Grant’s comment on my post yesterday made me think of something…he mentioned if there is less luggage going through the system, then you probbaly will have less mishandled bag reports.
In August 2007, there were 57,499,972 enplanements, and there were 53,979,160 – a 6.1% decrease.
In August 2007, there were 435,766 mishandled baggage reports, and only 268,590 in August 2008 – a 38.4% decrease.
I don’t know if/where the reports on the total number of pieces of luggage are handled are published, but I am willing to guess that there is less baggage going through the system, especially due to many airlines introducing baggage fees.
This is an effect that I believe was predicted during Continental’s conference call with analysts during the summer, and it seems to be coming true.
If I recall correctly, after the “liquid bomber” situation when all gels, fluids, etc were being banned, people went back to checking their luggage. Not long after, there were reports massive increases in the mishandled luggage rates.
If a system is barely managing to work correctly at a certain rate you expect it to start breaking more often when the rate increases. It’s like juggling balls – you do fine with 4 and then with 5 you’re only dropping one every now and then, but increase to 8 and you drop way more than before.
Same kind of thing happens with tarmac at the airports. If an airport can handle 60 movements per hour in good weather but the airlines have 65 scheduled movements, at least 5 aircraft are going to be delayed every hour. Now if bad weather reduces that to only 40 movements per hour, you’ve got 25 delayed aircraft per hour which means you’ll never clear the backlog.
The airlines are now reducing the number of flights they have scheduled around the country, so in the hypothetical example above, you may now have 50 movements scheduled. This means no delays in good weather and a chance to claw back the delays when the bad weather lifts.
So, with the reduction in pax and luggage helping reduce turn around time (less to move on/off the aircraft) we appear to be seeing less delays and lost luggage. Throw in the reduced number of flights per airline and I’d say we should definitely be seeing a reduction in delays and an increase in on-time-arrival rates.
Now, whether this means fewer complaints remains to be seen – I don’t think the main US airlines have figured out what customer service means yet