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In these days of financially strapped airlines, it's harder for fliers like Darlene Bainbridge to rely on what used to be onboard standards such as pillows and a hot meal, both of which she totes herself.Airlines ground comfort
The joy of flying fades as fliers face more hassles
Jeffrey Hibbard of Bloomfield Hills jumped through many inconvenient hoops to get onto a flight to St. Louis.
Fly the stingy skies
What's your biggest gripe about airline travel today?
Jaberi Warfield eats lunch in a waiting area at Detroit Metro Airport on Monday. More airlines are ditching in-flight services such as meals.
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Darlene Bainbridge packed up her National Coney Island Express lunch and hustled toward the gate Monday at Detroit Metro Airport.
"I live in the airport. I eat in the airport," said Bainbridge, a consultant from the Buffalo, N.Y., area.
The scene was a far cry from a time when meals were served on planes. In coach. For free. A time when there were magazines, free snacks, even pillows for your head.
Now Bainbridge totes a red pillow from flight to flight, surrounded by girls in flip-flops and guys in cutoffs who'd be astonished to hear that people once dressed up for air travel.
Flying used to be a miracle and a luxury, when Pan Am Clippers laid linen table settings and skycaps carried the bags. Now it's a $59-each-way do-it-yourself RollAboard trudge that holds as much romance as climbing on a bus.
That's never been more clear than today. Metro's largest carrier, Northwest Airlines, dropped free pretzels in June, a week after it shelved free magazines. The pillows went, too, even after Northwest finished last in a J.D. Power and Associates satisfaction poll.
Complaints about airlines are increasing, too, said the U.S. Department of Transportation. In May, overall complaints were up about 37 percent over last year, and baggage gripes rose 25 percent.
Still, as Metro heads into what's shaping up as a record year for summer air travel, there's one thing passengers aren't complaining about: cheap tickets.
"Customers are voting with their dollars, saying, 'All we want is an inexpensive airline ticket,'" notes Michael Tretheway, executive vice present of InterVISTAS Consulting Inc. in Vancouver.
Squeezed -- hard -- by rising fuel, health care and labor costs on one side and cheap discount carriers on the other, the older established airlines are pinching every dollar.
Amenities have gone by the wayside. So has service. Customers often buy their own tickets over the Internet and check themselves in at self-service kiosks.
Comfort? Forget it. Coach seats are typically a mere 31 inches apart. To save on fuel, idling planes turn off air-conditioning on the runway. Fees are up, too, with charges for extra bags, heavy bags, ticket changes and snacks.
"I do expect to see airlines start charging for soft drinks soon," says Terry Tripler, airline expert and analyst with Cheapseats.com, "but I don't think the FAA will let them charge for the lavatories."
More and more, flying the stingy skies these days feels like the philosopher's dour take on life -- nasty, brutish and short.
Except for the short part.
Besides pitching the perks, airlines also save money by increasing their "load factors." That means packing passengers onto smaller planes for fewer flights.
Northwest reports that its June load factor was its highest ever -- nearly 88 percent of its seats were filled with paying customers. Metro Airport itself reports an increase of 300,000 passengers through May over its previous record in 2000. But all those extra passengers flew on 12,000 fewer flights.
While that helps keep ticket prices low, those cheap seats come at the cost of convenience.
First, it means fliers are less likely to find a flight that departs and lands when they want to travel. They're also more likely to find those flights are filled, or that all the bargain seats and frequent-fliers slots sold out long ago.
Second, when passengers do find a ticket, high load factors mean that if the flight is canceled because of a summer thunderstorm over the Rockies, they often face a long wait to catch another plane. It also means they're more likely than ever to be bumped from the flight.
Take Northwest, which handles more than 78 percent of traffic in and out of Metro. Its total of bumped passengers increased by 20 percent for the first quarter of 2005 over the same period in 2004 -- which already was up from 2003.
That included an increase of 14 percent in voluntarily bumped passengers, but the number of unwillingly bumped fliers more than doubled, according to federal statistics.
All told, Northwest bumped 25,200 passengers from January through March, 2,048 involuntarily. Of 18 major airlines, Northwest had the fourth-worst ranking for bumps.
Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor of airline management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., puts it succinctly: "With load factors being as high as they are, the passenger is basically screwed."
Just ask Jeffrey Hibbard.
The Bloomfield Hills man was supposed to be on a 7 a.m. Monday flight to St. Louis, for a 10 a.m. training session. But with only 15 minutes before it started, he was still walking around Metro's Midfield terminal, hoping to catch his third flight of the day.
After getting caught in a lengthy security line, Hibbard explained, he rushed to the gate with eight minutes to spare. Northwest, however, won't let passengers board less than 10 minutes before takeoff. He watched the door close, then watched his 9:30 a.m. standby flight take off without him.
Then his corporate travel department at Kronos Inc. in Southfield rebooked him on the 12:03 p.m. to St. Louis. As he lined up for a new ticket and another slog through security, he figured he'd make the after-lunch session.
"You're standing there looking at the door close," he said with a sigh. "It's frustrating."
It's also the way things are going to be for a long time to come.
After years of underpricing to keep up with discounters and struggling to contain rising costs, the major airlines have no choice but to completely join the stripped-down world of discount air travel.
"The amount of excesses we've had in this business for the last 20 years is enormous," said Tretheway, the airline consultant. "So this is judgment day, and judgment day is never pleasant."
Pleasant wasn't exactly the word at Metro on Monday. Over at the security gates, passengers moved through quickly, but only as quickly as they could balance carry-ons, unwrap laptops, fold up strollers and tend to crying babies. The lines looked like a sock-hop as shoeless passengers shuffled around, retrieving the belts, keys, change and cell phones they'd shed to pass through the metal detectors.
At the self-service check-in kiosks, passengers lined up seven deep, with looks ranging from mild annoyance to outright disgust.
Patricia Knehler, 64, of Windsor, and her sister, Margaret Brow, 73, of Montreal, were bound for Vegas.
Knehler nervously navigated the check-in computers. "Your reservation could not be located..." the screen said.
"My heart's all aflutter," Knehler confessed, after an agent coaxed boarding passes from the machine.
"I hope I never have to go through that again."
You can reach Brian O'Connor at (313) 222-2145 or boconnor@detnews.com.
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