Airlines for America Archives

Here comes the travel crunch for the holidays – and beyond

December 7, 2017

Ah, the holidays –long lines and overcrowded airports. (Image: Jim Glab)

Are you flying somewhere over the holidays? You’ll have plenty of company: The U.S. airline industry is predicting a substantial increase in passenger traffic for the year-end holiday period. And the airlines’ global trade organization sees continuing growth and prosperity into the New Year for its members – while passengers can look forward to more crowded planes and higher fares.

Airlines for America (A4A), the trade group for U.S, carriers, says it expects the number of passengers over the year-end holiday period to increase by 1.7 million over the same period a year ago, or 3.5 percent. That means a total of 51 million air travelers during the holidays, which A4A defines as the 21 days from December 15 to January 4.

The biggest airport crowds will be seen on the Thursday and Friday before Christmas (December 21 and 22), A4A said, with a passenger volume of 2.7 million each day. That compares with a typical daily passenger count of 2.25 million in 2016. The organization noted that U.S. airlines are scheduling thousands of extra seats over the holiday period by adding more departures and using larger aircraft on their busiest routes.

The least busy travel days will be December 16, December 24, December 25, and January 31, A4A said. The organization noted that more people are traveling this season than last year due to “an improving economy and sub-inflation air fares.”

All this adds up to increased prosperity for the airlines, a trend that will accelerate in 2018, according to the International Air Transport Association, the airlines’ global trade group.

Don’t miss: How to be a Holiday Travel Pro!

Allow plenty of time for TSA screening. (Image: Jim Glab)

In a new report, IATA said North American airlines are expected to see net profits of $16.4 billion in 2018, up from $15.6 billion this year. North American carriers are expected to increase capacity by 3.4 percent next year, IATA said, while traffic is expected to grow by 3.5 percent.

And what happens when passenger demand increases faster than passenger capacity? Fares go up. IATA said that North American airlines lead the world in financial performance, accounting for almost half the total profits of the global airline industry.

The same trend will be seen globally, IATA said, with 2018 passenger numbers expected to grow 6 percent to 4.3 billion. That’s on top of a 7.5 percent increase this year. But worldwide airline capacity is expected to increase only 5.7 percent next year. “This will push up the average load factor to a record 81.4 percent, helping to drive a 3 percent improvement in yields,” IATA said. Worldwide, the group expects airlines’ average net profit per passenger to increase from $8.45 this year to $8.90 in 2018. Translation: Fewer empty seats and higher fares in the New Year.

ICYMI, see the 25 most recent TravelSkills posts right here

Reassessing your card strategy? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you!

Don’t miss out! Join the 185,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

Best/worst days, airports & airlines for Thanksgiving

November 4, 2016

Carving out some time for Thanksgiving travel this year? I’m not! (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

The crazy Thanksgiving peak travel week is almost upon us; it can be a great time for reuniting with family and friends back home, but it can also be a time of travel trauma when you’re actually trying to get there.

Overall, travelers, the airlines and airports seem to have gotten the Thanksgiving travel drill down in recent years. When everyone plays by the rules and the weather cooperates, everything goes pretty smoothly and there’s a collective sigh of relief and a “well that was not so bad after all” when it’s all over. Hopefully that will happen again this year.

Did you think Thanksgiving travel was crowded and hectic last year? Well, in 2016, according to the airline trade organization Airlines for America (A4A), you can expect to see 55,000 more passengers per day than you did during last year’s Thanksgiving holiday period. “Highly affordable air fare is driving that increase,” A4A said. Airlines have bumped up capacity to handle the extra loads.

U.S. airlines expect to carry an average of 2.27 million passengers a day during the Thanksgiving period, which A4A defines as the 12 days from Friday, November 18 through Tuesday, November 29. Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 24. The group said it expects the busiest travel days to be – in descending order – Sunday the 27^th, Monday the 28^th, and Wednesday the 23^rd, with the lightest travel, as usual, on Thanksgiving Day itself.

But the travel search engine Skyscanner looked at its data and came to a different conclusion: It predicts the busiest day for air travel will be Saturday, November 19, “with travelers taking advantage of the short workweek to get away for a longer period of time,” said Randi Wolfson, the company’s communications chief for the Americas.

And where will it be the busiest on that day? Skyscanner predicts that passenger traffic will hit levels three times or more above average at New York LaGuardia; Washington Reagan National; and Orange County, California’s John Wayne Airport. Traffic is expected to be twice the usual level or more at both Chicago airports, all three Bay Area airports, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, New York JFK, Newark, Philadelphia, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles International and Burbank.

Chart: Milecards.com

Another take on holiday travel trauma comes from Milecards.com, which conducted a study of airline cancellation rates over the holidays during the past six years at the nation’s 50 busiest airports.

Its main conclusion? “If you have only one holiday to choose for a flight home, make it Thanksgiving” instead of Christmas, Milecards said. Why? Because the flight cancellation rate around the late December holidays is five times greater than at Thanksgiving – 2.1 percent of all flights vs. 0.4 percent. The days when your flight is most likely to be canceled are December 26 and 27, the company said, while the best odds for avoiding a cancellation are on December 23 and 24.

With a hub at New York’s JFK, which has been hit by snowstorms during recent holidays, JetBlue takes a hit. Chart: Milecards.com

The worst holiday-period cancellation rate is at Newark Liberty International – almost three times the national average, and it’s worse around Christmas than Thanksgiving, with a cancellation rate of almost 6 percent. Airports with the lowest cancellation rates around the holidays are Honolulu, Oakland and Seattle, while the lowest rates for major connecting hubs are at Salt Lake City and Denver.

Milescards found that cancellation rates are much higher for shorter flights, such as San Francisco-Sacramento, than for longer flights such as transcons.

You can see several charts here documenting the findings of Milecards.com’s holiday flight cancellation study.

I’m staying put in San Francisco for Thanksgiving this year, with our feast just a short drive away. What about you? Will you brave the skies this year?

ICYMI, see the 25 most recent TravelSkills posts right here

In the market for a new credit card? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you!

Don’t miss out! Join the 150,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

Long TSA lines might keep many travelers from flying

May 26, 2016

Will heavy media coverage of long lines keep travelers at home this summer? (Image: Jim Glab)

Maybe those long lines at the Transportation Security Administration’s airport checkpoints won’t be so bad this summer after all – not because TSA will process them much faster, but because many travelers might decide to avoid the airport altogether rather than face an extra-long wait for screening.

That’s the ominous conclusion of a new consumer survey conducted by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA), which found that almost 22 percent of Americans planning a summer plane trip “will either travel by other means or delay or cancel their trips because of saturation coverage of hours-long waits at airport security checkpoints.”

Saturation coverage is no exaggeration: Major media outlets have been serving up daily stories on the miseries of security line waiting times; Congress has been holding well-publicized hearings on the issue this week; and social media have been clogged with consumer posts and tweets of long TSA lines, inspired by the @HatetheWait campaign started by Airlines for America (A4A), the airline industry’s main lobbying group.

“We’re looking at convincing data that says hundreds of thousands of people are potentially reconsidering whether to get on an airplane every single day. Given the importance of travel to both our economy and our way of life, it is not an overstatement to call that a national crisis in need of a national solution,” said USTA CEO Roger Dow.

No doubt consumers are especially dubious about air travel when they hear statistics like those presented to a congressional committee this week by a senior American Airlines executive, who estimated that so far this year, some 70,000 passengers and 40,000 checked bags missed their flights due to TSA screening delays – and that was just on American.

More PreCheck enrollments could help alleviate long lines. (Image: TSA)

Some help is on the way. Congress recently approved plans for TSA to reshuffle its budget so it has more money to spend on staff overtime and on hiring additional screeners. The private sector is also getting involved: Delta, American and United Airlines have each said they expect to spend up to $4 million or more this summer in assigning their own employees to help out the TSA with non-screening duties at security checkpoints, like managing lines and moving plastic bins from one end of the checkpoint to the other; some airports are also hiring private contractors to handle the same kinds of tasks.

Still, that may all amount to applying Band-aids to a gaping wound. Everyone seems to agree that the real problem nationwide is in the raw numbers: TSA estimates it will need to screen 740 million travelers this year, a 15 percent increase over 2013, even though its staff of inspectors has been reduced by 12 percent during that time due to budget cuts.

There is some evidence that throwing resources at the problem can help. At Chicago O’Hare, where passengers were facing line times of two hours or more a few weeks ago, the wait dropped to just 15 minutes this week after TSA added more inspectors, extra canine units and a new management team, according to the Chicago Tribune. But it’s unlikely that the agency could do the same at a large number of airports in the immediate future.

It’s ironic that Congress is so outraged by TSA’s shortcomings in passenger screenings, according to A4A, which charged this week that Congress largely created the problem by short-changing the agency’s budget. The government collects a security fee from every passenger to pay for airport screenings, but A4A alleged that under terms of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, Congress directed that billions of dollars from those collections be diverted away from TSA’s budget to pay for deficit reduction instead.

All parties seem to agree that one of the best solutions would be a surge in enrollments for TSA’s PreCheck program, which gives travelers access to expedited screening procedures with shorter lines. But that’s all they agree on. Some airline executives have suggested that TSA should revert back to earlier procedures that allowed its inspectors to direct non-suspicious travelers into the PreCheck lanes just to even out the screening workload. But some members of Congress, TSA executives and newspaper editorialists have called for airlines to eliminate checked baggage fees at least for the summer so that fewer passenger would be dragging overstuffed carry-ons through the security lines.

Readers: You probably belong to TSA PreCheck so you’re not that concerned, but what would you suggest as the best way for government and/or the private sector to address this “national crisis”?

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: United’s newest, longest flight + Tipping Uber drivers + Qantas 747 Trip Report + Confusion over PreCheck policies + No-fee earlier flights

Do you follow us on Twitter? It’s a great way to keep up with the latest news!

Please join the 125,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

New solutions emerge for TSA airport security mess

May 13, 2016

A shortage of TSA inspectors is contributing to long lines. (Image: TSA)

The Transportation Security Administration has been warning travelers to expect extra-long lines at airport security checkpoints during the busy summer travel season. The agency has announced some steps it is taking to alleviate the problem, but other stakeholders in the industry are groping for solutions to the problem as well.

TSA got some good news this week as Congress approved the agency’s request to let it shift funds around among its accounts, freeing up $34 million that can be used to pay overtime for its airport officers, and also allowing it to hire another 768 new inspectors. It remains to be seen, though, how much this might help with the problem of long lines this summer.

One proposal that’s getting the most attention is one that’s least likely to happen. Two Democratic Senators – Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut – have asked U.S. airlines to eliminate their checked bag fees for the summer. The thinking is that if travelers can check bags for free, they won’t haul so many overstuffed carry-ons through the security checkpoints, backing up the lines. Even if that might work, there’s no reason to believe that airlines are going to give up one of their most lucrative revenue streams just because a couple of politicians asked them to.

Delta is taking a more pragmatic approach. The airline said this week it will assign some of its airport employees to take over non-security-related tasks at checkpoints to free up TSA inspectors for actual inspections. That includes things like managing lines and returning plastic bins from one side of the checkpoint to the other. The airline will also lend expertise “from industrial engineers and other areas” to make recommendations on redesigning checkpoints for a more efficient flow of travelers, the company said.

Baggage fees mean more overstuffed carry-ons and thus longer TSA lines. (Image: Jim Glab)

Speaking of checkpoint redesigns, officials at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport are hoping for a May 24 debut of an overhauled south security checkpoint, which has been closed for a few weeks for reconstruction. Two new lanes there will each have five stations where five passengers can simultaneously put their belongings into plastic bins for screening. The conveyor belts are automated so passengers don’t have to linger to push their bins into the scanner. And RFID tags on each bin will allow a TSA screener to shuttle suspect bins off to a separate line where an officer can manually inspect the items in them. There’s also a lower-level conveyor belt that automatically returns plastic bins back to the other side of the inspection station so that TSA agents don’t have to haul them there manually.

Some stakeholders want to give up on TSA altogether. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – which operates LaGuardia, JFK and Newark airports — has become the largest airport authority thus far to tell TSA it is thinking of going private with its security inspections, replacing TSA staff with contractors of its own choosing. A similar idea has already been expressed by the Seattle and Atlanta airports. In a letter to TSA, the Port Authority said it can “no longer tolerate the continuing inadequacy of TSA passenger screening services.” It cited statistics showing that waiting times this spring at its airports were almost twice as long as last year.

The airline industry started a social media campaign to complain about long security lines. (Image: Airlines for America)

Meanwhile, the airline industry, as represented by its trade organization Airlines for America, has launched a social media campaign called “I Hate the Wait.” At that site, travelers who are waiting in long security lines at the airport can click on pre-set buttons to send a Tweet to TSA customer service (@AskTSA) with the tag #ihatethewait or to post a photo of their waiting line on Instagram and tag it @TSA. “Help improve efficiency by sharing your security line experience with the TSA,” A4A says – although it seems like this program is designed more to harass the agency than to bring about real efficiencies.

TSA has suggested that the best way travelers can help alleviate the long lines is by joining the PreCheck program (or Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry, which includes PreCheck privileges). It has also put part of the blame on Congress for cutting back its budget, leading to a reduction in the number of agents available for front-line inspections.

Do you follow us on Twitter? It’s a great way to keep up with the latest news!

Please join the 125,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

Americans love the air travel experience! Wait. What? [POLL]

April 13, 2016

Americans love to fly, a new survey finds. (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

A new consumer survey finds that Americans love the air travel experience – they even love all those fees!

Really? Well, you need to consider the source: The survey was sponsored by Airlines for America (A4A), the airline industry’s trade organization. Hey — we just report; you decide. (Take our TravelSkills poll below)

A4A said its online survey of more than 3,000 consumers found that fully 80 percent of them “are satisfied or very satisfied with air travel.” Only six percent were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, A4A said. That seems pretty low based on the mountain of complaints we get at TravelSkills, but we are probably lightning rods when it comes to complaints.

When queried about the old air fare system where most things were included in the price vs. the new “a la carte pricing” system where most things carry an extra fee, “two-thirds of travelers said they prefer to pay only for the items and services they want ‘so my ticket ends up being less expensive.’” Was that how they phrased the survey question? If so, it just goes to show how easily a pollster can get the results he or she wants.

It’s important to note that this was not a survey of business travelers but a broad cross-section of the public, and A4A said that only 45 percent of U.S. adults traveled by air in the past year (although 81 percent had done so sometime in their lives). The survey group covered all the demographic bases, and 86 percent of them said that price is the biggest single factor in their decision to fly instead of using another form of transportation or staying home.

By contrast, the majority (57 percent) of “road warriors” in the survey (i.e., those who fly 12 or more times a year) said their biggest concerns are comfort and inflight options such as seat outlets, wi-fi and entertainment, in addition to logistics – airline schedules and routes.

I'm originally from Atlanta and have flown Delta extensively for the last 25 years (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

Fewer business travelers, more leisure travelers these days according to poll (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

The increasing affordability of air travel has indeed led to a sort of democratization of the skies, the survey found: Whereas business trips accounted for 47 percent of all air travel 20 years ago, A4A said, that number has now dropped to 31 percent. Everyone else is flying for personal or leisure purposes.

Apparently the survey didn’t give respondents a chance to evaluate the things they might not like about the air travel experience. It provided no data about respondents’ opinions on seat size, service quality, airport lines and so on. Nor did it address the inevitable results of cramming a cross-section of society into cramped seats in a metal tube for a few hours: Google the term “air rage” and you’ll get more than 3.4 million search results. Or just bring up the topic at your next cocktail party and you’ll stir up plenty of prattle!

Consumer complaints to the Transportation Department about air travel jumped 34 percent last year, but FAA reauthorization legislation currently in the Senate tacked on only a few modest provisions to make life easier for travelers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More significant reforms, like defining acceptable seat dimensions and requiring airlines to justify all those fees, were rejected.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) commented: “I know there are some who think we should go further and re-regulate the airline industry, but we know deregulation has helped make air travel more accessible and more affordable for families and business travelers.” He sounded very much like an A4A press release.

Let’s take a TravelSkills poll and see how our view of the airline experience stacks up against the A4A findings. How would you rate your satisfaction with airlines?

TravelSkills Poll

How would you rate your satisfaction with the current air travel experience?
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Unsatisfied
Very unsatisfied
Not sure
View Results
Loading ...

Be sure to click on the clear or grayed out “Vote” button

Do you follow us on Twitter? It’s a great way to keep up with the latest news!

Please join the 125,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

Seat size regulation killed in Congress

April 7, 2016

Think airline seats are getting too cramped? Tough. (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

Senate Democrats have been trying to push pro-consumer legislation that would rein in what some see as abusive practices by U.S. airlines, but they knew it would be a tough sell in a Republican-dominated Congress –and they were right.

The Senate this week voted down an amendment from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would have compelled airlines to stop reducing the width of their seats and the distance between seat rows (i.e. pitch), and would have empowered the Federal Aviation Administration to set new minimum standards for seat size.

The latest rejection of a new airline rule came on the heels of a vote last month when a Senate committee dumped another proposed amendment that would have let the Transportation Department take action to stop carriers from imposing unreasonable fees on passengers – i.e., fees that bore no relation to the actual cost to provide the service or amenity involved.

In a TravelSkills poll last month, 80 percent of readers who responded were in favor of new regulations to protect passengers, like the measures proposed in the legislation.

Thinner “slimline” all the rage among airlines these days (Photo: Chris McGinnis)

The failure of the two measures should come as no surprise in a Republican-dominated Congress that abhors regulation of the private sector. And it is also testimony to the strength of the airline industry’s lobbying group, Airlines For America (A4A), which almost always gets its way in Congress.

Almost, but not always. Earlier this year, A4A was behind a measure to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system, taking it out of the hands of the FAA – but that bill was scrapped by House Republican leaders. It may have been overreach on the part of A4A, or maybe it was overreach on the part of its sponsor, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), who admitted last year that he was romantically involved with Shelley Rubino, A4A’s vice president for global government affairs.

Do you think the government should play a role in regulating airline seat size? Please leave your comments below.

Do you follow us on Twitter? It’s a great way to keep up with the latest news!

Please join the 125,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!

As expected: Airline bag size proposal flops

June 17, 2015

Just a week after the International Air Transport Association came out with a recommendation that carriers worldwide adopt new, somewhat smaller size limits for carry-on bags, the group has suddenly announced it will reassess that proposal “in light of concerns expressed, primarily in North America.”

The global airline trade organization’s retrenchment on the controversial plan came on the same day that its U.S. counterpart — Airlines for America (A4A) — said none of its members planned to adopt the new IATA standards, which called for maximum carry-on dimensions of 21.5 by 13.5 by 7.5 inches.

“A4A and its members reject the recent carry-on size initiative put forth by IATA because it is unnecessary and flies in the face of the actions the U.S. carriers are taking to invest in the customer experience — roughly $1.2 billion a month — including larger overhead bins,” said A4A President and CEO Nicholas Calio. “Our members already have guidelines in place on what size bags they can accommodate, making this action unnecessary.”

Original story: Another carryon bag brouhaha brewing

Considering the potential consumer outrage if the plan had been widely adopted, we can’t say we’re surprised that cooler heads prevailed at U.S. carriers.

IATA said that there has been too much confusion about the proposal (which it calls Cabin OK) — particularly by media reports that made it sound like the standard would be mandatory and that travelers would have to rush out and buy new carry-on luggage to meet the smaller dimensions.

“Cabin OK is a guideline for an optimally sized cabin bag, not an industry standard,” IATA said. “Cabin OK does not seek to define a maximum size for carry-on bags, which is something each airline does individually. And no consumer will be forced into buying a new bag as a result of this voluntary initiative.” Nonetheless, IATA said it has “paused” the program until it can reassess the whole idea.

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: Android users book cheap hotels + Gogo prices rise 50 percent + CLEAR goes cardless + Cool gasoline price heat map + More!

Reassessing your card strategy? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you!

In the market for a new credit card? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you!

TravelSkills Poll

How would you rate your satisfaction with the current air travel experience? Very satisfied Satisfied Unsatisfied Very unsatisfied Not sureView Results Loading ...

How would you rate your satisfaction with the current air travel experience?
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Unsatisfied
Very unsatisfied
Not sure
View Results
Loading ...