Attention All Passengers, page 29
The improprieties extended even further. One Friday evening at the Plaza Hotel in New York, I danced with an airline public relations rep at a company function and much later that night found myself making out with her at the Oak Bar. In my feeble defense, there were two mitigating factors: she worked for an outside PR agency, not the airline itself, and it was a small carrier based in a small country and rarely if ever would I be called upon to write about its operations. But then again, I knew more than one travel trade reporter who slept with airline employees they had interviewed.
Over the years I became friendly with many airline PR folks, and in a few cases I would even say I became friends. When I was struggling through a very painful custody battle, I often spoke for hours with a public relations rep at one of the major airlines, because she had endured a similar experience years before. She was a very kind person, and I don’t believe for a moment she had ulterior motives for speaking to me; rather, the fact remains I was the one out of line, and turning to her for emotional support was wrong, just like the Oak Bar was wrong.
I share all this not as a mea culpa or a lame effort to cleanse my journalistic soul. I share it because in those years I think I was a pretty fair journalist and I broke quite a few important stories for the travel trade press, many of which the airlines were quite unhappy about. Yet I never once considered that I might have been biased in any way by the wining and dining I received. Sometimes my trade editors massaged, tweaked, rewrote, and killed my work, depending on whether I had offended the sensibilities of a given airline, aka advertiser. But I never considered myself complicit, or that I somehow allowed relations with airline personnel to influence what I wrote. In fact, if that had been suggested I would have been shocked, angered, and offended.
That said, a fair amount of industry cheerleading is not unusual from the airline press; even a respected publication such as Aviation Week & Space Technology can appear to have blinders firmly in place. In naming Continental CEO Jeffery Smisek its 2010 Person of the Year, the magazine referred to him as “appearing to distance his airline from the accident” of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo and called this only a “hiccup.” Smisek’s congressional testimony enraged family members of the fifty people killed in that crash, and it’s doubtful any of those next of kin would consider his actions a hiccup.
At times, beat reporters can tend to sound not like impartial chroniclers but like industry flacks. I asked Joe Brancatelli if journalists are susceptible to Stockholm Syndrome if they cover one business too long, and he said, “I think they are.” He claimed the relationship can become incestuous, particularly when reporters are worried about access to key executives for one-on-one interviews.
However, an old friend who covered the airline beat from Washington for many years says this of the “free lunch” issue: “I think there was a backlash against that kind of coziness after deregulation. If you’re a good solid reporter who is fair, I don’t think you will be able to be bought—especially that cheaply. I’ve always trusted that my friends [in the industry] understand that I have a job to do. Look, some of my best stories have come from those relationships.” This reporter adds, “I understand there’s a danger in getting too cozy. But with airlines and finance, you have to make an exception. It’s too complex for new people to cover.”
Entering the Nonprofit Monastery
The way I learned to curtail my relations with the airlines was to find religion and take vows. No, not that kind. I began writing for the largest nonprofit consumer organization in the world. In early 2000 I became the editor in chief of Consumer Reports Travel Letter, and found Consumers Union is unlike any other publisher in America. The company anonymously buys and tests all kinds of products, with no advertising, no marketing deals, no “strategic partnerships.” Even the fund-raising department won’t accept gifts from corporations. When Consumer Reports screws up, it’s never because someone kissed up to an advertiser.
This is no small matter. The wall between editorial and sales is quite low at some media companies, and airline executives have been happy to vault it. As you read earlier, Delta’s racist and homophobic interviewing practices in 1991 were highlighted by Newsday in the front-page article “They Love to Pry and It Shows.” American Journalism Review later reported that the inflammatory headline prompted Delta to pull its ads from Newsday, costing the newspaper $2.2 million—a graphic case of an airline attempting to influence media coverage.
Fast-forward twenty years and it appears an entirely new management team at Delta still responds to negative coverage by shooting the messenger—with a cannon. In March 2011, Atlanta radio producer Chadd Scott encountered a lengthy delay on a Delta departure out of St. Louis so he tweeted: “The bean counter who saved Delta a few bucks in st. lou hoping he wouldn’t need more de-icing fluid this year screwed a lot of people today.” By the time Scott returned to Atlanta, he was fired; according to WXIA-TV, “his bosses told him Delta threatened to pull its advertising from the station.”
Journalism ethics expert Fred Brown notes, “Is there pressure from advertisers? At good publications it shouldn’t matter. The proper response is to resist that pressure.” And such pressure can be positive as well as negative.
Back when I was interviewing at Consumers Union that holiday season I stopped in to see CRTL’s outgoing editor, Laurie Berger. On her desk was a large box of assorted gourmet brownies, courtesy of America West Airlines, which I recognized because that same morning the staff at my trade magazine had torn into an identical box. She explained they would overnight the entire box back to the airline’s headquarters in Phoenix. I was impressed. But I also let her know the white chocolate raspberry brownie had been excellent.
I won’t lie. I went through a little bit of a withdrawal process when I first started working for a nonprofit. No lunches. No cocktail parties. No trips. No tchotchkes. No schmoozing. It never quite reached the night-sweats phase. Martinis . . . must have appletinis . . . Balthazar . . . must do prix-fixe lunch at Balthazar! But many an afternoon I’d feel itchy and isolated and cut off from the travel industry shindigs occurring a few miles to the south in Manhattan. Gradually I learned I didn’t need to schmooze with travel execs in order to write about their industry.
CrankyFlier.com’s Snyder has taken an extra step. His site includes a Code of Ethics, which is clearly and easily explained: “My goal is to be an open book here.” In addition to stating his personal policies, Snyder goes further and provides complete details on every offer extended to him by airlines and other travel companies. It makes for fascinating reading, and he explains why he does it: “Nothing annoys me more than being called a shill for the airlines. I know I have strong ethics, so why not share it with the world?” He adds that ethics are particularly critical for new media outlets, noting, “Anyone can start a blog and you have no way of knowing who they are. Newspapers have tended to be trustworthy, but with blogs—who knows?”
Unfortunately, not every media organization sets clear policies. Many companies willingly accept freebies from the travel industry. Others establish weak procedures that are not enforced. And some establish strict policies that are occasionally ignored.
Veteran journalist Fred Brown currently serves as vice chair of the Ethics Committee for the Society of Professional Journalists. I asked him about the particular hazards of reporting on the airline industry, since the temptations seem riper than on other beats. Brown responded, “This issue is kind of difficult for newspapers and websites to address because they use a lot of freelancers and freelancers don’t have a budget to travel. You read about a new airplane and you wonder, is it an [Associated Press] story or a freelance story?” But he adds, “Ideally a credible publication or credible website should pay its own way.”
Getting Social: New Media
If traditional media outlets have not always provided full disclosure on airline issues, thankfully other channels have emerged. Dave Carroll, the author of the YouTube mega-hit “United Breaks Guitars,” makes an important point: “The beauty of my situation is that social media has leveled the playing field—you can now be heard.”
Indeed, just as in most arenas, democratic and technological forces have combined to bypass mainstream media outlets. Consider that recent breaking news reports of airline disasters have led with cell phone images and text messages from rescuers and survivors alike, notably when US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River adjacent to the world’s media capital. It’s a phenomenon seen with extended tarmac delays, too, as passengers trapped on aircraft have called local media to provide real-time updates from on board, thus elevating such events into even larger news stories. Meanwhile, no gripe is too arcane for the leveling influence of the Internet; back in 2007, the website The Consumerist even provided graphic photographic and editorial details of a Continental flight in which lavatory waste backed up and began seeping down the aisles of the airplane.
Kate Hanni, the passenger rights advocate who knows a thing or two about generating media coverage, also knows what she’s up against with the airlines: “They use a lot of money to buy a lot of ink for what they want.” But she maintains that passengers capitalizing on social media by photographing and tweeting about service problems help keep pressure on the industry. And then there are TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, and dozens of other travel advice sites that solicit and post tens of thousands of comments from passengers. Some of these amateur reviews are biased, some are unfair, and some are downright wacky. But few would deny they have the power to influence an airline booking decision.
The flip side is that new problems can be brought to light through new media. In asserting that coverage drives policy, safety expert Todd Curtis stresses this includes coverage from both “formal and informal networks.” In fact, his AirSafe.com site includes a discussion about a photo taken in-flight by a Continental passenger that clearly shows loose and missing screws on the engine strut of a Boeing 737. As Curtis notes, “What you have now is a pervasive reach of media. Any [event] that happens is discussed. It’s hard to hide a problem.”
Epilogue
Fighting the Clock
This book has been a journey. I’ve now spent twenty-seven years in and around aviation, but through research and writing I learned an awful lot I never knew I didn’t know. Ostensibly this book is about the airlines, but in fact it’s about much more, as we struggle to define what America is becoming in 2012.
When Pan Am was in its death throes, one executive noted, “If we went into the funeral business, people would stop dying.” I thought of those words as I visited the Southern California Aviation facility in Victorville, otherwise known as the aircraft boneyard. This Mojave Desert cemetery contains hundreds of discarded commercial airplanes, some still painted in the colors of Delta or United, some partially obscured, others completely whitewashed. Domestic flights are fuller than at any time since World War II, yet this dysfunctional industry can’t find a way to improve customer service, put more skilled Americans to work, and keep planes flying.
The question emerges: Is it too late to save America’s airline industry? I certainly hope not. I think it’s worth noting that I have immersed myself in the business for more than a quarter of a century and I was stunned to uncover some of the findings shared in this book. Over a very short period of time, the airlines have radically changed how they do business. Now it’s up to all of us to reverse some of those dangerous trend lines.
Two years ago, in early 2010, I began the outline of what would eventually become these pages, though I put the project on hold once I joined the FAAC. I was also traveling about three times a week from Connecticut to New Jersey to visit my mother, who was succumbing to the cruelty of Parkinson’s disease and had begun reacting with suspicion and paranoia when any of her many children paid daily visits to her facility. One night in March she spotted me and recoiled, while I told her repeatedly not to worry, that it was Bill. Finally, I invoked the sobriquet I had been running from since 1973: “Mom . . . it’s Billy.”
Then I tried to repay a forty-five-year-old debt by settling in at her bedside to soothe her into sleep. Conversation lulled, so I started a new thread. “I’ve begun writing a book,” I told her. “A man wants to help me sell it.”
One eyebrow rose. “A book? About what?”
I leaned in close. “It’s about airplanes.”
She would be dead within weeks, just shy of her ninetieth birthday, but at that moment her features softened and it was apparent she was no more than six going on seven. She had beaten diphtheria and was perched atop her father’s shoulders, anxiously awaiting a glimpse of Lucky Lindy himself. America had oceans to conquer. “Bill?”
I smiled. “Yep. I was named for your dad.”
She seemed surprisingly lucid then, and she nodded. “Make it a good book.”
I kissed her on the forehead and dimmed the headboard light. “I’ll try,” I promised.
Conclusion
A Manifesto for Taking Back Our Skies
In September 2011 the members of the Future of Aviation Advisory Committee were called to Washington by Secretary LaHood. There we discovered that the collection of proposals we submitted the previous December was very much a work in progress. To the DOT’s credit, there were advancements on passenger rights issues, particularly new rules to enforce transparency of airline pricing and added fees. And a forum was convened to spur a long-term discussion between airline executives and labor leaders. But many of what I view as the most critical safety issues—particularly enhanced oversight of outsourced maintenance and regional carriers—never made it past the discussion stage. As for child restraint systems, the FAA backed away from mandating CRSs on domestic airlines, and instead said it will continue bolstering efforts to educate parents.
I’ve come to see that the deepest problems facing the U.S. airline industry are the deepest problems facing the United States itself. These include the pervasive effects of corporate influence throughout all three branches of government; political gridlock; the ever-widening economic gap between corporate CEOs and rank-and-file workers; federal regulators failing to regulate the industries they are sworn to oversee; the wholesale outsourcing of decent jobs, particularly outside the United States; and a willful ignorance of how industry is affecting the environment.
Quite a few of the experts I interviewed for this book offered sensible, practical, and reasonable solutions to address the many problems facing the U.S. airline industry. After analyzing and weighing a broad spectrum of competing philosophies, I came to form my own proposals for fixing the airlines. Therefore, I respectfully suggest the following actions be considered.
• Crafting a National Transportation Policy
A hot topic on the Future of Aviation Advisory Committee was “intermodalism,” a term meant to encompass how various transportation modes intersect. But a committee composed solely of aviation experts charged with examining aviation is in itself lacking—how can those with a vested interest in promoting the airline industry help determine the big-picture transportation needs of the United States? The airline lobby has its cheerleaders, as do the lobbies for highways, rail, motor coaches, etc. Consider that one expert I spoke to noted that for many U.S. airports, the largest single source of revenue is parking. So what incentive does aviation have to promote Amtrak or intercity buses? If the U.S. Department of Transportation truly wants to examine the future of aviation, then the White House must instruct the DOT to examine the future of all transportation modes at once, so we as a nation can discuss transportation not only in terms of convenience, but also in the context of jobs, the environment, infrastructure, and the public good. As Kevin Mitchell has noted, it’s past time for America to develop a true national transportation policy.
• It’s Time for Partial Reregulation
The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 held out many promises, and the industry would have us believe those promises have been fulfilled, primarily because of the tremendous influx in commercial flying over the last thirty-three years. Prior to 1978, airline safety was improving, more passengers were flying, and fares were decreasing. What remains unknown and unknowable is how many of the changes we have seen since 1978 would have occurred naturally, even in a regulated environment, due to technological advancements and other big-picture factors. Today it’s fair to ask, who exactly has benefited from airline deregulation? Investors have lost billions over three decades. Airline employees have been downsized, outsourced, offshored, and cut back. Communities have lost service and in some cases airlines. And as for consumers, they are more frustrated with commercial aviation than they have ever been. The claim that base airfares have not risen dramatically in the aggregate conceals the billions now paid by passengers in ancillary fees and does not address the inequities in a system that primarily has seen fares repressed only by the presence of low-cost carriers. The industry’s stellar safety record is threatened by cost cutting and outsourcing. It’s time to acknowledge the simple fact that the airlines are run as a cutthroat free-market exercise, yet they provide a necessary and vital service for the nation and are intrinsic to its economy, welfare, security, and even defense. Airline executives make individual decisions that may seem logical on a corporate basis but are detrimental to the country on a macro level. As former American Airlines chairman Bob Crandall notes, the airline industry is a necessary utility, and as such it requires the regulation of a utility. Few would seek a complete return to 1978, when the Civil Aeronautics Board micromanaged the industry, route by route and fare by fare. But it is time for the White House and Congress to direct the Department of Transportation to reconsider how partial reregulation will level the industry’s inherent deficiencies. This means ensuring that communities and passengers are served, fares are priced to ensure a return on investment, labor agreements are fair to both parties, and safety is not compromised.
