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American--Without Bankruptcy--Has Lowest Cost-Per-Available Seat of Legacy Carriers; Guess Who Has the Lowest Cost?

Every once in a while I come across a statistic that surprises me, and a recent Wall Street Journal article detailing labor relations between American Airlines and its pilots included a sidebar that revealed that among the so-called "legacy" carriers, American Airlines enjoys the lowest cost-per-available seat mile.

That figure is derived by taking an airline's available seat miles and dividing it into an airline's operating cost.  The three airlines with the highest cost as of the third quarter of 2006?  Three airlines that are either in, or have recently been in, bankruptcy: US Airways (with a 1.57 cents cost to fly a passenger a mile), Northwest (14.2 cents), and Delta (13.9 cents).

Two airlines that didn't declare bankruptcy in the last five years managed to have lower costs--Continental (13.4 cents) and American (12.6 cents).  United, which is still in bankruptcy, lands in the middle of Continental and American; it costs United 13.2 cents to fly each available seat mile.

Keep in mind airlines including United, Delta, Northwest, and US Airways used their time in bankruptcy to, in some cases, get rid of big pension obligations, renegotiate airplane lease agreements, slash workers' salaries and perks, and change work rules. 

Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. 

I just find it very interesting that American, which managed to keep its pension plan afloat (though the airline needs a string of profitable years to top it off) has comparatively lower costs than competitors who used bankruptcy as a way of cutting back.  That's a testament to the airline's executives and workers who put their heads together to figure out how to cut costs and boost productivity.  It's often been said, "Bankruptcy just forces lawyers and creditors to do what management ought to do."  In American's case, management and workers stepped up to the plate.

And what about the former upstart airline that is now the new, 900-pound gorilla in the business, Southwest?  Helped along by a highly motivated staff and fuel prices locked in years ago at earlier, lower levels, Southwest has costs of only 8.7 cents per available seat mile--a big competitive advantage. 

Lamb's Eyeball? Beating Frog Heart? All In a Day's Meal For Andrew Zimmern On His New Travel Channel Series

You gotta love this guy, Andrew Zimmern.  (And I can tell you he IS lovable because I've gotten to know him and his lovely wife, Rishia, since moving to Saint Paul, MN. That's the happy couple below and to the right at a debut party for the series at Morton's in Minneapolis last night .) 

Anyway, you should love Andrew Zimmern because he's willing to eat the beating heart of a frog, slimy worms extracted from inside trees, and other exotic foods that are considered delicacies in some parts of the world so you don't have to.  It's all a part of his new, one-hour Travel Channel series called "Bizarre Foods."   

"Bizarre Foods" made its debut last night, and 11 more episodes will air on subsequent Monday nights at 8 p.m. East Coast time on the Travel Channel, although I note by looking at my local cable schedule that the network is repeating his shows frequently.  The series is also being shown on Discovery Asia and Discovery Europe, and the shows are so well done, I expect Andrew and his production company, Tremendous Entertainment, will be signed up for a second series soon.

That's because Andrew has a warm and witty television personality that allows viewers to share his curiosity about different cultures and cuisines even as they go, "Ewwww!"  Andrew's first season's shooting schedule has included destinations as far afield as Mongolia, the United Kingdom, and the Gulf Coast of the US.  His list of the top ten most bizarre foods he's consumed includes soup made from the back and testicles of cow, goose intestines (served with bean sprouts), coconut grubs and mangrove worms. 

A big Maxa thumb's up for "Bizarre Foods."  Catch it if you can, and bon appetit.

 

From the Twin Cities, Here's a Talented Restaurant Reviewer With a Sense of Humor as Sharp As Her Taste Buds

I sometimes write about food, so I know how difficult it can be to describe meals and ingredients in a way that allows a reader to share your experience via the written word.  Which is why I so enjoy the writing of a Minneapolis-based food writer and restaurant critic, Dara Moskowitz of City Pages, the Twin Cities' free weekly tabloid. 

On a weekly basis, Moskowitz manages to make the dining scene in and around Saint Paul and Minneapolis come alive, even if that dining scene doesn't always deserve her talented attention.  She is tough, fair, and I will confess in my limited experience, right on target.  (Which means I generally agree with her reviews about restaurants I've experienced.) 

I just had to share a great paragraph from her review last week of a new Italian restaurant in Saint Paul called Il Vesco Vino.  While Moskowitz loved the restaurant's appetizers, she had complaints about several main courses.  And I laughed outloud when she described the restaurant's gnocchi. 

Moskowitz said on her first visit to Il Vesco Vino, she was told the chef didn't liked the way his gnocchi was turning out that night, so he'd taken it off the menu.  On her next visit, she ordered the gnocchi again, and this time the pasta was available.  Moskowitz said the dish was "a white swamp of glue with bits of veal struggling to escape to the top, like prehistoric beasts trying to flee the LeBrea tar pits." 

And that led Moscowitz to wonder what the gnocchi must have been like the night the chef declined to serve it.  Here's the sentence that cracked me up:

"Later, I woke up in the night, trying to imagine how the gnocchi that the chef didn't like the look of could have been worse: Perhaps they arrived at the table, raced from the bowl, performed an IRS audit and a colonoscopy, and then tore off down the street on fire?"

Moskowitz's writing talent hasn't gone unnoticed.  Her byline has begun to appear in USA Today and other national publications.

Bravo, and a big thumbs up. 

What's the Bottom Line On the jetBlue Fiasco? And What the Heck Does 'Controllerable Irregularity' Mean, Anyway?

I know I promised my reaction to jetBlue's self-imposed "passenger bill of rights" last week, but I wanted to watch the reaction to the airline's announcement, primarily to see if other airlines might follow suit.

They didn't.

The most startling part of jetBlue's announcement was its promise to pay $1,000 to any passenger with a reservation who is denied a seat because a flight is overbooked.  That's a lot of scratch.  Given that most airlines routinely overbook because it's known a certain percentage of passengers will not show up, jetBlue must be very certain of its ability to predict how many people will post for its flights.  Most airlines, of course, handle overbooking by offering passengers $200 or $300 or a voucher for a free future flight to surrender their seats and accept a later flight.

As to the issue of what got jetBlue in such deep trouble last week--passengers stranded on fetid planes--the airline proposed a sliding scale of compensation depending on how long passengers are delayed.  And jetBlue introduced a new phrase into airline lexicon--at least to my knowledge.  It's a phrase I think is better suited to those commercials that air on the evening broadcasts of network news: "Controllable irregularity."

As in, to quote jetBlue's web site: "Customers whose flight is delayed prior to scheduled departure for four to six hours due to a controllable irregularity are entitled to a voucher good for future travel on jetBlue in the amount paid by the customer for the one-way trip."

I searched in vain on the airline's web site (including its legalese-filled "contract of carriage") for a definition of "controllable irregularity."   Perhaps jetBlue will soon explain exactly what that means, but I think it means if something bad happens that the airline can control yet it still strands passengers in a terminal or the apron of a runway, it'll pay up.  Of course, weather is not considered a "controllable irregularity," but the airline's failure to get passsengers off a stranded plane would be a controllable event.

Several members of Congress are proposing their own passenger bill of rights.  Sen. Olympia Stowe (R-ME) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are co-sponsoring a bill that would compel airlines to let passengers off a grounded plane after three hours.  And that's what worries me about legislators passing laws regarding the complicated world of commercial aviation.

Let's say you're a newlywed couple aboard a jetBlue plane at JFK when bad weather shuts down the airport.  But air controllers and airline weather experts tell pilots waiting in line for takeoff they expect the weather to clear in a reasonable amount of time.  (Which did, in fact, happen last week at JFK.)  Under the Stowe-Boxer bill, the aircraft would have had to head back to the gate after three hours even if the airport is expected to open in 15 minutes. This presents three problems:

1. By returning to the gate, the aircraft loses its position in line for take-off, and it may take a long time to receive another "slot" from air controllers.

2.  When an aircraft returns to a gate, the flight is considered completed, even if it never went aloft.  Pilots are not permitted to fly more than eight hours a day unless a flight is delayed while already underway.  Wait in line for three hours, taxi 15 minutes back to the gate, and a flight crew facing a five-hour cross-country flight cannot fly anymore that day.

3.  And what about that newlywed couple and other passengers who might be willing to wait an extra hour near the runway if it means they can reach their destination that same day?  Will they be writing thank-you notes to Congress the next day?

I agree with Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Marilee McInnis who told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We think customer loyalty and the threat of lost business are greater than threats of regulations from Congress."

This is not to belittle the extreme discomfort the passengers of Northwest's planes experienced in 1999 when they were stranded for hours in a snowstorm on the apron of Detroit's airport.  Or the terrible conditions endured last week by jetBlue's passengers who could neither take off nor return to the gate for many hours.  But such incidents are the extreme and very unusual.

I argue that common sense and market forces should correct mistakes and punish the makers of those mistakes.  What do you think?

jetBlue's Neeleman Makes Personal Apology To Passengers; Details On a New Passenger 'Bill of Rights' To Follow This Afternoon

In an extraordinary public apology and statement early this morning, jetBlue CEO David Neeleman "asks for your business and trust" and calls the meltdown of his company's flight operations last week an "aberration" he's taken steps to make sure never happens again.

Sometime this afternoon, the airline will post on its website its own passenger "bill of rights" that Neeleman yesterday described in a conversation with me on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" as a "living document."  By that he meant the airline will feel free to modify and add to its new corporate policy regarding what passengers can expect in terms of service.  One revolutionary promise expected to be included in this afternoon's statement will be a vow to pay customers should they ever have to wait longer than three hours aboard a plane stuck on the ground for whatever reason.

As I mentioned in numerous media interviews yesterday, Neeleman's quick apologies, extensive outreach to both print and broadcast reporters, and mea culpas are unprecedented in the airline industry, where chief executives are better known for going to ground when things go wrong.  Being an airline, to twist a cliche from that '70s sappy novel, Love Story, usually means never having to say your sorry.

I'll be on an airplane headed to a speech in Kansas City when jetBlue posts its "bill of rights," but I'll address it here as soon as I have a few minutes to review it this evening. 

See That Ice Bucket In Your Hotel Room? Don't Go Near It!

This "Thumbs Down" is directed at the ubiquitous hotel room ice bucket.  Now, it's not the ice bucket's fault I've chosen to ding it today.  It's just that there's something I can't get out of my mind whenever I see one.  And once I tell you this, I promise you won't be able to get it out of your mind, either.

Last September, I was hired to give a speech at an annual conference on tourism safety and security in Las Vegas.  I stuck around to listen to other speakers, including the man who is in charge of overseeing issues of health and cleanliness for the vast empire of Harrah's hotel and resort properties.  I found his presentation fascinating.  You may know that every few years or so, a television investigative reporter goes snooping around hotel rooms with a black light that often reveals all manner of germs and filth on seemingly clean hotel room phones, bedspreads, and bathrooms.  Frankly, if we all carried black lights with us when we travel, we'd probably sleep standing up in most hotel rooms.  (But since we've all survived hundreds of such rooms, I say, get over it.  Or, better yet, carry disinfectant pads and wipe down the telephones and toilet seats when you check in if you're a true germaphobe.) 

He offered such tips as how to check for evidence of bedbugs (look behind the headboard of the hotel bed), but it was the ice bucket that came in for the hardest drubbing.  The Harrah's exec pointed out that when someone throws up in a hotel room, it's often the ice bucket that they reach for.  They may rinse it out afterwards, but it was his suggestion you not use an ice bucket in a motel or hotel--unless you happen to travel with your own dishwashing liquid and clean it out thoroughly with very hot water before walking down the hallway to find the ice machine.

I've never looked at a hotel room ice bucket in quite the same way since.  And neither should you.

Will JetBlue's Most Horrible Day Lead To a Bill of Rights? Not Likely

It's now two days since jetBlue stranded passengers for up to ten hours on ten flights at New York's JFK airport because of a combination of winter weather, frozen ground equipment, unavailable gates, and hopeful airline dispatchers who thought maybe, just maybe, if they kept planes loaded and ready to go, a break in the weather would allow an opportunity to take off. 

A passenger bill of rights is the topic du jour, just as it was seven years ago after Northwest Airlines stranded passengers at Detroit's airport in a winter snowstorm.  (At least jetBlue had the presence of mind to quickly apologize and offer full refunds as well as a free ticket on a future flight to its victims.)  After the Northwest snafu, the airlines blunted congressional action by proposing their own voluntary bill of rights that included such promises as keeping passengers up to date on the reasons for delays--once somehow considered top secret information by some airline ground staff for inexplicable reasons.

Since then, airlines have heeded that self-imposed list of promises rather haphazardly, perhaps because failure to abide by those promises carried no penalty.  And because the Northwest foul up wasn't repeated right away, proponents of new legislation got little attention.  Then came an American flight two months ago at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport that lingered for hours on the apron.  And then jetBlue's crisis on Tuesday.  And today, another jetBlue flight held passengers five hours on board on a Pittsburgh runway when the aircraft's brakes froze before takeoff on a JFK-bound flight.

Based on my experience of having been a Washington, DC, reporter for more than 20 years, I predict despite all the brouhaha surrounding jetBlue's terrible Tuesday, there will still be no passenger bill of rights at the end of the day.  And if there is, airline interests will  manage to water it down so as to make it toothless. 

But maybe there's an airline smart enough to steal the march on the competition--jetBlue comes to mind as one company creative enough to do this--by issuing its own list of promises that come along with self-imposed penalties.  Make the news, make it spectacular.  No passengers will be held longer than an hour on the ground no matter what, or each passenger will receive $1,000 for every additional hour.  Watch how fast an airline figures out--no matter how treacherous the weather--to get an aircraft back to a gate or a bus or snowplow out to a stranded plane.   

How I Saved $74 On a Rental Car: Priceline Still Delivers Deals

Several years ago, third-party travel providers such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline were doing a gangbuster business.  That's because the travel industry was in the doldrums, and hotels, airlines, and rental car companies were grateful for any additional channels through which they could sell their product.

But in the last 18 months, travel has roared back to life.  Airlines are flying full planes.  Rental car companies are raising their prices.  And hotels are working to gain control over more of their room inventory and making "lowest-price" promises to drive business to their websites. 

Third-party websites have begun concentrating on packages to make money.  By bundling a hotel room, airline ticket and rental car, sites such as Expedia can offer deals that are attractive to travelers who know buying two or three elements of a trip together can be cheaper than buying each separately.  So where does that leave Priceline, whose clever ads starring actor William Shatner remind us you can still bid for travel on the web site? 

I've never bid on an airline ticket on Priceline because I could never afford not to know ahead of time when during a day I'd be departing my destination.  (While you can buy specific flights on Priceline, if you bid, you can only specify the days you want to fly--not the times.)  But since Priceline began, I've regularly used the site to rent hotel rooms and reserve cars. 

Now, there are entire web sites and blogs devoted to ways to figure out how much to bid on Priceline.  But I will tell you this: Check the retail price of a rental car or hotel room, then bid at least 30 per cent less on Priceline.  I did just that to get a car for five days in Los Angeles last week.  I found most rental car sites quoted me between $230 and $300 for a standard car with unlimited mileage and an airport (LAX) pick up.  I bid $140 on Priceline ($28/day before taxes and fees) and got a car at Budget.  With taxes and fees, the total cost was $166.65. 

Just to see how much I would have paid retail, I went to Budget's own web site, replicated my request and was quoted a total cost of $240.  Savings: $74.  Not too bad.  Bottom line: I'm still a Priceline fan.