to the airport or when they get on the plane, but when the boarding door closes. The logic, of course, is that it gives flight attendants an incentive to board the plane faster, and increases efficiency.
But the problem is that it gives flight attendants an incentive to keep the door closed. On my flight, the flight attendants gave up their pay for the passengers' convenience. But as the previous example demonstrates, this is not always the case.
The future doesn't look so promising. While there has been talk of an "airline passenger bill of rights" on Capitol Hill, a similar measure died in the Senate two years ago. The four major airlines, United, American, Delta and Northwest, are all facing potential strikes in the coming months. United, American and Delta are in talks to merge with U.S. Airways, TWA and Continental, respectively. Due to the reduced competition, Congress, the FAA and the airlines need to jump into action fast. If they don't fix the system, then soon six-hour delays on the ground won't seem so outrageous.
(Brian Cook is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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