Thursday, October 18, 2007
Flying Can Indeed Kill
The shopworn antislogan 'Profits over people' was on full display this past September when a passenger on a Phoenix flight was arrested and died in police custody. The initial story focused mostly on the skeleton in Carol Anne Gotbaum's closet, that she was an alcoholic who had been travelling to a treatment center. Denied boarding, she became upset and violent, (leaving casual readers to assume she was tanked and belligerent) was detained and was later found dead.
With a few weeks of hindsight however, it is clear that she is yet another casualty of an American airline industry that discards virtually all concerns for stakeholders (employees and passengers alike) to make razor-thin profits that are then slipped back into the pockets of shareholders.
Disclaimer: My parents are both stake and shareholders in USAir, they worked there as some of the most loyal company people one could imagine, only to have their salaries and benefits and finally jobs stripped from them by a free falling, mismanaged company. Now of course, they're threatening the retirement funds of those folks like my dad who started there long enough ago that he was still covered by a defined benefit package when he retired. Back when they were loyal to a company that was still loyal to its employees, they did buy alot of USAir stock. It just ain't worth what it used to be. Nor is the airline. Once a regional upstart that pumped up like Barry Bonds following Reagan-era deregulation, it became just another mean-spirtited and mismanaged corporation. OK, OK. . . the rant is almost over; suffice it to say that the last few times I shuttled between Philly and the 'Burgh I took Southwest, once at the urging of my formally-loyal Mum.
It turns out that Carol Gotbaum was the victim over rampant overbooking. According to A.L. Bardach's impassioned article in the Washington Post: "Gotbaum wasn't late for boarding. She didn't forfeit her place by ignoring the airline's procedures. Her only mistake was showing up at the US Airways gate and believing that her paid-in-full, reserved-seat airline ticket meant that she would actually have a seat on the plane".
She tried to swap with willing persons, but the gate agents refused to even entertain the issue. Distraught, probably going on the most difficult trip of her life to an out-of-state treatment facility, she broke down crying and was detained for unruly behavior and locked in an isolated cell at the airport. Bardach again:"They left her chained alone to a bench, crying inconsolably. Not long after, she was found dead, the chain shackling her to the bench stretched across her throat."
Neither I nor Bardach completely blame the airport staff. The know that every flight is overbooked, that they will spend all day, literally everyday, dealing with people who, like Gotbaum, bought and paid for seats, showed up on time, and even had confirmed seat assignments, only to find out that there was no guarantee they'd get out on that flight, or the next one, or even the next because in all likelihood they are all overbooked. Flight attendants, pilots, and gate and ticket agents used to have really cool, hip, trendy jobs, they were the standard bearers for the Jet Age. But imagine going to work in the scenario described above each day, everyday being like the worst-case scenario day of anyone's normal job.
And that's not just the only insult. Domestic aircraft by major US carriers have been diverted to international routes which are more lucrative per seat. Thus, if there is a plane malfunction, the spare idle aircraft that used to replace it on your Newark-Chicago route is now somewhere over Glasgow, and you're getting ready to spend the night in an airport terminal.
But wait, there's more. . . its not just the airlines but also airports, who make their money off of each takeoff and landing scheduled. That being the case, airports across the nation frequently overbook the number of flights coming in hourly, in some cases 20%-30% over what is feasible and often even safe given the gate space and runway capacity. They are loathe to scale back the amount of hourly flights, as are airlines who fear that, in this golden age of deregulation, they will lose valuable gate space if they voluntary scale back their flights to a more manageable and realistic number.
The Friendly Skies just aren't what they used to be anymore, I guess.
The shopworn antislogan 'Profits over people' was on full display this past September when a passenger on a Phoenix flight was arrested and died in police custody. The initial story focused mostly on the skeleton in Carol Anne Gotbaum's closet, that she was an alcoholic who had been travelling to a treatment center. Denied boarding, she became upset and violent, (leaving casual readers to assume she was tanked and belligerent) was detained and was later found dead.
With a few weeks of hindsight however, it is clear that she is yet another casualty of an American airline industry that discards virtually all concerns for stakeholders (employees and passengers alike) to make razor-thin profits that are then slipped back into the pockets of shareholders.
Disclaimer: My parents are both stake and shareholders in USAir, they worked there as some of the most loyal company people one could imagine, only to have their salaries and benefits and finally jobs stripped from them by a free falling, mismanaged company. Now of course, they're threatening the retirement funds of those folks like my dad who started there long enough ago that he was still covered by a defined benefit package when he retired. Back when they were loyal to a company that was still loyal to its employees, they did buy alot of USAir stock. It just ain't worth what it used to be. Nor is the airline. Once a regional upstart that pumped up like Barry Bonds following Reagan-era deregulation, it became just another mean-spirtited and mismanaged corporation. OK, OK. . . the rant is almost over; suffice it to say that the last few times I shuttled between Philly and the 'Burgh I took Southwest, once at the urging of my formally-loyal Mum.
It turns out that Carol Gotbaum was the victim over rampant overbooking. According to A.L. Bardach's impassioned article in the Washington Post: "Gotbaum wasn't late for boarding. She didn't forfeit her place by ignoring the airline's procedures. Her only mistake was showing up at the US Airways gate and believing that her paid-in-full, reserved-seat airline ticket meant that she would actually have a seat on the plane".
She tried to swap with willing persons, but the gate agents refused to even entertain the issue. Distraught, probably going on the most difficult trip of her life to an out-of-state treatment facility, she broke down crying and was detained for unruly behavior and locked in an isolated cell at the airport. Bardach again:"They left her chained alone to a bench, crying inconsolably. Not long after, she was found dead, the chain shackling her to the bench stretched across her throat."
Neither I nor Bardach completely blame the airport staff. The know that every flight is overbooked, that they will spend all day, literally everyday, dealing with people who, like Gotbaum, bought and paid for seats, showed up on time, and even had confirmed seat assignments, only to find out that there was no guarantee they'd get out on that flight, or the next one, or even the next because in all likelihood they are all overbooked. Flight attendants, pilots, and gate and ticket agents used to have really cool, hip, trendy jobs, they were the standard bearers for the Jet Age. But imagine going to work in the scenario described above each day, everyday being like the worst-case scenario day of anyone's normal job.
And that's not just the only insult. Domestic aircraft by major US carriers have been diverted to international routes which are more lucrative per seat. Thus, if there is a plane malfunction, the spare idle aircraft that used to replace it on your Newark-Chicago route is now somewhere over Glasgow, and you're getting ready to spend the night in an airport terminal.
But wait, there's more. . . its not just the airlines but also airports, who make their money off of each takeoff and landing scheduled. That being the case, airports across the nation frequently overbook the number of flights coming in hourly, in some cases 20%-30% over what is feasible and often even safe given the gate space and runway capacity. They are loathe to scale back the amount of hourly flights, as are airlines who fear that, in this golden age of deregulation, they will lose valuable gate space if they voluntary scale back their flights to a more manageable and realistic number.
The Friendly Skies just aren't what they used to be anymore, I guess.
Labels: airlines, deregulation, mismanagement
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