The boarding announcements often begin with the reminder that “we are primarily here for your safety”–an oblique way of saying that unless we’re in flames, I’d really like to be undisturbed as I chat with my colleagues or read my magazine. This is certainly a blanket statement–and often untrue–but that it should be true so often is a clear indication of just how far service standards have fallen.

Some staff also seem to have decided that they are also arbiters of behavior as well. We all know that children can be unpredictable, even in cases where the parents are doing their best. We also know that some parents don’t try very hard to limit their kids. Nonetheless, how many restaurants or hotels throw people out based on a young child’s demeanor? Very often, the norm in other venues is to ask how one might be of service to help, but that apparently is no longer the case for many airline staff since threats take so much less personal involvement.

On some American carriers, the use of the toilet by the cockpit crew is preceded by the erection of a barricade of food trolleys and a flight attendant on guard. Given the fact that one of the things we learned on September 11 was that once passengers perceive a threat, they will be a first line of defense, this seems to be a poor course of action. Nonetheless, carriers often treat their passengers as threats rather than allies, building additional roadblocks in the client relationships.

In short, I will not be driven from flying by higher prices but rather by rudeness, intolerance and poor attitudes. And those things, Mr. CEOs, you can fix.

What about people who live in places where the attractions aren’t as numerous or convenient? I have no answer other than we got along quite nicely for many years without cell phones in movie theatres. Non sequitor? Sorry :) It’s a way of saying sarcastically, “how did we ever survive without airplanes!?!” I think we did just fine, and if we all choose not to fly, we’ll still be fine.

My company does not fly our people anywhere anymore. We’ve got ooVoo for video conferencing, Skype for teleconferencing, and Outlook for written communication and scheduling. It’s really too bad that I may not see some of my clients face-to-face for many years, but they don’t want to fly either, and they really appreciate how well we communicate in lieu of in-person contact.

Bill the Cat: Aaack!
Mrs. Fletcher from the “life alert” commercial: Help! I”ve fallen and I can’t get up.
My bathroom: (the sound of flushing)
My 6 year old: How do planes fly? My answer: Customers, dude. Customers.

Cheers, -Big Daddy Alan

HOWEVER, I do not wish to see a raise in fares through ‘nickeling and diming’ the customers. There are plenty of airlines out there who are not raising their fees and are still earning a profit.

The reason a customer used to fly an airline such as American or United was for a certain guarantee about the level of service. You assume that if you fly a name brand airline then you will be treated like a value customer. However with the new added fees we are receiving a discount airlines level of service for a premium price. If thats the level of service I want, I will pay for it, but I will pay the budget airline fare which is often a fraction of the cost of the big airlines.

I continue my point by showing that many budget airline who charge under $75 for round trip flights with all added fees and taxes are still turning larger profits than the major carriers. The only answer to this can be mismanagement by the airlines and not as a direct relation to oil speculation.

I loathe the arilines like everyone else — flying is just a pain in the rear end these days, and with increasing prices, I am sure I will hate it even more — but with that said, anything that helps them, helps me, so I did not take the suggestion to write Congress as them whining.

Wachovia sent out an interesting graph the other day showing demand has been all but steady for over 20 years, but not the price. I have heard all types of oil execs saying it is not the fundamantals, ie supply and demand, driving this price increase.

So I went back to United’s web site to see where I had missed that little fact. It was very easy to find the price of a ticket but the only mention of a penalty for canceling was one buried deep within their web site that said cancellation would mean a small charge.

I went online to find any mention of that steep fee. Sorry, without being a member of their frequent flier club, it’s not available.

Misleading? Intentional obfuscation? You be the judge.

PS: I own my company. United can keep my $167. I get to prevent any of my partners and employees from flying United. Last year’s flights were just over $250,000.

Maybe instead of asking consumers to stop oil speculation, they should ask when we’ll be ready to acknowledge that fares need to actually go up rather than nickel-and-diming us on the small stuff.

That’s my real question. How low cud they go to save money so that their managements’ payment kitty is not affected?

And I second the motion to eliminate bonuses for any industry leader who is whining about loosing money and blaming the other guy. I live on 1/10 of your salary and I get by, so can you.

1. Southwest Airlines is the only airline stock with a positive return this year, up 8% so far – all others have dived up to 85% year to date.

2. Southwest Airilnes (surprise!) hedges their fuel cost – any airline that does not hedge its full fuel costs (and a NYTimes article pointed out last Thanksgiving, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/business/29hedge.html ) should fire its Board, CEO, CFO and head of procurement.

3. The coming carbon cap-and-trade system and resulting price-per-ton of greenhouse gases (GHG) is only going to exacerbate the pricing of oil and its users. If you think $150/bbl is high for oil, wait til you calculate $150/ton of GHG.

My father used to say that the airline business was the worst you could invest in because of the long list of risk factors: safety/crashes, maintenance/frequency, fuel/oil prices, consumers hooked on $300 airfares, capital/leases at risk of under-utilization, partial regulation (and more in overseas markets), underpaid staff, and more.

Here’s to the resurgence of customer satisfaction, eco-jet fuel (thanks Richard Branson of Virgin, and soon Continental Air), and employee-respecting airlines (oh how I miss you People Express and Don Burr!)

R. Paul Herman, HIP Investor Inc.

Hello Airline Management,

Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something to help now.

For consumers, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of dollars lost just commuting to their jobs, and severe reductions in discretionary spending. This includes your own employees who are continuously asked to take pay cuts while management continues to collect undeserved ‘performance’ bonuses. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step or writing this letter to our nation’s airline industry.

Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces, the airline industry needs to focus on increased flight efficiency and conservation. However, there is another side to this story because normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poor management and ridiculously unearned bonuses.

Twenty years ago, airlines actually cared about their customers as people. Today, the customer is looked at as nothing more than self loading cargo, and that reflects the continued mismanagement of the majority of the US air carriers, even with taxpayer assistance. Airlines continually work to squeeze more and more money using unadvertised ‘fees’ and ‘surcharges’. These may tack on 50% or more to the actual cost of travel; the price goes up with each creative ‘unbundling’ yet with the never decreasing base fare the non-using consumer is still picking up the tab. You have even had the gall to blame rising fuel prices for many of the charges, yet when the fuel prices finally fall the charges will remain. Some airline travelers have found that rather than experience the pain of air travel, they would rather travel 18 hours or more by road or rail.

Back in the 1980’s, Congress bailed out the airline industry by removing regulations deemed excessive, opening up the industry to unchecked market speculation and manipulation. However, over the past two decades, the regulatory limits have come to be missed by the air traveling population. We believe that restoring and enforcing these limits, along with several other modest measures (such as a strong federal passenger’s bill of rights), will provide greater customer service, industry efficiency, and sound market oversight. Together, these reforms will help weed out the managers that have brought this once thriving industry to its knees, and once again allow market forces to dictate which companies survive, and which management teams receive well earned compensation.

The nation needs to pull together to reform the airline industry and solve this already overgrown problem.

We need your help. Contact Congress by visiting http://www.house.gov