The Airlines' Big Meltdown Is Our Gain

Exhausted from traveling, Johnny Sigmon waits in line after his American Airlines flight to Las Vegas was canceled on Wednesday at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Rick Gershon/Getty Images

It's one of those weeks when you should be happy to be you. 'Cause you could be this guy. Or you could be one of the thousands of displaced refugees formally known as American Airlines passengers (or passengers of a few other airlines, including Delta and Alaska).

As a (too) frequent flier of American Airlines myself — way to go three-for-three trips losing my bags! — my heart goes out to all the stranded travelers. Though I'm sure the airline's automated phone systems and overworked, underpaid employees are doing everything they can to make it seem as though they can actually do something for you.

By the way, AA CEO Gerard Arpey says he takes "full responsibility" for failing to meet FAA inspection standards, which caused the cancellations. So I'm sure any minute now he's going to break off a piece of his reported 2006 compensation of $10,201,059 to help pay for the mess. Any minute.

But while you wait...

If you travel with any regularity, you know that aside from the cancellations mess, this is a crappy time all around for the airline industry.

ATA, Aloha Airlines and Skybus stopped flying within days of each other. With oil topping $110 a barrel and fuel the single biggest expense of airlines, a few more may be crushed shortly. Add to the mix the safety issues with American, Southwest and other airlines. And add to that the Airline Quality Rating survey conducted by the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Wichita State University, which found that customer complaints over issues like lost bags and delays are up 60 percent year to year.

It pretty much seems like air travel as we know it is done.

Thank God.

It's not that I believe this meltdown is the horrid end of getting from here to there by plane. I think what's happening now is more like a self-cleaning oven, in that you're not really sure what's going on inside the thing, but you know when you open the door in the morning, all that crap that was there before is gonna be gone.

And when the crap is gone — "crap" being airlines that can't compete — I think there will be fewer carriers carrying fewer people.

Fewer flights would mean less fuel used, less pollution, less congestion in the air and less noise and traffic around airports. With an antiquated system that carried 769.4 million domestic and international passengers in 2007, fewer flights also could mean better service, more accurate departure and arrival times and, hey, know what? Your bags might even get there when you do.

What would we lose? Convenience. There might not be the flight you want leaving right ... NOW! But even that might just be a "paper" loss. If the airlines can reduce the number of delays and the number of people bumped from overbooked flights, then you might actually get to where you're going when you're supposed to be there.

So, luck to you stranded American passengers. And know that next week Tuesday when you eventually get where you're going, the beginnings of a better air transport system might actually be waiting for you.

5:48 PM ET | 04-11-2008 | permalink

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