With airlines continuing to face major operational issues, they’re being called to the principal’s office today… or something like that.
Continue reading: Buttigieg Calls Meeting With Airline CEOs Over Delays
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
It's Mayor Pete's airline pow-wow time!
Ben's 100% on target with his analysis.
We flew from SEA to ANC on Tuesday and SEA was extremely crowded and busy. So many people flying now. Fortunately our flight was on time and bags made it. Just hoping we have the same luck on Monday from ANC-SEA-DFW.
Mayor Pete doing an outstanding job. What a man,
Airlines, rail, road. the whole thing is a nightmare for 18 months. Now he wants a 'chat' on it.
One way to incentivize airlines to running trains on time would be EU 261 style stuff. Just saying.
100% load factors, heavy banking of flights, summer weather-what could go wrong?
I think we annoys me more about the new spat of delays is the contagion effect of it all. It's not just that a single flight gets delayed because a plane needs to wait an hour for a mechanic (hey that happens), its that once that happens in the morning, the entire rest of the schedule for the day is already broken. You spread this out of a network of 1000s of flights, things quickly spiral. There is just no slack in the airline's systems and its not just the planes themselves, its everything on the planes from pax making connections, bags, and of course the pilots/FAs needing to be where they need to be on time.
"the government doesn’t actually have much leverage here, aside from just generally attempting to appear to stand up for consumers"
Looks like people are starting to figure out this administration...
Airlines would just raise ticket prices across the board to account for this new "expense"
Every executive administration, not just this one. Real power is with Congress. Which is why the vast majority of lobbying dollars head there.
Let's have a fireside chat inside the Delta Skyclub. Use your miles for a bottle of Dom P and let's talk about Spirit being apart of the new "Big 4". Ain't much gonna change, this is gonna be the summer from hell for domestic travel. Get used to it.
Something on the same lines has been issued as a warning to U.K. airlines, they’ve been told to cancel summer flights now! Specifically the flights they know they won’t be able to operate over the summer period.
I disagree. Airlines already charge the maximum they can to match supply to demand. A regulation like EU261 would increase the price floor that airlines are willing to sell tickets and could potentially prevent some new routes from being added, but I doubt it would affect pricing other than the deepest discount economy fares.
On the plus side, airlines would be more incentivized to operate on time, not overschedule, and not cancel flights.
I'm curious, have EU airfare prices gone up much to account for EC 261? There's plenty of ULCCs offering cheap tickets where compensation would be disproportionately more than the ticket price.
And? The expense is that the airlines are then punished for failing to perform. And we should really stick it to them. Over and over again. They took millions and millions in dollars via bailouts time and again and yet nothing to show for it. Shitty performance. Shitty service. Shitty everything. It's time they be held to task. Maybe you're too cheap - and that's a lot of what's wrong with air travel today is that it's a race to the bottom for pax's money and air travel is just Greyhound in the sky...as cliched as that is to say. But if I was guaranteed that my flight would operate as expected/promised by a contract of carriage that is legally binding by ALL parties, to include the shitty airlines, or I'd be due generous compensation for their failure then I'd gladly pay more. Start gouging the airlines for poor performance. If you don't want to pay, stay home.
Politics are just like insurance.
They are so damn complicated, consumer end up getting denied with everyone pointing fingers.
The industry itself, getting fatter because of all those income and very little payout.
Now they are fat enough to rig the system or collude with other industries.
But they always say they have your back.
@Steve points to the Sleepy Brandon, @Never In Doubt to the administrations, @Andrew points to Congress, even we the people point at each other.
BA did this some time back, whilst easyJet has been cancelling on the hoof.
Why would any business suffer the reputational damage of trying to sell products which it can't deliver? From the UK perspective, Jet2 and RYR have performed well (hardly any cancellations and no last minute ones), whilst TUI and EZY have been disasters. Personally, I'd certainly not fly EZY for the foreseeable future.
Relative to the FAA / Air Traffic Control piece of this, $1B of the allotted $5B in infrastructure spending for those shortcomings had started to be scheduled as of April. Thank you, Ben, for the usual thoughtful analysis.
I don't understand why one would look to the government to fix this. Not only do I not see the appropriate tools in the government's toolbox, but on-time records are public knowledge. If I were traveling this summer I would base my plans not around which airline is cheapest but rather which has the best operational record.
When you buy a ticket, you are indicating what your priorities are. Some people prioritize cost. Others prioritize comfort and soft product. Still others like myself prioritize reliability, because i want to get to my destination without drama and get on with my work or vacation.
"Nothing will eclipse United’s summer from hell in 2000."
You're setting yourself up for MAJOR disappointment, if you actually believe that....
What do you expect when you take someone who's never worked directly in transportation, then place them at the pinnacle of responsibility as a political favor for being a good little team player, by dropping out of a race even though he had more primary votes + cash than you did, at the time.....
anyone that wants to assign blame needs to bookmark two pages
nasstatus dot faa dot gov
and
flightaware dot com backslash live backslash cancelled backslash today
The simple reality is that airlines are flying far less capacity than they did pre-covid and yet ATC delays - which are handed out by the FAA - are skyrocketing.
Just like everything this government gets its hand into, the outcome is higher prices for consumers as airlines continue to have to cut capacity - initially due to their own staffing but ultimately will be due to the inability of the FAA to handle delays.
With a government that is at war with fossil fuels, air travel will become more and more expensive and the reliability of airlines will continue to suffer as the FAA fails to do its part to staff the ATC system.
Tim Dunn for President!!!!!!!!!!!
Let's all name Tim Dunn in our ballots.
At least Tim Dunn can probably do something, not just be sleeping 18 months or add fuel to other people's burning fires.
Mayor pete checked all the boxes this admin wanted. Like every other pick in the cabinet they forgot to check the boxes that matter; competent & qualified.