Watch me fly

I'm not sure if it's curiosity, paranoia, concern, interest or what, but I've been increasingly tracking the flights of loved ones, particularly my wife, watching their progress from take off to landing. I'm not sure if it's the healthiest thing to do for someone slightly obsessed with flying, but it's a pretty interesting distraction for a slow day at the office. You can track any flight any time, anywhere in the world. A lot of airlines have flight trackers on their websites, but the best service I've seen is flightaware.com. It takes a bit of fumbling around to get it down, but the level of precision, detail and information available is pretty incredible. Check it out!

Now that's what I'm talkin' about...

Yesterday the new airline "OpenSkies" launched premium service between New York and Paris (they are affiliated with British Airways will be expanding service to Brussels, Milan, Frankfurt and Amsterdam in the future). This follows the trend of other premium airlines like MaxJet, Eos, and SilverJet, although each of those airlines failed to catch on and all quickly folded. The difference with OpenSkies seems to be that normal people (normal defined as those of us that can't pay upwards of $4,000-10,000 for a flight) can actually fly this airline. I did a quick check, and a flight from New York to Paris is about $1000, around or even less than the going rate on most airlines these days. Honestly, even if I could save $100-$200 bucks on another airline I would consider OpenSkies for the mere fact that their goal seems to be to treat passengers with civility, service, respect, and maybe even a little luxury, even for those of us paying the cheapest fares. Certainly this mentality is simply lost on most airlines these days.

The economy service they describe, including nice adjustable leather seats, personal entertainment systems, quality food, and free wine, is similar to the service that I experience on an AirCanada flight to Paris recently (upgraded services has additional perks on both airlines). I got off that flight feeling great about the experience, about AirCanada, about flying, and I'll be an AirCanada passenger for life. It's the simple, yet too often forgotten, proposition that success in the airline industry involves decent service, a little respect, and a reasonable price. Those companies that have figured that out seem to thrive (JetBlue and Southwest domestically), those that don't all teeter on bankruptcy (most major airlines in the U.S.) It sounds like OpenSkies could be a keeper.

Captives of industry

Here's yet another story involving airline travelers being abandoned on an airplane for hours without any good reason or rationale. After a harrowing flight from Denver to Chicago the plane was diverted to Gary, Indiana. Now Gary is basically a suburb of Chicago, located 30 miles southeast. How does it make any sense to force folks that just experienced one of the worst flights of their lives, to sit on a plane for SIX HOURS because of the slight hope that they might be able to take off again, fly 30 miles and attempt another landing in Chicago. It's simply incomprehensible. Let the people off; give them a $50 travel voucher; put them on a bus to Chicago; and they would have all be happy and home (or at O'Hare figuring out their connection flight details) within the hour.

It's amazing to me that we don't have the right to exit a plane that is stuck on the ground for this length of time. I mean ok, maybe an hour or two of sitting there, maybe even three, but anything beyond that seems like false imprisonment to me. Yet, the airline industry has blocked efforts in congress and the courts to allow the implementation of state or federal "Passenger Bill of Rights," that would provide this right. So once again, we, the traveling public, remain captive, literally, to the business decisions of the industry.

Another two bite the dust...almost

UPDATE 2: Another call for re-regulation of the airline industry. Pressure seems to be building.

UPDATE: And the process of screwing the flying public has begun.

Recently, United and Continental have both made major announcements regarding reductions in their fleets, jobs and the precarious state of their companies. Publicly the reason for these actions is the rising cost of oil prices. However, these announcements raise two important questions about these companies and the airline industry generally:

1) Why haven't these companies and the industry acknowledge that oil is a finite resource and demand will some day soon outpace supply. Why hasn't the industry invested the money and time in researching and developing alternative fuels for airplanes. Like most businesses concerned only with the bottom line, the airline industry has seemed happy to pass the buck on to the next CEO, the next Board of Directors, the next generation of customers. Now we're seeing the costs of such a mentality.

2) Why hasn't the government moved to reverse the insane policy of airline deregulation that started some 30 years ago. The negative consequences of deregulation are coming into full focus, and as these companies struggle to stay financially afloat. Because profit is the ultimate goal of the airlines, a goal which may not necessarily be in line with our goals as customers and a country, we just can't afford to leave it to industry to self-regulate, particularly when it comes to the airlines which play such an important role in our lives and economy. Ultimately it won't be the CEOs, the investors, or top management of these airlines that feel the pain of our misguided deregulation policy. It will be the workers and customers that ultimately bear that burden.

Style matters

This is a great article from this weekend's New York Times. The point of it is that many of us are sick of feeling like flying is just like taking the bus only at 35,000 feet. It speaks to the fact that the Airlines have lost sight of the service, the comfort, the convenience that flying was supposed to stand for. Higher fares because of oil prices, ok we'll take that; no more free crappy food, if you say so; but at the very least, if we're going to be on planes for hours at a time, give us an environment that's comfortable, and maybe even a little comforting. My recent flight on AirCanada on their brand new Boeing 777, with all the bells and whistles, even in economy class, proved to me that such an experience is possible, and reinforced what a difference it makes.