Delta Airlines cuts jobs; who’s to blame?

by Grant Martin on

Atlanta based Delta Airlines announced Tuesday that they were cutting 2,000 jobs, their second cutback in six months. Citing rising fuel costs, the airline also says that it will cut back capacity and park 45 airplanes.

As the airline despondently pointed out, fuel prices have risen 20% in the last three months while market prices and competition have stayed tight. Under those conditions, how can an airline not be forced to cut back?

The problem, as a function of the egregious gouging by oil companies, is that airline prices have not appreciated correctly with crude and inflation. Increased internal competition and external pressures from passengers to produce the cheapest fares possible have forced carriers to underbid one another to the point of taking losses on many of their flights while operating costs skyrocket. Sure, airlines could enact a unilateral increase in fares across the country, but then some carriers (those perhaps, who locked in their oil prices years ago) could unfairly take advantage of the market.

Besides, are we as Americans going to stand by while airline prices assume their normal level? I guarantee you congress and passengers would be in an uproar and we would have three particular senators crying murder.

But until something drastic happens, we’re bound to ride the imploding American skies. Bankruptcies will continue, mergers will haunt our shareholders and the unions will continue to battle management over labor costs. We’ll blame a CEO for taking a million dollar bonus and politicians will form committees against the backdrop of your favorite airline stock inching closer to the floor. Through it all, the oil companies will step back and let us fight amongst ourselves, and as we slowly work our way towards collapse they’ll silently take our money — and laugh themselves all of the way to the bank.

Near-collision videos show need for updated airport safety technology

by Catherine Bodry on

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released dramatic animation of two runway near-collisions, in order to promote the need for improvements in runway safety. The re-creation was based on radar and flight data recorder information from the planes involved.

The video includes audio from an air traffic controller yelling “stop! stop! stop!” to a United plane as it begins to taxi onto a runway where a Delta flight is landing. The planes came within 230 feet of each other. In another situation, one plane lands while another is taking off on a perpendicular runway. The leaving flight is able to lift off early while the landing flight hit the breaks and stops in the middle of the runway. The planes avoided a collision by as little as 30 feet.

The animations were presented at the annual NTSB board meeting, where the agency reviews its most transportation safety concerns.

Read the full article and watch the video on CNN.com.

Want to smell a new plane? It might be awhile if it’s American

by Jamie Rhein on

I’ve bought new cars and I’ve bought used. My last used car smelled lovely. The friend of mine who sold it too me must have either used wonderful soap daily —or wore a light, fabulous perfume. New cars don’t have to work hard to smell special. Smelling new like the grown up version of a fresh, just taken out of the box vinyl toy is enough–unless it’s brand new leather shoes, and then double yum.

A brand new airplane must really smell fantastic. I have no idea, though, since I’ve never been on a brand new airplane that I can recall. According to the latest news on U.S. carriers, it might be awhile before anyone will get the experience–at least if one is getting from here to there on an airplane from an American company.

These days, frugality is in–new planes are out. The airlines want to beef up their coffers in order to make up for the post 9/11 shortfalls that had them tumbling towards bankruptcy. Okay, so new is not an option, and according to the New York Times article that outlined all the reasons why new airplanes aren’t on the horizon, giving the airplanes a through cleaning is not a priority either. One guy who was quoted used words like “grimy” to describe the problem.

According to the airlines, older planes are safe so there really isn’t anything to worry about. I do admit when I was flying Delta round-trip from Columbus to Los Angeles a few weeks ago, when I rested my head against the seat, I wondered about the upholstery.

Delta Opens up SKY360 Lounge in New York

by Grant Martin on

If you find yourself in New York any time over the next month, take some time to stop by the SKY360 Lounge that Delta opened up last week. Occupying an expensive piece of real estate on 57th street and 6th avenue, this new storefront is supposed to showcase the new changes happening at Delta over the coming months.

Among the cadre of activities for the public to experience within you’ll find:

  • A (complimentary) coffee and soda bar, serving cocktails in the evening, with little pods in which to sit and enjoy them. Bring your laptop for free wifi as well.
  • Samplings of the new, exotic menu items inspired by Delta’s celebrity chef. As dear Catherine and I pointed out last week, this is becoming the hip thing to do among airlines.
  • And my favorite, examples of the new leather coach and premium seats to be installed in the new 777 livery (pictured), integrated with the new Audio/Video On Demand (AVOD) system for your Sopranos fix.

Additionally, if you can manage to get your “friend in PR” to get you an invite, a variety of private events are happening in the evening, from an Esquire party to random hotties dropping in. I’m still trying to get there for a corporate event — keep an eye out for me.

Delta Requires Two Seats for Conjoined Twins

by Grant Martin on

In this week’s version of bizarre news, Delta is requiring that a mother traveling with conjoined infant twins purchase two seats instead of one. As the Arizona Republic reports, Mandy Bailey spoke with Delta ticketing agents before departure and they couldn’t figure out how many seats to sell her. After a brief period of evil-doing and cat-stroking, Delta replied that since the kids would need two oxygen masks they need extra seats. Then they told Bailey (I’m not making this up) to “call the Red Cross” for help paying for the other ticket.

I suppose I can see the concern with not having enough oxygen masks for conjoined twins. But what do mono-infants sitting in their parents’ laps do when the oxygen masks drop? In that case there is still only going to be one mask falling from the ceiling: for the adult.

In the end, Delta is put in a hard place because they’re trying to cope with nonexistant standards on conjoined lap infants against the simple human problem of a mother getting her girls out to see family in Maryland. Despite the defensive stance that any corporate entity has to take in this day and age, in this case I think they’re being a little conservative with their policies.