Joe Sharkey At Large

This just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it. Some air-travel items from this morning:

—There has been a sharp deterioration in international premium traffic, on which major airlines have basically bet the farm in recent years. According to the International Air Transport Association, international first-class and business-class traffic fell 8 percent in September, and the decline is likely to have worsened in October, though the figures aren’t available yet. For years, that segment of the market had been growing monthly. Largely because of robust international premium travel, major U.S. airlines have been diverting capacity to international routes.

—In a trend with implications for hotels and big-city retailers as well as airlines, there has been a 15 percent decline in the last month in online searches for flights to the U.S. from the U.K., according to the European search engine Skyscanner. “In previous years, there has been an increase in flight searches to the USA at this time of the year” as travelers from the UK came to the U.S. to do holiday shopping or to book leisure trips to ski resorts. Not only has the worldwide recession affected this, but so has the weakening pound, which no longer provides major buying power here.

—Air France/KLM said quarterly profit is down 44 percent largely due to weakening business travel demand internationally.

And it’s only 9 a.m. here in Arizona where I’m holed up in the desert working on a book … about air travel. Title: “High Anxiety,” natch.

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Tom Parsons at Bestfares.com, the discount travel booking site, says that airlines are so concerned about the drop-off in Thanksgiving travel demand this year that advance-purchase requirements are being relaxed.

He reports:

“The major airlines have now reduced their 14-day advance purchase holiday discount airfares to three days or no advance purchase…

“Travel on these little or no advance purchase airfares are valid from November 20 through December 3, 2008. We do suggest that travelers avoid traveling on Sunday, November 30, because prices are overly high due to demand on that date. As we get closer to Thanksgiving, the airlines will lower those three-day advance fares to no advance, so they can gobble up as many last-minute travelers as possible.

…We also suggest that this a very good week to book holiday travel for Christmas and New Year’s. Many of the major airlines are offering cheaper airfares than they did just six short weeks ago.

Travel between major U.S. cities, except those in Florida, and fares to the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii have dropped since the week of October 6.

We believe there are two primary reasons why consumers are not booking travel.

1. The economic crisis we now face has made many travelers rethink a holiday getaway. Travelers would rather stay home than face the many new charges including increased ticket change fees and baggage fees that the airlines are now imposing on them.
2. The cost to travel by car had dropped. In many parts of the country the cost of gallon of gas is at least two dollars less than the price during July 2008 and at least a dollar less than November 2007.

…Lowest priced travel dates – December 13, 14 and 24, ’08, January 6-8, ’09.

Second lowest priced travel dates – December 15-19, 22, 25, 30 and 31, ’08, January 1 and 5, ’09.

Second highest priced travel dates – December 21, 23 and 26-28, ’08, January 2-4, ’09.

Highest priced travel dates – November 30, ’08, December 20, ’08.

… With no sign of an economic recovery in the near future, many of the major airlines are discounting airfares this holiday season much more than we expected. Imagine how many bargain basement airfare sales they will have to offer us in the first three months of 2009 to get us back in the air and flying.”

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Everybody’s favorite domestic airline, Southwest, is finally planning to operate out of a New York airport, La Guardia. Southwest said today it submitted a $7.5 million bid to acquire the unused slots of ATA Airlines, which declared bankruptcy last April, in a plan to operate seven non-stop routes from La Guardia.

Here’s the announcement.

Southwest has been conspicuous in its absence from Kennedy, Newark and LaGuardia in the vital (and delay-ridden) New York air-travel mark

Each year, local newspaper and television-news editors faithfully assign hapless reporters to cover the annual ranking of airports whose restaurants have the most “healthful” food. The rankings come from a group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Predictably, some news outlets — knowing a cheap local angle when they see one — run credulous stories saying “Bumbutt Tri-State Regional Airport Scores High on Physicians’ Healthy Food List.” Or something to that effect.

Seldom do reporters go beyond regurgitating the press release and ask, just what it this Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine that we give so much credence to?

Well, as I have reported in the past, it’s a group, mostly made up of animal-rights activists, including some physicians, that campaigns against meat, milk, animal medical experimentation and other perceived threats to health. That inconvenient information never appears in the press material.

First, credit where it’s due, because of course we want to encourage healthy eating, and the last time I was in an airport, the amusingly named George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport, to be specific, I noticed enough butts the size of baggage carts to wonder if some people have ever heard of a nice salad.

The Physicians Committee press release, due out later today, cites airports where restaurants offer good vegetarian options. Ranked at the top were Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit Metropolitan and Chicago O’Hare. At the tail end of a list of 12 were Reagan National, Hartsfield Atlanta and Las Vegas McCarran, with the hilariously named Newark Liberty close, um, behind.

And here is some critical background information on the group. Remember, now, that other pseudo grassroots groups that oppose the Physicians Committee may be funded by the meat or dairy industry! Everybody’s got a PR angle.

I have no real beef (so to speak) with the Physicians Committee, except that they really should disclose where they are coming from. And reporters should look it up.

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Obviously, I’m a little extra-sensitive to aviation safety incidents, but I still insist that safety and maintenance are going to be a much bigger story before long.

Today, a deHavilland Dash-8 Q-400 made a hairy landing at Philadelphia after its nose landing gear failed. The fuel-efficient Dash-8 turboprop is increasingly popular on shorter hauls. [Update and correction: As several readers pointed out, the Dash-8 model was a 300, not a 400.]

The wire story follows, but wait just a minute here, AP: How hard would it have been to look up the somewhat troublesome recent record of the Dash-8 as regards its landing gear. Here.

Here’s the AP report today from Philadelphia:

“PHILADELPHIA — A US Airways Express airliner slid down a runway Sunday during an emergency landing without its nose landing gear. No injuries were reported.

The Philadelphia-bound deHavilland Dash-8 turboprop, operated by Piedmont Airlines, took off from Allentown at about 8:20 a.m. with 35 passengers and three crew members, according to officials of the airline and Philadelphia International Airport.

Before the scheduled landing at Philadelphia, the crew got an indication that the landing gear was not down and did a flyover to confirm that the nose wheels had not deployed, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.

Fire crews spread foam on the runway as a precaution before the landing at about 9:20 a.m.

The plane skidded down the runway on its nose, but there was no smoke or fire, Lupica said. Passengers were taken to the terminal by bus.

The cause was being investigated, said US Airways spokesman Morgan Durrant. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board also were investigating, Lupica said.

The airport had to be closed for about 25 minutes, Lupica said.

It reported some flights delayed more than two hours around midday while the plane remained on one of the four runways. That runway reopened in the early afternoon, and most flights were running on time, Lupica said.”

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Things do not look good at Eclipse Aviation, which makes the innovative Eclipse 500 very light jet. Eclipse said today that it was “unable to meet its payroll obligations” that were due yesterday. Eclipse said there have been no layoffs and that the company is working on a “long term financial solution” to keep operating.

Employees will be paid next week, Eclipse said. The company is based in Albuquerque.

The respected aviation analysis company Forecast International said it will soon issue a new report predicting the end of production for the Eclipse 500 line. Forecast International said it believes that Eclpise Aviation “will not attract new investment necessary to allow it to continue making the aircraft beyond the first quarter of 2009.”

Forecast International analyst Douglas Royce said that Exlipse is making the planes “at a low rate as it seeks to preserve cash” and predicts that total production of the jets will be 162 for this year.

Eclipse aggressively marketed its little jet, but the main customer, the air taxi service DayJet, ceased operations in late summer, a victim of the credit crunch. DayJet had 28 Eclipse 500s in its fleet, and about 1,400 more on order.

Forecast International said part of Eclipse’s current dilemma is that the manufacturer accepted a large number of orders for the plane at a unit price of $1.5 million. The price rose to $2.15 million in May, but Eclipse still “is required to deliver aircraft at the earlier, lower price.”

“Every aircraft delivered under the old price is delivered at a loss,” Forecast said, noting that Eclipse has said publicly that it needs between $200 and $300 million in new equity investment.

Eclipse said in June that it had orders for 2,600 aircraft.

Competitors in the very-light jet market include the Cessna Mustang, the Embraer Phenom 100 and HondaJet.

I don’t quite get the point of airlines crowing about their record-high load factors these days. Delta, the latest to report October traffic, leads off the announcement proclaiming that domestic load factors for the month were 83.7 percent — “higher than any previous October on record.”

I guess that plays well with those poor devils who invest in airline stocks. But to the rest of us, it simply underscores how crowded and constricted the airline system has become.

Delta is no exception to the trend. Planes are more full than ever despite a sharp fall-off in demand. That’s because there are fewer flights and fewer seats going up. Delta’s domestic capacity in October, for example, was down 13 percent from October 2007.

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Speaking of a fall-off in demand, my wife and I are in San Francisco right now, marveling at how few tourists are around.

We usually avoid Fisherman’s Wharf, but we had reason to stay at the Hilton Hotel here this time. I’ve been coming to San Francisco for 40 years, in every month of the year. I know that the pre-Thanksgiving weeks are usually slow everywhere, but I have never seen the tourist areas of this city emptier.

On the other hand, the grand old San Francisco spirit is always in evidence.

Take the Tuesday election (San Francisco went 85 percent for Obama, incidentally). While decrying those “wacky San Francisco stories” and tropes that the media are so fond of, the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday ran an editorial that praised local voters for rejecting a ballot measure on Tuesday that would have renamed a sewage treatment plant after President George W. Bush.

Dunno, I had to think about that one. Passing the measure would have been an act of sarcasm, of course. Rejecting it strikes me as an act of delicious San Francisco irony.

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Airlines have sharply slashed domestic capacity and cut routes, and fewer people are flying. One result is that delays are dropping.

Flightstats.com reports today that in October, 84 percent of domestic flights arrived on time (defined as within 15 minutes of schedule). It was the fifth straight month of improvement in on-time performance.

The lesson: You may not be able to get there anymore … but you’ll get there faster.

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…look fairly significant, at least from the first two major airlines to report October operational results, United and Continental.

United flew 12.6 percent fewer domestic seats in October, and reported 10.3 percent fewer domestic revenue passenger miles, compared with October 2007. Continental flew 10.8 perecent domestic seats, with a 10.2 percent drop in revenue passenger miles.

As I keep saying, we are witnessing a fundamental shrinking of our national air-transport system, and as airline executives keep saying, it’s a permanent situation.

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Above: Baker Bowl’s right field wall.

No disrespect to the world champion Philadelphia Phillies, my former home-town team. But I recall my father speaking about Baker Bowl, the Phillies’ home at Lehigh Ave. and Broad St. from 1887 to 1938, when they moved six blocks west on Lehigh to join the Athletics at Shibe Park, later Connie Mack Stadium. The Phillies were, of course, famous for being one of the worst teams in baseball.

Old-timers in Philadelphia like my father recalled that Baker Bowl had a huge billboard forming the right-field and right-center wall. It was for Lifebuoy, a popular soap brand up through the 1960s that promoted itself delicately as a remedy for body odor. For decades, the sign said, “The Phillies Use Lifebuoy.”

And Philadelphia fans being Philadelphia fans, the popular retort became, “And they still stink.”

That’s a long way around third base for this note on airline prospects and airline stocks, from Zacks Investment.

As Warren Buffett famously said of investing in the airline industry: “If we knew then what we know now, we’d have shot the Wright Brothers down.”

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