Joe Sharkey At Large

Aloha Airlines is shutting down flight operations. The announcement is below. (I do wish they would have avoided blaming “unfair competition,” or saying that passengers will be “inconvenienced” rather than, as will be the fact in many cases, “stranded.” Even on their death-beds, airlines seem to be unable to speak truth.)

Aloha, battered by competition from the low-fare airline go!, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 20.

Code-share partner United Airlines is offering space available accommodations to Aloha code-share passengers with a United ticket, and offering “discounted one-way fares” for those with Aloha tickets to return home. Here’s the United statement.

[Joe Brancatelli just sent out an alert to members of his subscription site Joesentme.com with good advice for Aloha ticket-holders left holding the bag: "Worst case scenario, contact your credit-card company to contest the charge. Under federal law, credit-card companies cannot charge you for services not provided."]

Here’s the Aloha announcement:

“ALOHA AIRLINES TO SHUT DOWN PASSENGER OPERATIONS AFTER MARCH 31, 2008, ENDING A 61-YEAR TRADITION OF SERVICE TO HAWAII

HONOLULU – — Aloha Airlines announced today that it will be shutting down its inter-island and transpacific passenger flight operations. Aloha’s last day of operations will be Monday, March 31, 2008. On that day, Aloha will operate its schedule with the exception of flights from Hawaii to the West Coast and flights from Orange County to Reno and Sacramento, and Oakland to Las Vegas. Code-share partner United Airlines and other airlines are prepared to assist and accommodate Aloha’’s passengers who have been inconvenienced.

For more information on United’’s accommodation options, contact United at 1-800-UNITED1 or www.united.com. Passengers who do not wish to be re-accommodated by another airline should contact their travel agent or credit card company to request a refund. Effective immediately, Aloha will stop selling tickets for travel beyond March 31, 2008.

The shutdown of Aloha’’s passenger operations will affect about 1,900 employees. Aloha also announced that its air cargo and aviation services units will continue to operate as usual while the U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeks bids from potential buyers. On March 27, 2008, Saltchuk Resources, Inc., announced its intention to buy Aloha’’s air cargo business.

“This is an incredibly dark day for Hawaii,” said David A. Banmiller, Aloha’’s president and chief executive officer. “Despite the groundswell of support from the community and our elected officials, we simply ran out of time to find a qualified buyer or secure continued financing for our passenger business. We had no choice but to take this action.

“We deeply regret the impact this will have on our dedicated employees who have made Aloha one of the best operating airlines in the country. “Aloha Airlines was founded in 1946 to give Hawaii’s people a choice in inter-island air transportation.

Unfortunately, unfair competition has succeeded in driving us out of business, bringing to an end a 61-year-old company with a proud legacy of serving millions of travelers in the true spirit of Aloha. ”We realize that this comes as a devastating disappointment to our frequent flyers and our loyal business partners who have supported this company for many, many years.””

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—Disruptions continue at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5, heralded (until it actually opened on Thursday) as the crown jewel of British Airways. No one really knows how many bags have gone missing, but 15,000 is the current estimate. And, of course, recriminations are flying.

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—Two reasons why we might want to think a little more about whether that border wall should be built:

1. Jobs:  http://www.twango.com/media/asan13.junk/asan13.10786

2: Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as quoted in today’s Times: “Show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.”

[Actually, the quote seems to be from Napolitano's 2006 State of the State speech in which she said, 'You show me a 50-foot wall, and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That's the way the border works.'"]

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So far, the only person to get in or out of the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 on schedule was the Queen, who stopped in to cut a ribbon two weeks ago and hustled out fast, pearls clicking, to return to the serenity of her castle.

Nobody expects a new airport terminal to function perfectly on Opening Day, but British Airways, which had proudly trumpeted the opening of the huge, modern new terminal that will be the center of its Heathrow operations, was clearly stunned by the mishaps, delays and customer fury after the terminal opened for business on Thursday.

It’s been a customer-relations disaster for British Airways, an airline that prides itself on its reputation for quality in-flight service.

Here’s a comprehensive update today from London’s Evening Standard newspaper. (Today, even the terminal’s elevators malfunctioned.)

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Mandi Hamlin, the 37-year-old Texas woman who was made to use pliers to remove a nipple piercing by TSA screeners in late February, is being represented by Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who has called for a TSA apology to Hamlin.

She’s going to get it — or at least a courtesy call with an acknowledgment that TSA procedures as followed in this case need to be modified.

TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe told me this afternoon that the agency has already spoken with Allred, and that arrangements are being made for TSA director Kip Hawley to call Mandi Hamlin personally.

Howe also said that based on the Hamlin case the TSA is changing its procedures to allow for a screener of the same sex to conduct a visual inspection of a private body part, such as a nipple with a piercing that has set off the metal detector alarm, if requested by the person who has triggered the alarm. Until now, the TSA operating procedures — the details of which are classified — prohibited screeners from inspecting or patting down private parts of the body such as genitalia and female breasts.

“We reviewed the situation and it appears [the screeners] did properly follow the procedures as they exist,” Howe said. “They didn’t have in their procedures the option to visually inspect.”

She added, “We are going to acknowledge that the procedures caused difficulty and we are going to make a change that will enable the procedures in the future to meet security needs while providing additional flexibility for this kind of screening situation,” Howe said.

“We had a good conversation with Gloria Allred yesterday and we definitely understand the woman’s distress,” Howe said.

Hamlin had said that she could hear male screeners “snickering” as she stood behind a curtain using the pliers to remove one of the nipple rings. The TSA’s Howe said there was no indication that any routine checkpoint chatter or laughter Hamlin might have heard was directed her personally, however.

At the press conference, Allred and Hamlin seemed to present a pretty straightforward case of a woman being arbitrarily humiliated by TSA screeners at Lubbock, Texas.

A video clip of the press conference is linked to at Allred’s Web site, under “Featured News.”

In November 2004, by the way, I wrote about a widespread problem of women being humiliated and arbitrarily patted down by airport screeners, and the TSA ultimately dealt with the problem. That story was initially prompted by an e-mail from the singer and actress Patti LuPone, who told me in subsequent conversations how she’d been humiliated and almost arrested when she refused to remove her blouse in public at an airport checkpoint.

(This has nothing to do with the subject, but Patti, by the way, opened on Broadway last night starring in the revival of “Gypsy,” to great reviews.)

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[A passenger on the US Air flight took a photo of the missing wing panel. Via MyFox Washington, D.C.]

A 5 x 7 foot panel from the left wing of a US Airways 757-200 tore loose last Saturday and struck the fuselage, cracking one window, according to an FAA report on the scary incident.

The FAA incident report describes the damage to the aircraft as “substantial.”

The flight was at 27,000 feet and 45 miles from Baltimore when the accident occurred. It was bound to Philadelphia from Orlando and landed without further incident. There were 174 passengers on board. The FAA incident report was filed yesterday.

[It wasn't a great weekend for US Air and safety. The day before the wing-panel accident, as noted here in a recent post, a US Airways pilot accidentally discharged a firearm in the cockpit of a flight from Denver to Charlotte. No one was injured.]

According to the initial FAA report on the wing-panel incident, because “the loss of the wing panel adversely affected the flight characteristics of the aircraft, the event has been classified as an accident. ”

That preliminary FAA report went on:

“The wing panel has not yet been located. Safety Board
investigators are using a specialized computer program to
perform a Ballistic Trajectory Analysis with data such as
the aircraft ground track, speed, prevailing winds and other
factors to create a search area where the missing panel is
most likely to be found. Once a specific search area has
been created, local authorities in the vicinity will be
notified that an aircraft part may be located in their
jurisdiction. …”

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Delta Air Lines’ flight schedule returned to normal this morning after the airline canceled  another 12 flights by 6 a.m. today, according to data on FlightStats.com. Yesterday, Delta canceled 241 of its 1,656 scheduled flights as it pulled aging MD-88 aircraft off line to conduct FAA safety inspections.

I like Delta. But I think they dropped the ball on this one. Unlike American Airlines, which provided a day’s advance notice earlier this week when it pulled MD-80s out of service for the same FAA maintenance checks, Delta waited till Wednesday night to send out a news release that it was taking planes out of service on Thursday.

On the other hand, American had announced that it was pulling 200 MD-80s out of service, and the actual number was nearly 300. American ended up canceling 325 flights on Wednesday, according to FlightStats.com.

Delta left a lot of customers flat-footed yesterday. I happened to be at a book-party lunch yesterday at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South in New York, and a handful of people there had to either return to Washington or fly elsewhere. They all were anxious about whether they’d get there on Delta. All of them lacked information.

Airline management is often ham-handed, and Delta’s is right in character on this. Here’s the lecture … I mean, customer-service statement … that Delta put out yesterday to make sure you know your “inconvenience” was for your own damn good. Note how it fails to address the fact that Delta simply didn’t give customers enough notice:

“DELTA AIR LINES OFFERS OPTIONS TO CUSTOMERS IMPACTED BY MD-88 RE-INSPECTIONS

ATLANTA, March 27, 2008 – Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) remains on track to complete all MD-88 maintenance re-inspections by late today and expects to resume normal operations Friday morning, March 28, 2008.

In a statement to customers on its web site, Delta said:

“Dear Delta Customer,

We are very sorry for any inconvenience the MD-88 re-inspections may have caused you and realize fully that our decision to conduct this review may have negatively impacted your travel plans. However, at Delta we take safety requirements very seriously and moved quickly to take voluntary action in addressing the issue. Though these re-inspections impacted the travel plans of many of our customers, safety is our No. 1 priority at Delta and conducting these inspections proactively was the right decision.

Delta is already taking steps to communicate with Delta SkyMiles members whose flights were canceled as a result of the MD-88 re-inspections. However, if you are a customer who is not part of the SkyMiles program and you experienced an MD-88 flight cancellation as a result of the re-inspection, you may contact Delta via a special form found on delta.com. You’ll be asked to provide your contact and flight information so you may be contacted and assisted by a Delta representative.

Many of you have already heard from Delta after signing up for our customer notification system, Delta Messenger, or worked with Delta’s reservation agents and airport customer service agents to be reaccommodated for canceled flights.

We once again apologize for any inconvenience this may have had on you and your travel plans and hope that you can understand how important safety is to everything we do at Delta.

Sincerely,

Steve Gorman
Delta Air Lines
Executive Vice President – Operations”

Delta’s statement continued:
“Delta yesterday began working in full partnership with the FAA to proactively and voluntarily revalidate the full compliance of a prior Airworthiness Directive completed earlier this year.

Delta expects this voluntary review, which is taking place on the airline’s 117 MD-88 aircraft, to result in approximately 275 cancellations through early Friday, impacting about 3 percent of Delta’s worldwide flight schedule.

Based on the aggressive and proactive re-inspection schedule, Delta expects inspections to be complete on approximately 70 percent of its MD-88 fleet by early Thursday evening, with normal operations planned by early Friday. The majority of impacted customers have already worked with Delta reservation agents and gate agents to be reaccommodated or receive refunds for canceled flights.”

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It looks like domestic passengers on major airlines are about to get hit with another fare hike as the weekly, weekend airfare fandango approaches.

The latest attempt to hike fares and make them stick among the six legacy carriers was initiated today by Delta.

“After last week’s attempted hike failed, [Delta] persists this week, trying again by adding an additional $10 round-trip fuel surcharge systemwide,” said Rick Seaney, the CEO of FareCompare.com

“This marks the sixth airfare increase attempt in the past five consecutive weeks, and the tenth attempted increases so far in 2008,” he said. Five of those increases have stuck.

“Last week United was quick to match Delta, but the other legacy airlines stood on the sidelines for a few days and forced a rollback by both,” said Seaney. He said he expects United to match the new increase, and that United and Delta would then “hope to drag along the other four legacy airlines over the weekend.”

So far, I haven’t seen any evidence that soaring fares have affected passenger demand, even as the summer peak travel seasons approaches. The convention wisdom is that demand will begin to soften in April, including business-travel demand, but we’ll see.

Seaney agreed. “I continue to get mixed messages from a variety of sources on travel demand for the next few months. From all accounts bookings look to be strong, and typically late spring and early summer are strong — which could support “even” more increases, but I also continue to hear more than the normal amount of rumbling about business demand waning slightly.

Still, as the fare-hike hits keep on coming, comparisons with previous periods are difficult. “We are in completely uncharted waters right now,” Seaney said.

Meanwhile, in a phone interview, Seaney — who along with Tom Parsons of BestFares.com follows these mind-bogglingly complex fare structures carefully — pointed out that there is a difference between a fare hike and a fuel surcharge. So far, he said, about half of the across-the-board increases or attempted increases this year have been filed as fuel surcharges.

To most of us, the difference is nil. But if you’re a big corporate travel manager, you probably have negotiated fare discounts with one or more airlines. There’s where the difference can be important, because under most agreements, fuel surcharges are added onto the bill after the discount. Fare increases, on the other hand, are usually subject to the negotiated discount.

Typically, he said, though contracts can vary, “you only get the discount off the base fare.” When your employees are the ones “buying those $1,000 tickets,” the difference mounts up, he said.

On the other hand, calling an increase a fuel surcharge “gives some notion of its being temporary” and thus some perceived marketing advantage, he said. “Right now the fuel surcharge is around $40 or $50 for most city pairs, though some don’t have it on routes competing with carriers like Southwest, which are fuel hedged.”

Internationally, fuel surcharges have crept up to the $200 to $300 level on many routes, by the way.

One dynamic Seaney sees affecting demand:

“The real issue will be pretty simple. Most business travelers need to do business face to face, which is the way deals are done,” and that fact tends to support demand.

On the other hand, “there is a huge travel economy around consulting businesses — with major corporations sending people all over the country. During the week, they fly out on Monday and come back on Friday.

“These are the people buying $800 to $1,000 tickets. What might happen is the companies they are consulting for could say, ‘Why the hell am I paying $1,000 each for these 20 consultants to come work here all week’. And that will occur if the economy keeps in its present trajectory, when those corporations will say let’s cut discretionary travel spend by 20 percent. That’s when we’ll see the softening.

“That’s the airlines’ biggest fear,” Seaney went on. “And when it happens, they’re going to ground flights. If the flight is not profitable, or the lowest rung on their schedule, they’re just not go to fly it. That will be very bad for consumers who have are used to basically walking down to the nearest airport and going wherever they want for a relatively cheap price.”

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IN OTHER NEWS …

—Delta Air Lines became the third carrier to add a charge for a second checked bag, following United and US Airways. Starting May 1, it’ll cost an extra $25 for a second checked bag on Delta. American is expected to follow imminently. After that, the other major competitors will likely also get on board.

(By the way, I caught hell from business travelers after I said a week or two ago that generally the only people who check a second bag are the “Clampett Family.” Oh yeah? What about golfers and skiiers, several readers said. And families, and those of us who have to lug equipment or pack for three weeks? And so on. Sorry, I was way too glib on that one.)

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—I never worked in PR, but I do know this is a basic rule: Don’t go prattling on too much. You could end up as a snippet of video on, like, the Daily Show — and they won’t be laughing with you …

TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird hereby wins the Quote of the Week award (no use even going through Friday; no one will top this) with the following utterance as quoted today by the Associated Press:

”I’d be really curious to know what this woman had in her nipples,” Baird said. “Sometimes they have a chain between their nipples, or a chain between their nipples and their belly button. …”

Here’s the issue he was addressing.

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—David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue who basically faded away after the Valentine’s Day 2007 fiasco in which thousands of JetBlue passengers were stranded for four to eight hours on idled planes at Kennedy, announced plans to start a new airline modeled after JetBlue — in Brazil, the land of troubled skies, but also the land of a vastly underserved air-travel market.

Neeleman said today he’s looking for a name for the snazzy startup.

Oh, I dunno, given the horrible disasters Brazilian airlines Gol and TAM had in late 2006 and last year, how about: “NoCrash Airways?” … Ah jeez, there I go again …

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[Above: A Delta Shuttle MD-88]

—Following the extraordinary action by American Airlines yesterday, Delta Air Lines says it’s pulling an unspecified number of MD-80 models — MD-88s in this case — off line over maintenance issues. Flight cancellations will result. Delta flies 117 MD-88s in its total mainline fleet of 454. And remember, MD-88s are what Delta uses on its shuttle.

Delta’s statement was issued late yesterday after the news agency Reuters reported the story. Note that the word “cancellations” is weirdly missing from the PR language, as if not saying it means customers won’t notice the schedule disruptions.

Yesterday, American Airlines said it was inspecting 200 of its MD-80s. American canceled 325 flights yesterday, according to FlightStats.com data. America has about 2,200 mainline and about 4,000 total system (including regional feeds) flights daily.

[Update: As of 6 p.m. EDT today, Delta has canceled 237 of its 1,639 scheduled mainline flights, with operations at Atlanta being hardest hit, according to FlightStats.com. So be sure to check your flight status if you're on Delta tonight or tomorrow.]

Here’s Delta’s statement:

“ATLANTA, March 26, 2008 – Delta Air Lines today issued the following statement regarding its proactive, voluntary review of MD-88 aircraft:

Safety is Delta’s No. 1 priority and we take [the FAA] Airworthiness Directives very seriously. Delta is working in full partnership with the FAA and has begun pro-actively and voluntarily revalidating the full compliance of a prior Airworthiness Directive that was completed earlier this year. We expect this voluntary review, which will take place on Delta’s 117 MD-88 aircraft, to have some impact to the operation. Delta apologizes in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and will work to pro-actively contact and reaccommodate any affected customers. The review will be completed by the end of the week.”

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—American Airlines canceled 200 flights today, citing maintenance issues. During a routine audit, American said, “a joint team of AA and FAA inspectors raised questions regarding an already accomplished directive concerning how a certain bundle of wires is secured to the MD80 aircraft. We are re-inspecting the MD80s to make sure the wiring is installed and secured exactly according to the directive.” The MD80s will return to service throughout the day, said American, which has a total of about 4,000 flights a day.

—Excited Drudge Headline of the Day: “EARTH DIVIDED ON OBAMA/CLINTON”  …  Oh, I dunno … some earthlings probably have more pressing matters to fret about in Darfur, Tibet — oh, hell, even Scotland or Greece.

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