Why airlines make you suffer

[MARC Rider]

I found this article in the New Yorker which explains a lot about air travel today:

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer?intcid=mod-most-popular

In summary, it seems the airlines are making so much money from fees for extras (like baggage) that they feel the need to make basic service so terrible that customers will want to pay the fees. It's worked a bit for me. I will pay for at least one checked bag, early boarding, and the coach upgrade, if available (ie. United's "Economy Plus.") However, the whole situation sucks, and I'm not sure what we travelers can do, except maybe, refuse to travel by air. (Which I tend to do, I'll take Amtrak on up to overnight trips and drive up to 11 hours rather than deal the flying.)

I could see a justification for regulatory action in some cases: Crowded seating and people futzing with excessive carry-on luggage might be considered a safety issue. The only other alternative I can see is to actually do what they want us to do, at least in terms of paying the extra to book Economy plus or even business class to the point that they've got unsold seats in coach. Then, to fill the empty coach seats, they might start offering some extras (like free checked baggage).

I hate to say this, but if this is so successful for the airlines, maybe Amtrak should do the same. Basic fare is Amfleet I coach, if you want Amfleet 2 room, it will cost you more, fees for checked baggage, etc. Certainly one thing they could do for the long-distance trains is offer coach passengers the opportunity to make diner reservations when they book their ticket, whcih might increase diner revenue. Heck, they could even let people order off the menu when the book their ticket, it would make stocking the diners less of a crap shoot.

 

[railiner]

Certainly one thing they could do for the long-distance trains is offer coach passengers the opportunity to make diner reservations when they book their ticket, whcih might increase diner revenue. Heck, they could even let people order off the menu when the book their ticket, it would make stocking the diners less of a crap shoot.

I like this suggestion....as an incentive, they could offer a small discount like 5% off, when pre-ordering (and paying) for diner meals......

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Certainly one thing they could do for the long-distance trains is offer coach passengers the opportunity to make diner reservations when they book their ticket, whcih might increase diner revenue. Heck, they could even let people order off the menu when the book their ticket, it would make stocking the diners less of a crap shoot.

I like this suggestion....as an incentive, they could offer a small discount like 5% off, when pre-ordering (and paying) for diner meals......

I like the idea as well but are you sure today's commissary operators and diner crews could handle more than a few additional coach passengers per meal? They already struggle to serve a tiny menu of frozen meals to a handful of sleeper passengers. If coach passengers had an easier time registering for meals we might see a walkout or at the very least a lot of requests for refunds on meals that took forever, were served incorrectly, or weren't stocked to begin with.

 

[Blackwolf]

I really like the notion of a "pay-ahead" ordering service for passengers to partake in. I also have something of a visceral reaction to the notion of it being an impossible thing to implement due to labor and management. I am supportive of Unionized labor (being a union employee myself) but I do draw the line very clearly on the point of obstructionist acts of failing to do the job one was hired to perform. This is a case where the baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater and perhaps a clean-slate approach to food service on Amtrak be undertaken.

A system of accurately recording, ordering, loading and serving pre-ordered meals already exists. If airlines can do this for millions of people worldwide with hundreds of commissaries in dozens of countries without much issue, Amtrak can do the same.

It can be done. It should be done. And the logs who try to block progress in the labor and management ranks should be sent packing.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Excellent ideas, hence the chance that 60 Mass will even consider them is slim to none, and to actually adopt them is less than zero with the current bean counter mentality that is in place!

 

[TinCan782]

The airlines charging for checked baggage instead of excess/oversize carry-on just made the carry-on situation even worse than it already was.

 

[Anderson]

The airlines charging for checked baggage instead of excess/oversize carry-on just made the carry-on situation even worse than it already was.

As I recall, there's been a bit of a whack-a-mole pattern/unintended consequences problem for the last 15 years or so:

-First, airlines started charging for (most) checked luggage. This led to stuff-the-carry-on behavior amongst passengers and crowding in the overhead bins (since prior to those fees, luggage checking was more common even on domestic flights).

-Then, due to "security issues", most airlines went from two carry-on bags to "one carry-on and one personal item". I forget which incident brought this particular round of restrictions into being (they all run together), but it somehow became an FAA thing that I don't think too many airlines objected to since it basically let them drop their luggage allowances by a bag with good bureaucratic cover.

-A few of the "deep discount" carriers have even gone to charging for all but the personal item (or charging for carry-on luggage but not for a checked bag); the inversion, at least, seems to be an attempt to curb the on-board futzing that the "security restrictions" didn't curb. People Express was like this (I flew on their inaugural flight to Boston, and literally all I had with me was a briefcase and my hat).

Likewise, at least on Virgin America's flights, I heard a lot of begging for people to gate check bags to avoid crowding in the overhead bins (to the point of offering those passengers the ability to board with the second non-preboarding group) and not having much luck.

---------------

Swinging back around to the meal situation, I don't think the issue is the number of meals served...after all, a couple of tables that are seated with the meals pre-ordered should take less time to serve than those folks who need to order, so you should increase diner capacity. In theory, you could even make reservation times on certain trains (with the reservations also indicating your boarding station and the OBS being ordered to re-accommodate you if the train is late), but even if you couldn't...well, the staff can handle that on paper. This is a bit trickier on the four Western east-west trains (EB, CZ, SWC, and SL), but you could at least manage it for the initial dinner on the SWC...which, by the way, would allow a full diner seating as the train pulls out of LAX (much like the Cap used to do out of CHI) and thereby allow that first night's dinner to be a full seating (that meal's seating size is artificially low due to timing issues).

Still, let's take the Southwest Chief out of LAX for a handy example. The diner will have the orders for, say, 20 coach passengers and 30 sleeper passengers listed for the first night. They can apportion those between 2-3 dinner slots starting at departure time, adding in any additional orders (you could allow lounge-access passengers to place their dinner orders in the lounge as well). So the diner is going to know, give or take, almost their entire dinner order for at least their first seating...and probably their second one and part of their third. This would mean that the kitchen doesn't have to wait for orders to come in...they could have a good share of the first seating's meals already going in the oven when the passengers arrive. There's a good chance that this knocks the first seating's time needed at dinner down by 15-20 minutes and enables the rest of the seatings to be moved up a bit; even if you throw some non-pre-order customers in, their meals can be put at the back of their seating's queue. There's a good chance that you could wedge an extra half-seating into the Chief's dinner out of LAX.

For the more "normal" diner operations the effects should be similar...you could probably get the diners up to three full dinner seatings with a healthy share of pre-ordered meals allowing one's food to go in the oven as soon as one is seated. This might require tweaking staffing requirements...but at the same time, if Amtrak winds up with a massive number of pre-ordered meals they'd probably be able to "take the hint" and call someone off the extra boards.

 

[trainman74]

-Then, due to "security issues", most airlines went from two carry-on bags to "one carry-on and one personal item". I forget which incident brought this particular round of restrictions into being (they all run together), but it somehow became an FAA thing that I don't think too many airlines objected to since it basically let them drop their luggage allowances by a bag with good bureaucratic cover.

I definitely remember "one carry-on and one personal item" predating the major airlines charging for checked luggage, and not particularly having anything to do with security -- it might have even predated 9/11. It seems to me that the intent was more to attempt to regulate the amount of items people are trying to shove into the overhead bins (and therefore speed up the boarding process, etc.). Obviously, it doesn't always work out that way!

As I understand it, the airlines make their own carry-on policies, but the FAA regulations are written such that they'll enforce whatever each airline's individual carry-on policies are. Thus, if every airline has switched to "one carry-on and one personal item," it may seem like it's an official FAA regulation, but any airline could switch to "bring everything aboard including the kitchen sink" and it would be okay.

 

[PRR 60]

You don't have to go that far back (at least from the perspective of my age) to the point where aircraft overheads could not hold much luggage. The now common design that permits a standard roll-aboard to be place in the overhead straight-in rather than sideways has come about over the last 15 years or so. Before that, carrying anything but minimal luggage on board was not common. Every so often you run into one of these old interiors, and the luggage stowing is total chaos. I can never remember when it was permitted to bring two bags on board. There was not space even for one bag per passenger.

I'll reverse the argument. Why should I, traveling with one easily storable roll-aboard bag, have to help pay for someone carrying half their household with them for a weekend trip? I don't need all those ramp people, carts, and all the other ancillary staff and equipment used to handle checked luggage. Why not have those who use that service pay for it? I'll extend that to Amtrak as well. Those who use luggage service should pay for it. Those who do not, should get a break.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

-Then, due to "security issues", most airlines went from two carry-on bags to "one carry-on and one personal item". I forget which incident brought this particular round of restrictions into being (they all run together), but it somehow became an FAA thing that I don't think too many airlines objected to since it basically let them drop their luggage allowances by a bag with good bureaucratic cover.

Carry-on luggage has been limited to one carry-on and one personal item on US airlines for at least three decades. The specific dimensions and level of enforcement of this rule has varied greatly over the years but the fundamental terminology has not changed in a long time. In theory the carry-on should easily fit above your head and the personal item should easily fit below the seat in front of you. So long as the rules are defined and followed the FAA will generally recognize those rules that are more restrictive as if they were their own.

Unfortunately the FAA’s reciprocal enforcement process makes it easy for airlines to deflect blame onto the government for all sorts of decisions the airlines themselves enacted. The next time you hear an airline employee claiming the government created this or that rule take a moment to ask them for the name of the law they’re referencing or who passed it or when it was ratified. Most of the time they have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about and are simply making it up as they go.

As I understand it, the airlines make their own carry-on policies, but the FAA regulations are written such that they'll enforce whatever each airline's individual carry-on policies are. Thus, if every airline has switched to "one carry-on and one personal item," it may seem like it's an official FAA regulation, but any airline could switch to "bring everything aboard including the kitchen sink" and it would be okay.

Except that the FAA expects the airline to be able to reasonably anticipate the average weight of carry-on items and they expect all luggage to be stowed properly, which could prove rather tedious and difficult if there were no restrictions whatsoever.

 

[jebr]

I'll reverse the argument. Why should I, traveling with one easily storable roll-aboard bag, have to help pay for someone carrying half their household with them for a weekend trip? I don't need all those ramp people, carts, and all the other ancillary staff and equipment used to handle checked luggage. Why not have those who use that service pay for it? I'll extend that to Amtrak as well. Those who use luggage service should pay for it. Those who do not, should get a break.

Here's my biggest beef with charging for checked bags but not for carry-ons: it delays the boarding process tremendously, or it feels like it does.

Instead of having people just bring what they absolutely need today on board (and thus quickly getting into their seat) while letting professionals load their bags in the bottom concurrently, people are stuffing way too much stuff above, not putting it up there well, and not leaving enough room in the overhead bins for everyone. At the end of the day, this leads to longer boarding times as people search for room to put their carry-ons.

I'd be plenty fine with incentivising checking bags instead of carrying them on...that's where the incentive should be, in my opinion.

 

[chakk]

If you have accumulated enough miles flying on one airline, you automatically get all that stuff (checked baggage, early boarding, more spacious coach seats) for free. Having flown now more than a million miles on United alone in the past 35 years, I have Premier Executive status for life on their planes and those of their Star Alliance partners.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

You don't have to go that far back (at least from the perspective of my age) to the point where aircraft overheads could not hold much luggage.

Over the years I've watched routes that were previously served with 727's, 737's, 757's, DC-9's, and MD-80's replaced with tiny regional jets operated by the secondary outsourcing market. This includes flights lasting 3+ hours between major cities with millions of residents. So from my perspective the overhead bins have actually become much smaller over time.

 

[PRR 60]

You don't have to go that far back (at least from the perspective of my age) to the point where aircraft overheads could not hold much luggage.

Over the years I've watched routes that were previously served with 727's, 737's, 757's, DC-9's, and MD-80's replaced with tiny regional jets operated by the secondary outsourcing market. This includes flights lasting 3+ hours between major cities with millions of residents. So from my perspective the overhead bins have actually become much smaller over time.

Very true. One advantage with an RJ flight is the ability to leave your carry-on on the jetway or a cart, have it stowed, and then pick it up at the end of the flight. It's like checked baggage lite: you get rid of it for the flight, but have it as soon as you land.

United tried to pull a nasty surprise with this common practice in a few test markets. If you were boarding an RJ with a carry-on bag, you were prohibited from carrying it on board, but instead of simply stowing it for that flight, they processed it as conventional checked luggage all the way to the final destination. It apparently involved some regional routes in and out of ORD. Of course, this negated the very reason to carry on a bag - to avoid the wait at the carrousel. The United frequent fliers, who tend to be a pretty snarly bunch anyway, were very displeased by this move. I have not heard much chatter on this lately, so maybe even UA thought it was a step too far.

 

[jis]

AFAIR the definitive move towards real large bins in the cabin started in the mid 90's with the introduction of the new interior in the 777. Later that concept was back fitted into almost everything with a classic 707 cabin width or larger, both Airbus and Boeing. The culmination of this is the so called "Sky Interior" in the new 737s.

 

[Anderson]

You don't have to go that far back (at least from the perspective of my age) to the point where aircraft overheads could not hold much luggage. The now common design that permits a standard roll-aboard to be place in the overhead straight-in rather than sideways has come about over the last 15 years or so. Before that, carrying anything but minimal luggage on board was not common. Every so often you run into one of these old interiors, and the luggage stowing is total chaos. I can never remember when it was permitted to bring two bags on board. There was not space even for one bag per passenger.

I'll reverse the argument. Why should I, traveling with one easily storable roll-aboard bag, have to help pay for someone carrying half their household with them for a weekend trip? I don't need all those ramp people, carts, and all the other ancillary staff and equipment used to handle checked luggage. Why not have those who use that service pay for it? I'll extend that to Amtrak as well. Those who use luggage service should pay for it. Those who do not, should get a break.

Well, the question is one of how much luggage you're going to have, say, 75-90% of people take on a trip. Yes, there will be those with absolutely no luggage beyond a "personal item"...but the number of people going somewhere with just a change of clothes in a backpack is, if not vanishingly small, very much a niche market.

In an ideal situation, there would be a "standard allowance" that would be either checked or carry-on (given that some luggage will need to be checked, the incremental cost of letting folks check the bags is limited while there might be an incremental benefit in terms of time turning the plane...5 minutes off of boarding time and 5 minutes off of disembarking time adds up on short-haul flights in particular) that the airlines would basically sort out and then need to stick by. On the carry-on side, you would ideally standardize the luggage sizes and then stick to them on basically a permanent basis (IIRC, one of the remaining legacies got into some hot water when they decided to shave their carry-on dimension allowance...I think they technically violated their contract of carriage and it would be fun to see them wind up in small claims court over it). A standard free checked bag (as opposed to a carry-on) would also largely remove the hassles of the (IMHO stupid) liquids rule, which basically forces at least some baggage into being checked.

The other option (as hinted at with the RJ bit posted above) would be some sort of "expanded gate check" option...but that might cause issues with turning the gate over to the next flight(s).

Kicking over to Amtrak, the issue there is as follows:

(1) On most LD services, a baggage car is going to be needed, even for one or two checked bags. The weight of more bags is a negligible element in most calculations (a ten-car single-level train weighs over 1.1 million pounds before the locomotives come into consideration; adding a hundred full-weight checked bags adds less than half of a percent to the weight of the train).

(2) The red caps, etc. are going to be needed for disabled passengers and the like. Unless you totally banned checked luggage you would still need the same staffing, and even if you did you'd still need someone with a cart to run people down the train at a number of stops. Pull those and cue an ADA hue and cry.

(3) Because of (1) and (2), the cost to Amtrak of offering free checked luggage is minimal. I don't even think there was much benefit to reducing the baggage allowance a few years ago (from 3 free and 3 pay to 2 free and 2 pay). There is arguably an opportunity cost/room to try and develop a profit center, but the response is that (A) where Amtrak competes with driving, adding a luggage charge is likely to make driving more attractive; and (B) it isn't like Amtrak has a legacy of vigorously enforcing luggage limits (I've heard the definition of an Amtrak carry-on given as "If you can carry it on, it's a carry-on"), so trying to snap back there would generate quite a bit of ill will among passengers.

Put another way, I think you can argue that you're mostly subsidizing getting old/disabled people out to the train and the baggage service is mostly thrown in on top of that.

 

[Anderson]

I was chewing this over and it occurred to me that there's another angle to take here in response to your question about who is subsidizing who. Namely, I think you can argue that baggage-heavy passengers are probably subsidizing everyone else even when baggage weight is taken into account (witness the fact that Spirit, for example, has one of the biggest profit margins in the industry).* The baggage fee shift should arguably have been close to cost-neutral (i.e. the cost of a ticket drops but bag fees make that up), but instead baggage has become a significant profit center.

Of course there's more at work: The low-ticket-price, fee-heavy carriers tend to bias younger and therefore they don't have a lot of the cost structures of other airlines. Delta, United, American, etc. have large networks (even after pruning and making things more efficient), more senior employees, pension expenses that they can't fully shed, even in bankruptcy while newer carriers don't have these factors weighing on them.

*Actually this is probably not quite right. What's really going on to some extent is that everyone is paying for your Super Duper Platinum Diamond folks to haul their luggage around at their expense. Pulling an example from Virgin America, I believe that if one has top-tier status, the credit card, and travels in First Class then one can take a whopping six checked bags with them. I forget whether all of the stacking applies to a +1 as well, but...well, if you're packing six checked bags and you're not moving then you might want to reconsider how you pack.

 

[Ispolkom]

What's really going on to some extent is that everyone is paying for your Super Duper Platinum Diamond folks to haul their luggage around at their expense.

I think that high-status fliers are paying their share, and probably more. After all, they are flying a lot (hence the status), and paying well for the privilege, upgrades or no. That's transparently clear with frequent-flyer programs that give status based on money paid, like Delta and United, but even on the airlines that still grant status based on mileage it's difficult to get status based on low-fare leisure travel if you have limited vacation time.

And for what it's worth, in my experience travelers in domestic first class seem to carry on at least as much luggage as coach passengers, so I doubt many are taking advantage of free checked luggage.

I traveled on Frontier three times last year, and rather enjoyed it. On the flights I took, no flight attendant actually enforced the carry-on item charge (you're still not charged for items you put under the seat in front of you), but there definitely was less crowding in the overhead compartments, and it seemed that boarding and debarking were speedier.

 

[saxman]

I saw somewhere on an internal memo to Delta's employees that their frequent flyers only make up about 5% of the passengers but are 26% of their revenue.

 

[Anderson]

What's really going on to some extent is that everyone is paying for your Super Duper Platinum Diamond folks to haul their luggage around at their expense.

I think that high-status fliers are paying their share, and probably more. After all, they are flying a lot (hence the status), and paying well for the privilege, upgrades or no. That's transparently clear with frequent-flyer programs that give status based on money paid, like Delta and United, but even on the airlines that still grant status based on mileage it's difficult to get status based on low-fare leisure travel if you have limited vacation time.

And for what it's worth, in my experience travelers in domestic first class seem to carry on at least as much luggage as coach passengers, so I doubt many are taking advantage of free checked luggage.

I traveled on Frontier three times last year, and rather enjoyed it. On the flights I took, no flight attendant actually enforced the carry-on item charge (you're still not charged for items you put under the seat in front of you), but there definitely was less crowding in the overhead compartments, and it seemed that boarding and debarking were speedier.

Yes, but status/points being based on spend is quite a new phenomenon. For example, when I wound up on Delta (less-than-desirable experience that it was), I got points based on the fact that I had traveled SLC-ATL-ORL, not based on the fact that I was spending $X. Delta really only flipped models in the last year or two (and in fact, I think there was a sort of chain reaction where everyone but American has flipped in the last year or two...and American has only been held off by the fact that mergers are always a logistical nightmare. Had the merger with USAir happened a year sooner or later they, too, would probably have flipped this year. Until recently, spending and points earning really had a rather loose connection given how much fares could vary for different routes of a given distance (leading to absurd mileage runs, for example).