Urgent!!! Please Help the Airlines!

May 22, 2008 | Uncategorized

Wednesday American Airlines announced that starting June 15 it will start charging customers flying on discount tickets — it does not affect first- or business-class passengers or those paying full price or flying overseas — $15 to check their bag.

Wait a minute — didn’t American and a lot of other carriers just begin charging $25 for a second bag? It appears that checked baggage charges are becoming a cottage industry at our airports. But wait, it gets better — that is, it gets worse.

And do you think your flight is crowded now? American, which has already trimmed its number of seats by 6%, is now going to eliminate another 11-12% to save fuel and is also going to retire about 10% of its fleet later this year.

Did you read yesterday’s blog about the guy who is suing JetBlue because he had to sit in the toilet for his flight to California? Pretty soon that’s going to be the most comfortable seat on the plane.

I know fuel prices are soaring sky-high — a place American may not be going if it continues on its present course — but aren’t things getting a bit excessive? After all the carrier has raised its fares 14 times in the last month alone. And since the price of oil shows no sign of abating, I don’t think these increases will end anytime soon.

Two years ago Christopher Elliott, a well respected writer for The New York Times, reported that the airplane manufacturer Airbus had been considering the idea of passengers traveling in a standing position (supported by padded backboards) in order to cram more people onto a plane. When the article appeared there was quite a furor raised by Airbus and the Times backed off the story. Having been in the airline industry, I tend to believe Elliott since all carriers are always looking for ways to squeeze out another dollar.

Robert Crandall, American Airlines CEO who retired some ten years ago, was a master at shaving costs. He’s the guy who took the olives out of the martinis on American’s fleet because of the added weight — ditto for not painting the planes which added several hundred pounds.

Well, hey — since the airlines now really must pinch pennies, I think that we travelers have an obligation to them. I know that if we brainstorm we can save the industry. Here are a few suggestions:

1) All children under the age of ten should be shipped as baggage. Everyone benefits from this — it frees up seats, you don’t have anyone behind you kicking your seat and it also provides your favorite carrier with badly needed revenue (a family with four children, for example, would have to pay $90 — $15 for the first child and $25 each for the other three) for the airline. Better yet for the family — the $90 baggage fee is a lot less than four airline tickets!
The only problem I see is that I think many parents would then just take a carry-on and “forget” to pick up the kids at the carousel. So the airline just has to close all its lost baggage offices, and open an orphanage instead.

2) The “Pay to Poop Policy”. Airlines should now charge to use the bathroom. Hey — plan ahead and go when you’re on the ground. You plan ahead with what you pack don’t you?
They can install those little mechanisms they used to have on pay toilets in New York years ago, where you put a coin in the slot and turned the handle. Better yet, allow passengers to swipe their credit cards. I can think of an interesting play on the word “swipe” but I better not go there or I’ll be in trouble.

3) Serve free food but sell the air sickness bags. Fill all the passengers up with free food and after everyone finishes eating, the chief attendant can alert the captain to start rocking the plane from side to side, diving down and spiraling. You know, enough to make everyone really sick. I’m certain some folks will gladly fork over $100 for a bag at that point if they haven’t brought their own along.

4) Get rid of radar. Let’s face it, it’s probably expensive to buy and more expensive to maintain. In the early days pilots didn’t have radar. And for many centuries people only used compasses to find their way from one ocean to the other. So what’s the big problem today?
Say you need to fly from New York to Los Angeles. Just point the plane to take off heading directly west and in mid-country — say at about Kansas or Nebraska — you can have big arrows cut into the corn and wheat fields pointing in the direction of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Las Vegas. Before we had GPS a navigation system in our cars isn’t that how we found our way around?

Anyway, these are only my suggestions for helping the airlines get out of the terrible tailspin they are now in. Anyone who may have other ideas, please add them in the comment section below.

Let’s get together and help the airlines save enough money and perhaps we can bring the olives back.

Jim Ferri