US airlines continue downward PR spiral

US airline news continues to be bad:

• Homeland Security officials proposed a plan requiring millions of visitors to register that critics say will keep travelers away and further damage the US image.

• The number of passengers involuntarily bumped “has been on a steady climb since 2002” and could get worse this fall as airlines’ already announced big flight cuts start to show up in fall schedules, says The New York Times.

• United’s plan to eliminate free meals on various flights, including some trans-Atlantic routes, drew thousands of complaints.

A program taking effect next January aims to tighten security by giving authorities more time to check for terrorism links and immigration issues among people from 27 friendly nations — including Spain, Great Britain and Italy — before they fly to the USA.

The government now gets such passenger records 30 minutes before flight doors close.

The new program will not affect US citizens. It applies to about 14 million foreigners in the visa-waiver program, which allows residents of certain countries to travel to the US for 90 days or less without a visa.

“The U.S. already has a bad reputation in terms of the difficulty of international travel, and this could make it even worse,” said Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group. “We foresee a lot of passengers getting to the airport having no idea what (the new program) is.”

The US Chamber of Commerce told the department in a letter that the program “could have a serious detrimental effect on our economy” by keeping out business travelers and tourists.

The Travel Industry Association said “air carriers could face chaos at check-in counters.”

For the first six months of this year, federal data shows about 343,000 fliers out of 282 million total passengers were denied seats, according to the Times. But most of those voluntarily agreed to give up their seats for some type of compensation from their carrier.

“But DOT statistics also show about 1.16 of every 10,000 passengers had their seats taken away outright because of overbooking — which may sound like a low rate, until your name is called.”

The Times says airlines had been overbooking their flights by about 15%, knowing that many fliers would simply never show up. And for those who did get bumped, frequent and less-full flights meant fliers could typically simply just catch the next flight out. But, now airlines have tightened rules and jacked up change fees on most nonrefundable tickets.

Fliers now have “more incentive to show up” for their originally booked flights, suggesting that the no-show rates are dropping for many flights — something that comes at the same times as airlines are reducing capacity.

United’s decision to end meals unleashed a wrath of criticism.

“Statistically speaking, it’s one of the – if not the hottest – topics in many years,” frequent-flier guru Randy Petersen told USA Today. “In a single day nearly 35,000 frequent fliers read about this topic and nearly 600 have added comments. That’s a lot of buzz for a single topic.”

“With so much bad news breaking lately, travelers have become pretty inured to the next fee, the next service cut, the next frequent flier devaluation, the next flight cancellation,” said airline guru Tim Winship. “In that context, any response at all is noteworthy. And the reaction so far to United’s suspension of meal service on some international flights has been vociferously negative.”

Report by David Wilkening