With travel season upon us, Daniel Gross checks in on the airline industry:
Ten years ago, the load factor—the percentage of seats actually occupied—was generally in the mid-70 percentages. The load factor has climbed steadily over the past decade—to 83 percent in 2011. As the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported, in February, the most recent month for which numbers are available, “The system load factor of 79.2 percent, the domestic load factor of 81.0 percent, and the international load factor of 75.8 percent were record highs for the month of February.” That means your flight is more likely to be crowded, totally booked, or overbooked, that your ability to go standby or get an upgrade will be degraded, and that the prospects of getting stuck in a middle seat between a screaming baby and a person of size are substantially greater. By the time you do get on board, it will more likely that the overhead compartments will be full and you’ll have to check the bag.
On the plus side:
When you reach your destination this summer, your luggage will be much more likely to be there.
After realizing it costs them a few hundred dollars each time they lose a bag, airlines have engineered an impressive reduction in the incidence of lost luggage. The rate of “mishandled bags” have plummeted from 7.05 per 1,000 passengers in 2007 to 3.15 per 1,000 in the first quarter of 2013.
An excerpt from Cockpit Confidential, airline pilot Patrick Smith’s new book, tries to put flying in a better light:
We’ve come to view flying as yet another impressive but ultimately uninspiring technological realm. There I am, sitting in a Boeing 747, a plane that if tipped onto its nose would rise as tall as a 20-story office tower. I’m at 33,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, traveling at 600 miles per hour, bound for the Far East. And what are the passengers doing? Complaining, sulking, tapping glumly into their laptops. A man next to me is upset over a dent in his can of ginger ale. This is the realization, perhaps, of a fully evolved technology. Progress, one way or the other, mandates that the extraordinary become the ordinary. But don’t we lose valuable perspective when we begin to equate the commonplace, more or less by definition, with the tedious? Aren’t we forfeiting something important when we sneer indifferently at the sight of an airplane — at the sheer impressiveness of being able to throw down a few hundred dollars and travel halfway around the world at nearly the speed of sound? It’s a tough sell, I know, in this age of long lines, grinding delays, overbooked planes, and inconsolable babies. To be clear, I am not extolling the virtues of tiny seats or the culinary subtlety of half-ounce bags of snack mix. The indignities and hassles of modern air travel require little elaboration and are duly noted. But believe it or not, there is still plenty about flying for the traveler to savor and appreciate.
The Dish 