Summer air travel in the US gets harder

26 May, 2007:

Air travel in the United States is facing in 2007 its toughest summer in many years, with airplanes packed with more passengers than ever and morale of employees at a low ebb.

Analysts have said that the 2007 summer travel season could even rival that of the summer of 2000 – with work slowdowns, record flight delays and passenger frustration, The Christian Science Monitor has reported.

It promises to be a busy summer travel season. The Air Transport Association, representing the largest airlines in the United States, predicts that a record number of passengers will travel by air during the Memorial Day holiday period and during the summer months.

It has been forecast that, during the 10-day Memorial Day period from May 21 through May 30, a total of 21.4 million passengers will travel globally on US airlines – a 3% increase from 2006.

The summer air travel forecast for June 1 through August 31 is for 209 million passengers to fly globally on US airlines, also a 3% increase from the same three months in 2006.

There is so much dissatisfaction and so many employees are burned out, complains Kevin Mitchell, chairman of Business Travel Coalition. They are working, he adds, longer hours for less pay in a system that is jammed to the hilt.

Pilots, flight attendants and ground workers are picketing to regain some of the concessions they had made when many big airlines went into bankruptcy after 2001, The Christian Science Monitor report said.

Captain Paul Rice, first vice-president of Airline Pilots Association, told the Monitor that the flight employees had made those sacrifices for the life of the company and with the understanding that when the company was back on the road to profitability, those sacrifices would be rewarded. But, as profits have finally come in, almost the first action of senior management in most companies has been to reward themselves and not to reinvest in the company, not to thank shareholders or their workers, alleges Paul Rice.

The Air Transport Association refused to comment on the concerns of labour or executive compensation, The Christian Science Monitor said.

Meanwhile, with the gasoline prices at record high, many travellers in the United States are finding that flying or riding a bus can be cheaper than driving.

Exorbitant prices of gasoline are prompting more and more people to consider alternatives to driving vacations.