No bag? Then airlines should refund fee – CNN Out of the Office
I’ve written about this here before. If your bag doesn’t travel with you, then you should get a refund of the bag fee, but that’s not the way it works at most airlines.

US Airways Warms to Inflight Internet – APEX Digest
I’m writing for the Airline Passenger Experience Association’s publications now. This piece was about US Airways revisiting inflight internet.

In the Trenches: Relying on Third Parties – Intuit Small Business Blog
Sometimes, you think you’re as prepared as you can be, but third parties can throw a wrench into things sometimes.

Apparently US Airways likes double digits. It seems that 9 Express carriers weren’t enough, so now US Airways has added a tenth to the stable: SkyWest. When Mesa came out of bankruptcy, US Airways agreed to keep 7 of the 50 seat CRJ-200s and 6 of the Dash-8 turboprops in the fleet for a short period of time. That time is up, and US Airways will replace those with 14 SkyWest CRJ-200s with the option to go up to CRJ-700s if it wants. What do you think of the move? Will Mesa’s remaining CRJ-900 operation end up flying under the SkyWest flag one of these days?

As a refresher, here are the other US Airways Express operators:

• Mesa – operates 38 of the CRJ-900s from Phoenix and Charlotte
• PSA – (wholly-owned) operates 35 CRJ-200s and 14 CRJ-700s on the east coast
• Air Wisconsin – operates 70 CRJ-200s on the east coast
• Republic Airlines – operates 20 ERJ-170s and 38 ERJ-175s on the east coast
• Chautauqua Airlines – operates 9 ERJ-145s on the east coast
• Trans States – operates 8 or fewer ERJ-145s from Pittsburgh
• Piedmont – (wholly-owned) operates 33 Dash-8-100 and 11 Dash-8-300 turboprops on the east coast
• Mesaba – operates 7 or fewer Saab 340 turboprops on the east coast
• Colgan Air – operates 7 or fewer Saab 340 turboprops from LaGuardia for now

Man, I really should have waited another day before writing that US Airways pilots union (USAPA) piece last week. Why? On Friday, US Airways filed an injunction in the courts to try to get the union to stop illegal slowdown activity. The evidence is quite comprehensive.

But let’s start with what’s important. If you’re flying, should you be concerned about a slowdown? It’s important to note that the slowdown is only being effected by “East” pilots from the pre-merger US Airways. That means that the Phoenix hub is running as usual. In fact, that’s one of the things that makes the evidence so compelling. The West operation is running just as it always has while the East has gotten much worse since May 1.

The epicenter of these problems is Charlotte, where USAPA has its strongest pilot support. If you’re flying through Charlotte, you may have had some problems during the last three months, and that could continue until (if) an injunction is issued. On time performance has suffered and there have been a few more cancellations each day, but it’s not a disastrous slowdown at this point. Still, it’s enough to get the airline to act.

So, should you stop flying US Airways on the east cost until it’s fixed? I say no; not unless you want to support illegal job action as a tactic for negotiations. If you stop flying US Airways, then those slowing things down will have achieved their goal. And remember, the West operation isn’t impacted, nor is the large Express operation. Hopefully this will all end quickly anyway now that the courts are involved.

How Bad is the Slowdown?
How bad is it? It’s not United summer of 2000 bad, but the actions seem pretty awful. Here is the motion. Take a look at this supporting brief for the juicy details. Also, here’s a report from an independent expert Darin Lee who performed statistical analysis to show how the changes are highly unlikely to be simply due to chance. (Take note, UNITE HERE. This is how to do analysis.)

There are really two parts to this. First, has there been a pilot slowdown? The statistics seem to conclusively point to “yes” as the answer. But there also has to be proof that the union is behind it, supporting it, or not doing anything to stop it. Let’s start with point one. Here’s what’s happened:

• The rate of the number of maintenance issues written up by pilots as a percent of total flights has usually been just below 25 percent. Since May 1, that has increased by half and stayed there. Here’s a chart:
  
• The percentage of East flights delayed due to pilot action has increased from a norm of 1.31 percent up to 2.85 percent since May 1.
• Previously there was an average of fewer than 7 fatigue calls per month. That’s more than doubled since May.
• Taxi times for mainline aircraft on the East were statistically about a quarter minute longer than Express. Since May, that has spiked to over 1 minute. Taxi times themselves have lengthened as well.

The end result here is that on-time performance in the East has dropped by 11 points and an additional 9 to 10 flights have been canceled each day due to pilot action. Once again, this is ONLY the EAST PILOTS. The West pilots and Express operations have seen no change, and that makes the evidence even more damning.

So, it seems pretty clear that there is a slowdown here, but the harder part is proving that the union is behind it. See, the union knows that it’s illegal to have any sort of job action unless the National Mediation Board releases the two sides from negotiation and the cooling off period has passed. That hasn’t happened here, so this kind of job action would be illegal.

Of course, that means the union, if involved, will do what it can to cover its tracks. It is, of course, already denying that it has anything to do with this, but it has left plenty of clues according to the evidence submitted by US Airways. Though there have been issues before this year including a flawed safety culture survey and incorrect information about what is considered safe to fly, the rhetoric ramped up this year.

Get On Board for Safety
The whole effort seems to be disguised as a safety campaign, something that has been used before as a tactic for disrupting operations at other airlines. US Airways strings together a picture of a campaign linked by a central campaign for being “On Board” the slowdown effort.

All of the information below comes from the US Airways supporting information. Though many of the actions came from anonymous email addresses and prepaid cell phones, there were plenty of mentions of this in union communications as well.

The union even started handing out lanyards with “Safety First” and “I’m on Board” on them. When a West pilot asked about them, the union’s communications chair said:

The lanyards are not however just a ‘party gift’ handed to everyone; they are handed to those, from any domicile, who have first demonstrated that they are onboard with the idea that safety comes before everything else . . . there are pilots roaming the system giving them out to those who demonstrate they are on board. If you’re flying, demonstrate in some fashion that you’re on board and have one of these pilots in the back, I would imagine you’ll get one.

Distance Learning Delays Not Safety-Related
So where else did this campaign show up? For example, calls were made to pilots encouraging them not to complete their FAA-mandated distance learning courses until the day they were due, May 31. These calls again referenced being “On Board” and clearly had nothing to do with safety.

Three days before the deadline, 897 pilots had failed to finish the learning, and only 1 of those was from the West group. That’s about 900 out of 2,600 active East pilots, or about a third. What’s worse? Sixty percent of those pilots had completed 94 percent of the learning, so they were just waiting for the deadline. Had US Airways not been able to get a waiver from the FAA for a couple of days, it would have had to cancel flights because the pilots weren’t going to be legal to be scheduled for multi-day trips that extended beyond May 31.

Emails and Text Messages Leave Ample Evidence
The informal communications got even bolder. One email told pilots “to engage in slow taxi, stay home if they are fatigued, and refuse aircraft with legal [Minimum Equipment Lists] with the express purpose of “prov[ing] that [the pilots] are willing to endure a summer of inconvenience in exchange for decent wages.”

Decals were placed around the system with words like “+16” and “Time to get serious about a contract BLOCK +16.” The +16 reference refers to pilots arriving at the gate 16 minutes late so it counts as late in the Department of Transportation statistics.

Another email said “[b]eing ‘ON BOARD’ means . . . do[ing] what you can to help our cause,” including being “15 MINUTES LATE EVERYWHERE.”

A note was found on an aircraft stating “Management is very upset about the deteriorating performance of our airline. It’s time to turn up the heat. Until that time, the e-mail WE WILL Prevail[.] Pass this along to another pilot that you know is “ON BOARD[.]”

As if that wasn’t enough, the pilots turned on themselves and started calling out people who weren’t willing to obey. A broadcast text message went out on July 24 of this year saying:

Seems like we have our first winner for the COMPANY SUCK UP AWARD… PINK PANTY AWARD or whatever you want to call it. This A330 CAP on Reserve, on July 15th had 1 Day Available, suddenly on July 16th he is on a FRA 3 day trip. Congratulations go to [rank and file US Airways pilot] XXXX [name deleted by Cranky] as our first winner. Keep up the good work by screwing all your fellow pilots that are trying to get a contract we deserve. If you have a good reason please let everyone know.

They then actually placed a card in his mailbox saying “CONGRATULATIONS! You’re a WINNER! Your heroic effort to help management achieve their bonus checks has earned you the Pretty Pink Panties award[.] Do you want a new contract? EARN IT[.]”

Pretty awful stuff, right? As mentioned above, the union unsurprisingly argues that it was not behind these efforts. That means that this would have been just individual pilot actions that it can’t be responsible for, but that seems less likely after reviewing the filing. But even if that’s the case, how can the union explain why it hasn’t done anything to try to put a stop to these actions? It has a responsibility to do so and appears to have not acted, or used lukewarm responses at most.

With this mountain of evidence, I imagine it’s going to be a tough ride for the union with mounting legal bills. Once again, I feel terrible for the West pilots and really even worse for the East pilots who are just doing their jobs and not participating is this. What happens next? The union has 14 days to respond and then it goes from there. It could take weeks or even months depending upon the different tactics used by each side.

In the end, we’ll see if the court agrees, but there is clearly some solid statistical analysis showing evidence of a slowdown. The question is – will the union be held accountable for these actions?

I’ve written many times about the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA), and it’s never been in a good light. This week, the group which represents the pilots at US Airways has once again topped itself by taking out a full page ad in USA Today talking about how US Airways is unsafe. Though there are other groups in the running, I think USAPA has demonstrated that it is the most ineffective, poorly run union group out there. For the misguided representation it provides its pilots, USAPA gets the Cranky Jackass award. This has been a long time coming.

You may already know the story. USAPA was created when the US Airways “East” (pre-merger US Airways) pilots didn’t like the seniority agreement that was decided upon in binding arbitration (yes, “binding” is apparently a loose term) with the US Airways “West” (pre-merger America West) pilots. So they marched off and voted in a new union, casting off the arbitration result. The West pilots didn’t like that (it’s been working its way through the courts), but they didn’t have the numbers to prevent the move. You can read more of the history here. In short, USAPA has done absolutely nothing good for its members, but it wrongly likes to blame US Airways management for its failings.

And that brings us to USAPA’s current strategy . . . try to burn down the company and apparently put all of its members out of a job.

The latest shameful tactic is the taking out of a full page ad in USA Today claiming that US Airways is unsafe. Let’s see. You work for an airline that pays your salary with revenue that comes in the door, and now you’re going to turn around and try to shut off that revenue by falsely claiming your airline is unsafe? Simply pathetic. It’s such a blatant negotiating tactic, but how will the general public react? That’s unclear, though this hasn’t received much press at all considering all the more important “real” news in the aviation world in the last week.

The ad itself used a single pilot incident that happened on June 16 to show the supposed danger of flying the airline. Apparently there was a flight scheduled to cross the Atlantic from Philly that evening and there were a couple of mechanical issues. There are some mechanical issues that aren’t considered crucial to be fixed, and that appears to be the case here, but the captain refused to fly the airplane and then, according to the union, she was escorted out of the airport by corporate security. The next crew refused to fly the airplane as well. Over the next couple hours, some maintenance work was done and the airplane went on its way with a third crew.

This is why the union says US Airways is an unsafe airline. It says the airline is intimidating its pilots and pushing them to fly even if it’s not safe. Then if they refuse, it has security remove them. Sounds bad, right? Too bad it’s a crock.

Now, regarding the mechanical incident itself, I don’t know whether the captain did the right thing by refusing to fly the airplane. I do know that the FAA found US Airways did nothing wrong. Here’s the statement:

The FAA manager assigned to the US Airways certificate reviewed the June 16, 2011 incident. The APU shutdown the aircraft experienced is a failure that pilots are well aware can happen and that they are trained to recognize. The battery apparently was depleted by attempts to restart the APU. Flying an aircraft with an inoperative APU is not an unusual event and normally poses no safety issues when proper limitations are applied. The Captain simply chose to exercise her pilot-in-command authority of not accepting an aircraft. Our information indicates that US Airways followed their approved MEL procedures, and all maintenance procedures were followed in accordance with the operator’s approved maintenance program. We found no violations of Federal Aviation Regulations.

That being said, if a captain doesn’t feel comfortable flying an airplane, then it’s his or her right to deny it. The problem arises when that privilege is abused just to delay or cancel flights without good reason. I’m not saying that happened here. I don’t know, and frankly, it’s not central to my point. I have no problem in theory with her walking away from the flight.

But why would security come escort the captain from the airport? USAPA wants you to believe it’s because she refused to fly the airplane. Not quite. According to US Airways, “the Captain was escorted out of the airport by corporate security (after being released from duty) not for her refusal to fly but for her comments made to customers regarding the safety of the aircraft.” Unfortunately, I don’t know details about what she said to the passengers, but it was apparently highly inappropriate. See more in this a.net discussion. I would have had her carted off the airplane as well.

In reality, there is nothing pointing to US Airways being unsafe but rather more evidence of the airline having good safety practices. It recently passed the IATA Operational Safety Audit, for example. But that won’t stop the union from trying to sully the airline’s reputation. (Get it? Sully? I crack myself up.)

In the end, USAPA simply wants to damage US Airways as if this will somehow convince the airline to throw a ton of money at the union and solve all its problems. Unfortunately, the union needs to solve its own problems regarding seniority before it can even be ready to talk to management, and it doesn’t seem any closer to doing so. I feel really bad for those pilots who never even wanted this union to represent them in the first place. This whole thing is simply pathetic and more than worthy of the Cranky Jackass Award.

[Thanks to Johosofat for the excellent Cranky Jackass Award]

After years of back and forth, the Department of Transportation has finally decided to do the right thing and let US Airways trade a host of slots at New York’s La Guardia for a bunch of Delta’s slots at Washington National Airport. This swap is not a simple transaction. There are a lot of logistics behind it, and it took major creativity and commitment from both parties to make something like this work. Hopefully American is taking notice. And I say that not because Delta has made a move that will once again hurt American in New York, but rather because American needs to get off its butt and start doing some bold things like this to fix its business.

After last week’s post on American’s decision to order 460 new airplanes, I had some great offline conversations with people about it. I still stand by my belief that it was a good move. I have no doubt American beat up the manufacturers to get a great deal, and it will certainly help to lower operating costs when the airplanes start coming in, probably at little to no additional cost to American. But that doesn’t mean that American’s problems are solved. If American thinks this is the solution, and I really can’t imagine that’s the case, then the airline is screwed. This doesn’t touch American’s revenue problems at all.

The news that Delta and US Airways received approval of the slot swap provids a great contrast between Delta/US Airways and American. Delta and US Airways have been very proactive at doing the right thing and improving their respective businesses. For US Airways, it’s been all about focusing the business on reliability, convenience, and appearance while re-forming the route network to fit its strengths. US Airways shut down the money-losing Vegas operation. It got rid of all the non-hub flying on the east coast that was a drain. It cleaned up its airplanes, and focused on on time performance. And now, it’s ditched its turboprop-based hub at La Guardia in favor of strengthening its position at Washington’s National Airport where it’s a much stronger player and can draw better revenue.

For Delta, the change has been no less significant. It has pulled down flying at minor hubs like Cincinnati and more recently Memphis. It’s parking smaller airplanes and cutting service to small cities that simply aren’t profitable. The airline built up a more comprehensive premium product and has worked on setting product standards from its 70 seaters on up. It has positioned itself as a technology leader in a variety of ways, and it has worked hard to improve the airport experience. Now, it can trade its Washington position in order to strengthen its already strong capabilities in New York.

For both US Airways and Delta, this is yet another effort to play to their strengths, and it’s going to provide a great deal of benefit to both. Let’s contrast that with American.

Instead of doing hard work on its own, American is relying on partners to fix its problems. It has put its eggs in the joint venture basket – saying that its partnerships with British Airways/Iberia as well as with Japan Air Lines will spike revenues. It’s built up a partnership with JetBlue to feed its flights in New York and Boston. That’s nice, but it doesn’t fix the structural problems. It’s just a patch.

If you didn’t see the investor report issued by Bob McAdoo back in May, then you missed out on a scathing review. Bob noted some very simple things, like the fact that American’s 10 worst routes lose about $450 million a year, more now that oil has spiked. He uses Chicago to London as an example. American gets a much lower fare than United but it flies larger airplanes and has more frequencies. The same goes from JFK to LA and San Francisco. The average fare to LA has dropped over $100 since 2000 but the level of service stays the same, losing money all along the way.

Instead of addressing these big problems, American pokes around the edges. Sure, it made some moves, like slowly killing the San Juan hub, and cutting some vestigial flying, but it’s been mostly minor changes. It stops flying routes like San Francisco to Honolulu and starts flying to Helsinki and calls that a strategy. (This week, it’s building up Ft Lauderdale a little. Woohoo.) It has its cornerstone strategy of focusing on LA, Dallas, Chicago, New York, and Miami. That’s fine. But instead of just culling service around those cities, it seems the problem is how American serves those cities in the first place, at least that’s what the McAdoo report makes very clear. Then there’s New York. Delta has made huge strides in New York, and it will now have a ton of new service from La Guardia to offer up to its corporate clients. American stands still.

It’s not just the route network but the onboard product as well. The most glaring deficiency is that American is the only long haul domestic airline without a plan for flat beds in business class. It rolled out its substandard business class about the time United went fully flat, so it was obsolete from the start, and nothing has changed. Even US Airways has been actively rolling out flat beds.

Even when American has been a leader, it’s quickly fallen behind. It was an early adopter of gogo inflight internet, but it only put it on a limited portion of the fleet. While Delta put it everywhere, American stuttered and is only now catching up. Hopefully some of its more forward-thinking moves, like working on streaming video with gogo will actually go past the testing stage and give the airline a leadership position in . . . something.

I’m sure many of you will say a merger is the answer, but it’s most definitely not. American’s costs are higher than any potential merger partner, so it would effectively kill an airline that works well today on its own. The math becomes 1+1=0.5 if they were to do an ill-advised combo. So the weight falls squarely on American to do the hard work. It has spent a lot of time raising cash, but it keeps losing money while others profit. Instead of slowly bleeding cash, American needs to invest that money into fixing its problems.

The airline might want to take a hint from its partner Qantas, which is about to make some major changes on August 24 in order to get its house in order. Will these be popular? Not all, but that’s not the point. The point is turning the business around at all costs.

Get bold, American. Do something to get those revenues jumping.