Joe Sharkey At Large

“RINCON CHIAROSCURO”

Tucson, Arizona, twilight, New Year’s Eve 2008

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Airlines have so reduced their routes and seating capacities that the travel story of the new year is going to be the higher costs and sharply increased difficulties of getting there from here.

Even as fuel costs have tumbled, airlines are tightening the screws on the flying public, which they figure will now put up with just about anything. (Though once we have a look at passenger traffic data for December, we’ll see just how much air-travel demand is falling, and will continue to fall in 2009).

Here’s an example of the current mess: I need to get from Tucson to the ridiculously named George Bush “Intercontinental” Airport, preferably early in the morning of Jan. 7, in time for a 10.30 meeting at the airport.

That’s about 900 miles, incidentally.

No can do. Instead, I’ll need to fly in the day before and spend the night.

Fares? On Orbitz.com just a few minutes ago, here was the range among various airlines for that one-way flight (all requiring stops): $1,124 to $489.

Southwest Airlines, not listed on Orbitz, came in at a more sensible $226, but it requires a stop in Los Angeles and it arrives not at Houston Intergalactic (oops, I mean “Intercontinental”) but at Houston Hobby Airport.

Why not consider the option of taking the train, as so many people are suggesting these days?

Ha-ha: The best Amtrak can do is get me from Tucson to Houston on Jan. 8, and the trip requires 26 and a half hours. The fare is $115 for a seat, and $891 if you want a sleeping compartment.

And how about the bus? Well, I can board a good old Greyhound at 6:30 a.m. on the 6th and arrive in Houston a mere 26 hours later, after transferring buses in El Paso and again in Dallas.

And sorry, but I can’t get it out of my mind that during the summer, shortly after Greyhound began a marketing campaign saying there is no “air rage” on the bus, a lunatic on a Greyhound bus in Canada literally chopped the head off a sleeping passenger.

Hey, if that can happen in peace-loving Canada, no way I’m taking my chances in the middle of the night in El Paso.

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—I came across this letter on a humor forum on the aviation Web site ProPilot World. It’s purported to be real — a child’s note to a pilot — and it expresses everything we can hope for in the new year.

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By the numbers, here is why the holiday travel season has been such a nightmare in the air:

There were nearly 8,800 flight cancellations at major U.S. airports between Dec. 19 and yesterday, Dec. 28, according to Flightstats.com

Bad weather, of course, was the main culprit. But even though air travel is off in sheer numbers this holiday season, airlines have removed so many seats from the system that there is absolutely no slack. Crews and aircraft have been chronically out of place as weather stacks up delays, and preemptive cancellations have been the norm on the worst-weather days.

And every canceled flight means that many more passengers are stuck at the airport, hoping to find space available on another flight (difficult to do, since a shrunken system means most planes are already full, even though demand is down.)

So far (ain’t over yet, sorry to say), the worst day for cancellations, according to Flightstats.com, was Dec. 19, when 2,175 flights were scrubbed. Two days later, more than 1750 flights never took off.

And on-time arrivals also were abysmal. On six of the busiest travel days in the 10-day holiday period so far, fewer than half of the scheduled flights arrived on time. And excessively delayed flights — those arriving late 45 minutes or or more — exceeded 20 percent on most of the 10 days.

Portland and Seattle, clobbered by snow and ice, fared the worst starting on Dec.20. Both Chicago airports were snarled the day after Christmas. On the 27th, delays and cancellations rippled throughout most of the air-travel system, especially affecting Dallas, Atlanta and, again, O’Hare.

Local media reflexively send someone out to the regional airport to remark on the numbers of people stranded and take pictures, but so far, no one has had a look at the big picture: Once again, our vital national air travel system has teetered and tottered and caused social disruptions. It won’t be the last time.

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[Sunset, Christmas Eve 2008, Tucson, Arizona]

In case you want to keep count, 548 of the 2,474 scheduled commercial flights into and out of Chicago O’Hare yesterday were canceled.

As of 9 a.m. central time today, there were already more than 100 cancellations at O’Hare — about half of them American Eagle flights.

At O’Hare and elsewhere around the country, the huge number of flight cancellations from the weekend onward have messed up the nation’s airlines royally, with stranded passengers clamoring to be accommodated on flights that were already booked weeks ago, and with crews and airplanes out of position.

Yes, air travel is down sharply this holiday season. But the system is still in a huge jam.

Not a good day to be flying. If you must, need I suggest that you check ahead?

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Another update on one of the underreported current business stories: After riding high for the last few years, U.S. hotels are getting clobbered in the economic slump.

And luxury hotels, as I have been reporting here, are getting hit the hardest.

Data for November released today by Smith Travel Research, the leading hotel research firm, show a 12.9 percent industry-wide decrease in November’s revenue per available room (RevPAR), the key metric in analyzing hotel fortunes. The comparison is to November 2007.

But lookit the November RevPAR as broken out for the luxury segment: At luxury hotels, RevPAR  plunged 20.7 percent in November.

Down the scale below the luxury niche, the trend is obvious: For “upper upscale” chain hotels the decline is 13.7 percent. For “upscale” hotels it’s minus 12.8 percent. For “midscale without food and beverage” the decline is 11.1 percent. For economy hotels, it’s 9.6 percent off.

Mark Lomanno, the president of Smith Travel, noted that the “one silver lining” is that “the industry has been able to achieve positive year-over-year, year-to-date ADR [average daily rate] growth through November.”

Even in the luxury segment, average daily room rates this year through November ($288.11 nationally) were up a slight 0.6 percent compared with the same 11-month period in 2007.

Still, luxury hotels are loath to be seen discounting and, as noted here before, are instead offering many promotions, including three-nights-for-the-price-of-two type deals, that are effectively rate cuts that don’t show up on the nightly rate cards.

We’ll see how long before the dam bursts and hotel room rack-rates, especially at the top levels, come tumbling down. That’s because many customers, especially business travelers, are “trading down” to cheaper-level hotels — and many simply are not showing up at all. Overall average occupancy in November in U.S. hotels fell 10.6 percent, Smith Travel said. For the luxury hotel segment, the decrease in occupancy was 15 percent.

However, Smith Travel is optimistic that the industry slump won’t last throughout next year. “We believe that after a very bumpy first half of 2009, the hotel industry will begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the second half of the year unfolds,” Lomanno said.

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In all of the stories updating the Brazil mid-air collision, almost no one in the media has really got it right.

This includes one William Langewiesche, in a journalistically disgraceful article in the current Vanity Fair, in which the evidently clairvoyant Langewiesche narrates a fatuous description of the scene on the Legacy jet — without having had the courage to contact any of us who were actually on the plane for our observations on his suppositions.

More on that later.

Anyway, I am impressed by an article this week in Air Transport World magazine. The writer, Aaron Karp, gets it exactly right in his update on the shaky Brazilian air force report on the crash. Here’s his report:

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Assessing blame: Gol 737 crash report cites ExcelAire pilots, but experts finger ATC

December 22, 2008–The final report released earlier this month on the Sept. 29, 2006, midair collision between a Gol 737-800 and an ExcelAire Legacy 600 that led to the deaths of all 154 aboard the 737 has cast a sharp focus on ATC organizations’ critical responsibilities in managing traffic as well as the problematic role politics can play in accident investigations.

Brazil’s Centro de Investigacao e Prevencao de Acidentes Aeronauticos (CENIPA), a division of the country’s Air Force, issued a report widely praised for its attention to detail and its willingness to spotlight weaknesses in the Air Force-controlled ATC system. But the decision by CENIPA to cite negligence by the ExcelAire pilots as a probable cause left aviation safety experts scratching their heads (ATWOnline, Dec. 11). While there is little dispute that the ExcelAire pilots inadvertently turned off the Legacy’s transponder, causing no information on the aircraft’s position to be sent to ATC for 58 min., the “primary responsibility” for the accident clearly rests with ATC, Flight Safety Foundation President and CEO William Voss tells ATWOnline.

Voss has particular expertise in ATC, having served previously as director of ICAO’s Air Navigation Bureau and director of air traffic systems development at US FAA. “Radio failures and transponder failures are the kind of things that ATC expects to deal with,” he explains. “They’re routine and should have nothing to do with whether aircraft remain separated … [When a transponder fails], there is a long list of things that has to be done by the ATC unit.” As the US National Transportation Safety Board stated in its response to the Brazilian report, the controller with responsibility “never attempted to try a relay through other flight crews, emergency frequency, or any other means” to communicate with the Legacy.

Beyond trying alternate means to contact the ExcelAire pilots, controllers also assumed that the aircraft remained at the same altitude where it was when the transponder went off and directed the 737 accordingly, a major mistake, according to Voss. “A controller has an absolute obligation not to assume that an aircraft is at an altitude, but has an obligation to prove where the aircraft is,” he says. “There has to be clear proof. . .What should be done if you can’t prove [the aircraft's position] is you go to the aircraft you’re talking to [the 737] and turn him.” ATC assumed the Legacy was flying at 36,000 ft. when it was actually at 37,000 ft., the same altitude as the 737.

One of the reasons there does not appear to have been the necessary urgency when the Legacy lost contact is that ATC communication over the Amazon is known to be spotty. “On both sides of the microphone [pilots and controllers], there was never a sense that this was an ATC communication failure,” Voss explains. “Everyone expected communication to be intermittent.”

Another factor, one that certainly can serve as a lesson going forward, is the difference in how US and non-US pilots respond to ATC communication lapses. In the US, pilots are instructed that ATC’s last assigned altitude overrides the flight plan. Outside the US, international norms call for pilots to revert to the flight plan since ATC communications may have been misunderstood, particularly when borders are being crossed. So controllers outside the US may think that the pilots would “fall back on the flight plan, which is absolutely counterintuitive to a pilot raised in a US environment,” Voss says, adding that US pilots who fly internationally should be instructed on this “difference in philosophy.”

This may be what CENIPA was getting at when it alleged that the two Americans piloting the Legacy were unfamiliar with Brazilian air traffic regulations. Nevertheless, all issues related to the crash “stem from the basic investigative question, namely, how the primary mission of ATC to separate aircraft within positive controlled airspace was unsuccessful,” stated NTSB, adding that the pilots were “not in violation of any regulations.” Preliminary reports found that the pilots attempted to contact ATC 19 times in the 8 min. prior to the crash without success.

The rush in Brazil to blame the surviving ExcelAire pilots was severe in the immediate aftermath of the accident. The pilots were detained in Brazil for more than two months after the crash amid a heated political atmosphere, and Brazilian police in late 2006 charged them with endangering aircraft safety. Brazilian officials were criticized heavily for “criminalizing” the accident investigation and, while the final report goes further in citing ATC errors than many expected, political considerations may have contributed to its tone, which seems to place equal blame on the Legacy pilots.

“The takeaway from this is that politics and aviation safety mix very badly,” Voss says. “This [accident] caused a significant political uproar in Brazil and some of the comments made by officials [in the crash's aftermath] had significant political overtones, and political pressure was brought to bear in the investigation. . .Very political, knee-jerk reactions should not be playing a role in accident investigations.”

–Aaron Karp

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Man, is this shaping up to be a miserable week in the air, despite the fact that the number of people flying this holiday season is projected to be about 10 percent lower than the 2007 year-end holiday season.

Bad weather across the country, combined with airline seat cutbacks, are giving the old one-two to holiday travelers this week. Not only do snarls at one major airport ripple to other airports, but each day of major delays and cancellations creates fleet and crew scheduling problems on the next day (and days).

As of 6 p.m. Eastern time today, according to Flightstats.com, the following airports are experiencing “excessive delays,” defined as having flight operations averaging more than 45 minutes in late arrivals:

–Los Angeles
–San Francisco
–Portland
–Seattle
–Las Vegas
–The absurdly named George Bush Houston “Intercontinental” Airport
–Chicago O’Hare
–Orlando
–The ridiculously named Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
–Boston
–Kennedy
–La Guardia
–The hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport

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Here’s the initial accident report on the Denver crash in which 38 people were injured but (thanks no doubt to excellent responses by flight attendants, passengers and firefighters) no one was killed.

It’s from the Web site Aviation Safety Network.

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