D thinks a presidential candidate for the 2008 election ought to make airline reform part of their platform. Re-regulation, even. Something, because the airlines are broken, and only the executives are happy (as discussed in a Bill Moyers piece a couple months ago. Transcript here).
What’s Online: Passengers Scowl as Airlines Smile:
While the nation’s airlines are starting to work their way back to profitability, conditions for passengers are worsening with not enough seats to go around.
...For the first five months of this year, the on-time arrival rate of the big airlines was 73.5 percent, the lowest in seven years. Complaints about service were up 49 percent from May 2006. This summer, flights are booked at average levels of about 90 percent, a historic high. That means that if a flight is delayed, it is much more difficult for a passenger to get a seat on a later flight.Airlines make a simple calculation, comparing the loss from flying with an empty seat against the risk of bumping passengers, to whom airlines have to pay $200 or $400, depending on how quickly they can be rebooked.
“Previously, airlines worried about dissatisfied customers,” said a Wharton professor, Serguei Netessine. “Now I don’t think they worry about it because the customer service at all airlines is so horrible.”
...
But from the airlines’ perspective, “having a lot of rankled customers beats having a handful of happy ones,” wrote Tom Van Riper of Forbes.com.
Good luck to us all, in other words.
Technorati Tags: 2008_election, airline, Business
