There were fewer flights in the 60s but I believe there were actually more destinations. Lots of small-town airports ended up losing out to the freeway system.
Sure, but most of their other flights are short-hop as well, even out of places like Houston, El Paso, etc… That’s not to say that they don’t have longer flights, but rather that I suspect that most of the longer flights are ones where the majority of passengers on the short hops between the two points were staying on the plane, so it makes sense to fly direct, rather than short-hop it… for that time frame. If you look, some city pairs are direct for certain times of the day, and multiple hop on others. Houston to Chicago is that way- there are direct flights between the two, but an equal number of trips route you through Dallas, Nashville, Kansas City or St. Louis.
Another factor that’s contributed to the improved financial success of the airlines, is the consolidation that has occurred over the last several years. With fewer players in the market, the airlines have become more disciplined about not trying to merge into each other’s territory and not have as many routes operating. That’s why you see so many near full flights these days and fewer cheaper fares. Yes you’re going to see heavy competition for certain routes, but for the majority of routes, your choices are going to be much more limited to probably just two and sometimes only one carrier.
Considering the ease of check-in and the swiftness of baggage retrieval, in addition to crosstown traffic, flying from Burbank (depending where you live of course) is easily a shorter trip even when a one-hour change window is included at a waystation airport. Downside is that it’s more expensive to fly into/out of Burbank. I’m speaking specifically of my experience with Southwest. Another bonus of flying through their hubs like Vegas or Phoenix is that, although they won’t ticket you on flights closer together than an hour, you can sometimes jump on an earlier flight if there’s room (only works if you did not check baggage).
One explanation I’ve read is that, due to FAA rules that require pilots to have experience with training and operation of the airline, pilot unions have the ability to shut down an airline at will, and, thus, an insurmountable advantage in negotiations. In any other industry, the company could make a deal with the union or deal with the consequences of hiring replacement workers. In aviation, they can’t hire replacements.
As a result, pilot unions effectively capture the entire economic surplus of any given airline, and bankruptcy is the only way that their share gets reduced.
An article explaining this. Possibly where I originally read the idea.
Given that, practically speaking, it’s illegal for pilots to strike and has been for about 30 years now that’s not really a valid line of argument. It might have been valid back in the 1960s, but that was before my time so I can’t really say.
In more detail, labor relations in the US airline industry iare handled under the Railway Labor Act (“RLA”). That is a totally separate set of laws, regs, and administrative government agencies from the ones governing unions in industries like mines, schools, manufacturing, government workers, etc.
The RLA, which as the name implies started out back in the railroad days, was an attempt by Congress to permit unions to still exist, while largely defanging them due to the severe side effects on the rest of the economy when a big hunk of the transportation sector shuts down.
Under the RLA strikes are only permitted after a predefined series of events has transpired: 1) A contract has run its fixed term, typically 4-8 years. 2) Then after a bunch of negotiating process failures occur over a course of several further years. 3) And *then *after an RLA oversight board of government bureaucrats evaluates the negotiating history, hears complaints from both sides about how intransigent or disingenuous the other side is, then chooses in their sole discretion to agree with the union side in the argument and authorizes the strike.
Then once the bureaucrats authorize a strike (which has only happened once in the last 25 years), the US President can convene something called a “Presidential Emergency Board” consisting of a couple more high-rollers from the Departments of Labor & Commerce. If they determine the proposed strike will harm the US economy in any way, the President will issue an executive order prohibiting the strike. Failure to heed these orders can result in fines that bankrupt the union within days. The most recent PEB deliberative process took about 2 hours from the announcement of the decision to form one to the announcement of their decisiontoabort the authorized strike. “Justice” is sometimes very swift when there’s serious money on the table.
The last actualpilot strike against a US airline anybody has ever heard of was Eastern in 1988. Almost 30 years ago now. Every other failure to negotiate a deal at a non-trivial carrier has ended in either a PEB or more commonly in the bureaucrats agreeing with management that a strike would be unhelpful to getting a deal more to management’s liking.
I don’t think this is strictly true for reasons others have given but I think you have a point. I think that one of the reasons for this is that an airline ticket has one almost overwhelming consumer requirement, and all the airlines fulfil it. That is, when you buy a ticket you really just want one thing which is to get where you want to go. Everything else is highly, highly secondary. And since pretty much all airlines do the job of getting you where you want to go about equally, it’s hard to distinguish between them.
A lot of other services (or items) you might buy have far more potentially valued features which provide points of difference.
My experience is that for the most part competitors on a given route take about the same time, and fly at about the same time. Some may be marginally more luxurious or whatever, but in the end the one thing I really want is just to get there. So given that I’m going to get there either way, the only feature often is price.
This is really the crux. Nobody, but nobody, buys a ticket to go for an airplane ride.
And for most consumers, it’s still a pretty expensive purchase; not one they can make willy-nilly. As such, trying to scrimp on the last 10% is a natural way to think.
I’ve said it here before, but whenever I get cornered at a cocktail party & somebody wants to relate their tale of travel woes, it almost always starts out with “A non-stop was $400, but online I found a deal for $375. It had 3 plane changes on 2 different airlines, but I didn’t notice any of that when I clicked [buy]. So then …”
No shit Sherlock. You were going to spend more than the extra $25 on sandwiches while waiting in airports even if everything went perfectly. Which an itinerary that complex usually won’t.
A small addendum to my screed about airline labor regulations above …
The RLA applies to all unions in the industry, not just pilots. So flight attendants, gate agents, mechanics, overhaul workers, cleaners, baggage handlers, you name it. They’re all subject to RLA rules.
I have no domain specific knowledge here (so I could be quite wrong), but the existence of the RLA does not, in itself, do much to change the negotiating power of each side. The negotiating strength of each side is dependent on what the bureaucrats will allow, but what they allow could still be entirely in the favor of labor.
Strikes don’t have to occur if the threat of one is credible and both sides can see that it’s not in their interest.
So, even though there have been no strikes for ~30 years, if the labor unions know that the oversight board is inclined to side with them, then management is still going to have to agree to deals that favor labor.
Agreed in principle.
In fact the oversight board is dead set against permitting strikes. And the PEB feature which essentially says the interests of a 3rd party, namely the rest of the country, trump all pretty well removes labor’s right to strike except at economically insignificant carriers. As a result, labor can threaten a strike but cannot *credibly *threaten a strike. And as you rightly say, credibility is everything.
To be sure the PEB also effectively eliminates management’s right to lockout & replace their workforce. Although as a practical matter the rest of the FAA oversight process effectively precludes lockout and replace. As does the inability to recruit enough skilled people quickly enough due to simple logistics and the small available free-floating supply of appropriately skilled labor.
The net effect is extended stalemates at the negotiating table since neither side can deploy its nukes and the law provides that the contract continues in force indefinitely while negotiations plod on towards its eventual amendment/replacement.
And hence the popularity of engineered bankruptcy as a way for managements to deploy a 3rd party’s nukes against existing labor contracts. Which weapon labor has not yet engineered an effective counter to. Nor in the current legislative / economic climate does it have much hope of remedy from that quarter.
Are crypto-strikes possible and effective? Things like working-to-rule or synchronized slowdowns may be difficult to qualify as strikes but seem like they could be effective at hurting profits while still giving employees a paycheck.
The history of those is that management immediately goes to court to obtain an injunction on the grounds that labor doing anything differently than last week is a violation of the so-called “status quo” rule which provides that the existing contract must be adhered to by both sides UFN during negotiations. And contractual *status quo *adherence jas been judicially expanded over time to include all aspects of statistical “past practice”, such as collective willingness to pick up overtime, statistical rates of on-time versus late, volume of lost baggage, volume and niggledy-ness of aircraft maintenance write-ups or average times to repair, etc.
The union will, with varying degrees of honesty, protest that the sudden change in worker behavior is spontaneous and an individual grassroots reflection of frustration and anger, rather than an orchestrated effort by the union. Courts have generally taken the position that either
- The union is lying, they’re behind the job action(s). So here’s your injunction with hefty multi-million dollar fines to the union for any ongoing noncompliance.
OR
- The union is probably telling the truth, and this really is wildcatting. But either way the disruption must stop as a violation of status quo, the union must trumpet its unequivocal non-support for the wildcatting upon pain of crippling fine, and management is free to use its disciplinary capabilities against individual wildcatters. Which individuals the union may defend only as to ensure due process under the contractual disciplinary procedures, not as to defending their already-settled-as-illegal actions.
So for labor that’s pretty much a heads-you-lose-tails-they-win game. The last time somebody in the industry pulled a move like this the fines and damage awards after decision 1) above amounted to about $10K per union member. Which was a pretty hefty bill to pay and set a pretty chilling precedent that hasn’t really been tested since.
Choice 2) happens a lot more often, but only weakly and doesn’t generate much practical effect.
So, this strike against Northwest Airlines in 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/29/us/northwest-pilots-strike-as-talks-fail-on-contract.html
And this one in 2005:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/20/business/strike-is-called-by-mechanics-for-northwest.html?_r=0
Are figments of a faulty memory?
The faulty memory is mine. After some reading of the history …
In the Northwest IAM strike the parties worked all the way through the process to where the RLA bureaucracy declared an impasse. Which means that 30 days later a strike and/or lockout could occur unless the parties change their mind(s) or a PEB intervenes.
In the event, at the end of 30 days the parties chose to strike/lockout, and a PEB chose to not intervene. So the strike / lockout started.
And pretty quickly, like within a week, it was clear that although the IAM wasn’t backing down, they were the losing side. Management was able to operate most of the airline from the git-go and the strike slowly fell apart over the ensuing 4-ish months as the airline chugged along almost completely unhindered.
That was the second one. I remember the first one vividly because I was thinking about buying some stock in Northwest in 1998. Then the strike hit and their stock value fell by 50% and basically stayed there. They didn’t win the pilot’s strike, and their stock never rebounded while I watched it.
In my defense that strike happened during the time I was laid off and not in the industry, with then no expectation of returning. And it affected a carrier that didn’t operate much in my part of the country. So it was a non-event in terms of local and regional news. And a bit of a damp squib at the national level as well.
I once saw a brief TV item on “mystery flights” where you bought a ticket for a relatively tiny amount and had a one day outing to wherever. They interviewed a couple of young women who said they loved buying “mystery flights” and had done so on multiple occasions. When asked what they most liked about flying they said, in unison and with great enthusiasm, “the food!”
This was probably about 20 years ago when the food on flights was a little better, but still…