Joe Sharkey At Large

From Bill Shea:

U.S.Air Force’s announcement on Thursday said that a Missouri
National Guard F-15 jet broke apart in midair on Nov. 2, 2007; the pilot
evacuated the plane safely. The breakup in mid air was blamed on parts
that didn’t meet specifications; which raises issues ranging from national
security to potential legal action and even foreign sales.

This from Rick Seaney, the CEO of FareCompare.com:

“Thursday, February 28, 2008 3:35pm CST

In today’s 12:30pm EST airfare distribution Delta Air Lines raised domestic airfares by $10 roundtrip on the bulk of its route system. Over 18,000 city pairs show this new $10 roundtrip airfare hike affecting both leisure and business travelers.

This domestic airfare increase attempt follows a similar $10 roundtrip hike last week initiated by United Airlines and marks the 6^th attempted system-wide increase this year. Three of the previous five attempted increases in 2008 have been widely “successful” (sticky) except on selective routes dominated by lower cost airlines.

This trend in airfare hikes closely follows a similar pattern as 2007, where 23 attempted increases resulted in 17 successful airfare hikes. Airfare increases are being driven by the unprecedented run-up in fuel cost, firm demand for air travel and limited seat capacity. Last week I had predicted at least one more increase this quarter and would not be surprised to see another as well.

Airfare deals are going to be fewer and farther between in the coming years and travelers should brace themselves for higher prices – savvy travelers should be changing their shopping patterns by starting the purchasing process much earlier and being flexible on travel dates and times.”

###

Kate Hanni’s Coalition for an Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights issued a “report card” on the industry today and it isn’t pretty. Here’s a copy: final2007reportcard.pdf

Kate’s group is focused primarily on one issue: How airlines treat passengers who are stranded on parked planes, amid deteriorating conditions, for three hours or more. (In some cases last year, passengers sat in growing distress on parked planes for 12 hours and more). And what needs to be done to require airlines to provide for basic in cabin health, sanitation, food and water; and to give stranded passengers timely, reliable information and to provide a way for people to get off stuck planes after a certain number of hours.

The airline industry is adamantly opposed to the group’s push for federal legislation (bills are pending in both houses of Congress), insisting that it can handle the problem itself.

But it hasn’t handled it. Instead, the industry’s mouthpiece trade group, the Air Transport Association (ATA), has attacked Kate Hanni personally and, as shown in the following statement it issued today, has tried to muddy the issues.

Here’s the statement the ATA issued:

“The Air Transport Association responded to a report issued by a consumer group critical of the airlines on customer service and delays, calling the group’s claims baseless and not constructive. ATA went on to say that carriers are aware of the serious problems created by flight delays and noted that improving the country’s outdated air traffic control system will address the core issue of delays. Steps have been taken at the individual carrier level as well as in concert with other stakeholders in the airport and government communities to address these challenges,” the ATA said.”

The disingenuousness in that statement lies chiefly its claim that “flight delays” are the issue — and not airlines holding people for three to 13 hours in parked planes without adequate food, water or ventilation, and as passengers suffer through added indignities like unusable toilets.

How many stranded-passenger instances have there been? Thousands, by Kate’s group’s count. By industry count, there were 462 flights last June alone that sat on tarmacs with passengers unable to move for at least three hours, and in many cases far longer. I’d say “thousands” for the year was a good estimate.

Per usual, knuckleheads in the local press and cable network television media, who don’t seem capable of doing reporting beyond what they’ve been told by the last flack they spoke to, keep confusing the issue.

No, NBC4 Washington, there were not merely “thousands of delays” in the air-travel system in 2007.

There were millions. Do the math. Industry data show that well over 25 percent of flights last year were delayed. There were 11 million flights. Allowing for the percentage of those flights that left the U.S. for another country (whose operational performance isn’t reflected in the delay statistics), that still indicates that about well over 2 million domestic flights were delayed in 2007.
(Dow Jones, by the way, gets it about right.)

The ATA sniffs that criticism is not “constructive,” while obfuscating the issue — as if the Air Traffic Control system is responsible for not emptying overflowing toilets on stuck planes.
The airline industry doesn’t seem to be getting the message that it had better sit up and pay attention to what it needs to do — or will be legally required to do — about stranded passengers and the crummy way they’ve been treated. “Who would think it would take a law to ensure passengers on a stranded plane get a drink of water and a working toilet?” New York State Assemblyman Mike Genaris, who drafted the landmark passeners’ rights law that took effect Jan. 1 in New York State, asked me not long ago.

****

In Other Matters,  The Morning News:

—Your brain off drugs: I remember when George Carlin was actually funny. When did he turn into Red Skelton?

—Excited Drudge headline of the day (Another two-way tie!): “Prince Harry Fights Taliban” and “Channel 4 News in Britain: ‘I Never Thought I’d Find Myself Saying ‘Thank God For Drudge’ … (Me, I’m starting to worry about that boy. Drudge, I mean, not Harry the Prince.)

###

[Top: The alleged perpetrators]

I really don’t know what this is all about. Southwest Airlines says it’s reacting to “some news reports,” and here is a sample. This is the latest incident involving good-looking young female passengers who have run afoul of Southwest flight attendants (and in this case ended up being questioned by the police and the F.B.I., who evidently have no real threats to focus on.)
Oh, wait a minute. This happened on a flight from Tampa! Central Florida strikes again.

“The story has nothing to do with [the two female passengers'] appearance, but rather, their use of what other Passengers tell us was profanity …” the Southwest statement intriguingly says, indicating an attitude that cursing is reasonable ground for arrest. I gather that the women in question charged that Southwest flight attendants assailed them for their appearance, which would not be without precedent.

Maybe Southwest has a point, if in fact these two were being unruly and “threatening.” On the other hand, the womens’ accounts sound pretty plausible to me.

Meanwhile, Jayzus, Southwest PR Department, would you please get someone who isn’t wearing vintage lederhosen to proof-read this stuff?

All of those capitalized Common Nouns, in that vaguely Teutonic Manner, are weirding Me out.

###

As airlines continue to unbundle fares and add fees for certain things that used to be included in the price, US Airways said today it would begin charging most passengers $25 to check a second bag. This follows a move by United Airlines earlier this month to do the same.

The last time US Airways announced a reduction in customer benefits — its recent move to eliminate the 500-mile minimum credit on trips of under 500 miles in favor of credit for actual miles flown — it ridiculously described the change as some kind of unspecified benefit for customers. (See post of Feb. 14.)

I’m glad to see that US Airways plays it straight in today’s announcement. All the usual travel-media scolds will be flapping their arms over this, but the fact is that very few business travelers check a second bag anyway. As I said before, it’s usually the Clampett Family lugging all that stuff to the airport.

###

[Top: French President Sarkozy pretending to be a cowboy. Bottom: Napoleon showing off]

—Cowboy Nick puts his boot in his mouth again in another incident

I keep pointing out that M. Sarkozy, who is incidentally wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt in this pose, is astride a pony, not a horse, as was universally misreported last year in gushing news accounts of the new style the dashing little rake was bringing to Elysee Palace.

A Carmargue pony, to be specific. And video clips at the time showed that his riding skills are elementary. Dead giveaway, aside from the fact that he’s wobbling even in a western saddle: He keeps kicking his horse, I mean pony, and yanking the reins. A skilled rider gets a horse’s attention with a subtle pressure from the leg and seat.

The fearsome Napoleon rode bravely, if not well, while off on his savage missions. He was known among his troops for falling off his horse rather frequently (like any serious rider, he got right back on despite the pain). He is shown here in the heroic image the French love so much.But in fact, Napoleon actually rode a mule over the Alps in his Second Italian Campaign, which would be the sensible way to travel across a mountain if you couldn’t fly.

***

—I love reading the contrarian John Tierney merrily debunking knee-jerk thinking, like this morning’s entry on his Times blog. I hope he’s collecting his stuff, including that landmark magazine piece on recycling of several years ago, in a book.

—Speaking of books, Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason” is a must read.

—Will this guy ever just go away? (See also Andy Borowitz on Nader.)

—And finally, the excited Drudge headline of the day: “Obesity ‘More Dangerous’ Than Terrorism.”

###

–Another horrible plane crash in South America, this time in Venezuela.

###

—Traveling to or from New York airports today? Airport delays are piling up and cancellations are mounting. If it ices up late this afternoon, as the forecast indicates it might, it’s going to be an air-travel nightmare. [At 9:45 a.m., Flightstats.com was reporting "excessive delays" at all 3 New York airports, and also at the 3 Washington airports, Chicago O'Hare, Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis.]

{Update: Newark, which had a 20 percent on-time arrival rate by noon, reported 611 arrivals and departures canceled today by 5 p.m. The total number of arrivals and departures scheduled for Newark today is 1,316 — so already, before the evening rush,  nearly half of the flights into and out of Newark have been canceled.}

***

IN OTHER NEWS …
—Oh, great police work. Note the dateline.

—A post on the Times DealBook today says that Northwest Airlines CEO Douglas Steenland could bail out with a golden parachute worth about $7.8 million after a merger between Northwest and Delta. Last week, Steenland was busy assuring employees that they wouldn’t be screwed in a merger. We shall see. Steenland, remember, was the guy in charge in 2006 when Northwest sent out that famous booklet on money-saving lifestyle tips to about-to-be laid-off employees. You know, the one that suggested people scavenge trash cans for useful objects to cut down on expenses?

—Real Dumb Magazine Selects Real Smart Cities — Forbes Magazine comes out with a highly questionable list of the nation’s “smartest cities.”
… And the Columbia Journalism Review explains (well, partially, at least) why Forbes’s list is stupid.

—Nobody asked me, but: Shouldn’t this guy otherwise be getting out of prison right about now for killing that girl?

###

I don’t know what it is about the Tampa area, where only last Saturday we heard and saw how a sheriff’s deputy had dumped a quadriplegic out of his wheelchair, just for the hell of it, while evidently forgetting about that damn surveillance camera on the wall.

Here’s a new candidate for Moron of the Week, Central Florida Division. Via the T.S.A. web site.

Benjamin Baines Jr. was busted at security at Tampa International Airport last Sunday when the magnetometer at the checkpoint alerted T.S.A. screeners to the concealed box-cutter this master criminal was carrying inside a hollowed-out book.
Here’s the link.

“Relatives say he’s a good kid …” a local newspaper reports.

They always say that, if you ask relatives. Note all those brain-dead stories on what an otherwise nice, oppressed guy the homicidal maniac who hacked the Manhattan psychologist to death with a meat clever was. He just forgot to take his meds, is all.

Anyway, Baines was arrested, pleaded guilty, and got a 30-day jail sentence. Besides the “artfully concealed” weapon (we have steadily defined down “art.” And when did pop singers start becoming “artists,” by the way? Don’t get me started.) he had a Koran, a Bible and “rap music lyrics referencing police, drugs and guns,” we are informed.

Diversity in carry-ons!

A relative, evidently overlooking the weapon artfully concealed in a hollowed-out book, which is a trick I think I first saw in a Jimmy Cagney movie, said Baines was arrested merely because “he was black and carrying the Koran.”

Baines says he just plumb forgot all about the knife. No one seems to have thought it especially important to ask why he’d hollowed out a book to carry it in — which seems to me to be prima facie evidence of criminal intent.

Maybe he was off his meds.

###

The British Airways start-up all-business-class airline OpenSkies has chosen its initial European city — Paris.

Here’s the .pdf of its filing to the U.S. Transportation Department.

dot-filing-openskies-of-ba.pdf

If it gets approval from the U.S., which isn’t expected to be a problem, the little airline will fly 757s between Paris and JFK starting in June.The airline recently found a slot at JFK amid uncertainty about whether it would need to use Newark as its U.S. port if Kennedy wasn’t available.

OpenSkies, which plans to expand starting later this year, will fly 757s configured with 82 seats, mostly in first-class and business-class. At least for the initial phase, there will be a token small coach section in the back.

The airline, a subsidiary of British Airways, hasn’t yet decided whether the Paris port will be at Charles De Gaulle or Orly airports.

###