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Airline Fares Fall, Complaints Rise

Airline Fares Fall, Complaints Rise

By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Consumer surveys have shown that the most important factor in buying an airline ticket is price.

So a 5 percent drop in domestic airfares during the first 10 months of 2015 compared with the same period last year should result in lots of happy fliers, right?

Not so. Instead, complaints against airlines are on the rise.

The drop in domestic airfares was reported last week by travel giant Expedia with help from Airlines Reporting Corp., an Arlington, Va., company that handles ticketing transactions between the nation’s airlines and travel agents.

The study of more than 10 billion ticket transactions recorded an 8 percent drop in airfares worldwide. (The Expedia study did not list the dollar price for the average domestic airfare.)

A number of factors have contributed to the average 5 percent drop in fares in North America, including a steep decline in fuel prices.

But rather than singing the praises of airlines over lower fares, passengers are complaining at a 36 percent rate higher than last year, according to consumer data from the federal Aviation Consumer Protection Division.

In raw numbers, the U.S. Department of Transportation received 10,444 complaints against U.S.-based airlines in the first 10 months of 2015, compared with 7,467 in the same period last year. When calculated against the total number of air travelers, the rate was 1.97 complaints for every 100,000 fliers in the first 10 months of 2015 compared with 1.44 in the same period last year.

Paul Hudson, president of flyersrights.org, a nonprofit passenger rights group, said he isn’t surprised at the rise in complaints because airlines continue to charge high fees to check bags and change reservations while packing more passengers into smaller seats.

“The service level has dropped,” he said.

Airline industry representatives played down the complaint rate and instead focused on the decline in airfares.

“The customer complaint rate remains remarkably low,” said Vaughn Jennings, a spokesman for Airlines for America, a trade group for the nation’s biggest airlines. “Air travel remains one of the best consumer bargains out there.”

UNITED AIRLINES GOING TO THE DOGS

For those airline fliers who get so frazzled by holiday travel that they start to bark at seatmates, United Airlines is offering an all-natural way to relieve stress: dogs.

Through a program called United Paws, the Chicago-based carrier is deploying more than 200 dogs to the airline’s seven airport hubs Monday through Wednesday. The specially trained “comfort dogs” will be led around the terminals by handlers so that stressed fliers can pet, scratch and nuzzle the pooches.

In past years, the program has operated at only one or two airports during the holidays. But United plans to expand the effort this year to Los Angeles, Cleveland, Denver, Washington, Houston, Chicago and Newark, N.J.

The 13 dogs assigned to Los Angeles International Airport are coming from the nonprofit group Actors & Others for Animals.

Representatives of United Paws say research shows that five minutes spent with a dog can decrease stress hormones and lower blood pressure.
Throughout the rest of the year, LAX funds a similar program dubbed Pets Unstressing Passengers. Under the PUP program, dogs and their handlers roam the airport every day to spread the dogs’ healing powers.

DELTA BUSINESS-CLASS FLIERS TO GET PJS

How can you tell who the business-class travelers are on Delta’s long-haul flights?

They’re the ones wearing pajamas.

Delta Air Lines has announced that starting in March it will give passengers on its elite business-class section gray cotton sleepwear on flights from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, and from L.A. to Shanghai.

The PJs make sense because nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Sydney or L.A. to Shanghai can last up to 15 hours. In the business-class section, known as Delta One, passengers can sleep in lie-flat seats with a white comforter and hypoallergenic, down-alternative pillow.

Changing into the pajamas is not a problem because Delta One passengers get access to extra large onboard bathrooms. The price for such comfort: about $11,000 to $17,000 each way to either Sydney or Shanghai.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo Via Travis Wise at Flickr

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Cockpit Confidential’

Top Reads For News Junkies: ‘Cockpit Confidential’

In the wake of the recent tragedy of the Germanwings crash, it is natural and understandable to be apprehensive about air travel. The incident has already caused officials to reassess security protocols; surely another wave of reforms is in store for travelers. The best you can do is stay informed. In his 2013 book Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections, former pilot Patrick Smith pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of air travel, including the misconceptions, practices, and culture of the industry.

You can purchase the book here.

Airliner Skids Off Runway At New York’s La Guardia

Airliner Skids Off Runway At New York’s La Guardia

New York (AFP) – An airliner skidded off a runway at New York’s La Guardia airport Thursday as a major winter storm battered the United States from Texas to the U.S. east coast.

Heavy snow was falling as Delta flight 1086 from Atlanta slid off the runway, up an embankment and into a fence after landing at around 11:00 am.

A spokesman for New York Fire Department reported some minor injuries. Video of the scene showed passengers climbing out of the plane through an exit over a wing and trudging through thick snow.

It was the most dramatic incident on a day in which a huge winter storm forced thousands of flight cancellations, and disrupted life across a broad swath of the United States.

In Washington DC, government workers were ordered to stay home, schools were closed, and museums shuttered for the day as icy rain turned to heavy snow.

Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York were expected to get as much as eight inches of snow, with wind chill temperatures dipping well below average in much of the region.

Forecasters had warned of low visibility in New York, and some 40 percent of flights had been canceled at La Guardia before the accident there, according to flightaware.com.

“We just crash landed at LGA. I’m terrified. Please,” passenger Jaime Primak tweeted from @jaimeprimak.

“We have all been evacuated. Everyone is safe. Thank you for your prayers. God is good.”

Delta said the 125 passengers and six crew members aboard the plane had disembarked via aircraft slides and were moved to the terminal on buses.

“Our priority is ensuring our customers and crew members are safe,” Delta said in a statement.

The airline vowed to “work with all authorities and stakeholders to look into what happened in this incident.”

The FDNY said on Twitter there was a fuel leak after the McDonnell Douglas MD88 aircraft skidded off the runway.

A Fire Department spokesperson later told AFP the fuel leak was under control.

In a Twitter message, La Guardia airport said its runways were closed and warned travelers to expect cancellations and delays.

The National Weather Service said 65 million people were under a winter storm warning, and other another 29 million were under a winter weather advisory.

In Kentucky, Governor Steve Beshear declared a state of emergency for the state, where some cities were pounded with 20 inches of snow.

Southern United States was not spared — with Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico all facing weather warnings.

Forecasters said the storm’s scope was out of the ordinary.

“For this time of year, to be impacting people in the relative deep south, it’s a fairly unusual event,” NWS meteorologist Bruce Terry told AFP.

He said southern states, not accustomed to winter conditions, might not be as prepared as some of their more weathered US neighbors.

“They’re not going to be as well-equipped to deal with significant snowfall, as we would back east here and in the northeast.”

Washington and Baltimore were expecting up to eight inches of snow, with temperatures in the capital dropping to 10 Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius) by evening.

“Significant amounts of snow are forecast that will make travel dangerous. Only travel in an emergency. If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food, and water in your vehicle,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cautioned for Washington and Baltimore.

In New York and New Jersey, forecasters said wind chill temperatures could plummet to 13 degrees Fahrenheit(-10.5 Celsius), with as much as seven inches of snow expected as well.

Forecasters said Philadelphia could also get seven inches of the white stuff, and warned “the snow will make travel very hazardous or impossible.”

Meanwhile, freezing rain, sleet and snow was forecast in Texas, while New Mexico was bracing for “hazardous” conditions later Thursday.

Airports braced for travel chaos, with more than 4,100 flights canceled by Thursday afternoon and more cancellations and delays expected.

The storm was expected to last until early evening, Terry said, but warned cold temperatures were likely to remain.

“It’s going to be this air mass behind this cold front, so again Friday, temperatures will probably be average 20 to 30 degrees below normal,” he said.

Photo: A Delta flight from Atlanta skidded off the runway and struck a fence while landing at LaGuardia Airport on Thursday, March 5, 2015. New York City fire officials reported 24 non-life-threatening injuries and said three of those people were taken to the hospital. (Photo courtesy NYPD Special Ops/TNS)

This story has been updated.

Second U.S. Ebola Nurse To Leave Hospital

Second U.S. Ebola Nurse To Leave Hospital

Washington — A Texas nurse who was the second U.S. healthcare worker infected with Ebola while caring for a Liberian patient will leave hospital later Tuesday, her spokesman told AFP.

Amber Vinson was declared cured of the virus last week by Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, and is expected to make a statement to reporters upon her release at 1 pm (1700 GMT).

She will not take questions, spokesman Steven Jumper said.

Her colleague Nina Pham, who also worked in the intensive care unit of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, was treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and was released on Friday.

Both became infected while caring for a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola in Texas after flying to the United States from his native Liberia, the country hardest hit by West Africa’s Ebola epidemic. He died on October 8.

Ebola has killed more than 4,900 people and infected more than 10,000 since the beginning of the year, according to the World Health Organization.

Vinson’s story sparked alarm across the United States after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she flew on a domestic airplane from Texas to Ohio and back, and reported a low-grade fever before boarding the flight home.

The CDC cleared her for travel at the time — about a day before she was diagnosed with Ebola — but said later she should not have been traveling on a commercial airliner.

Vinson’s family hired a high profile Washington lawyer, Billy Martin, after issuing a statement saying they were “troubled by some of the negative public comments and media coverage that mischaracterize Amber and her actions.”

“In no way was Amber careless prior to or after her exposure to Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan. She has not and would not knowingly expose herself or anyone else,” it said.

The release of Vinson leaves just one patient in U.S. hospital care for Ebola, doctor Craig Spencer, at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

AFP Photo/Chip Somodevilla

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