JetBlue still upbeat, but not darling it once was

* Service defined by close connection with customers


* Higher costs, investor questions pose challenges


* Pilot incident adds to JetBlue headlines


* Travel system wound tight; surveillance cameras on planes


By John Crawley and Patricia Kranz


WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) - JetBlue's emergency response team barely had time to locate the Incident Operations Center at their new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens when they were summoned there to handle an emergency on March 27, a day after they moved in.

JetBlue pilot Clayton Osbon was behaving erratically on Flight 191 from New York to Las Vegas, running through the cabin screaming about religion and terrorists. Passengers tackled him in the galley. The plane had to be diverted to Amarillo, Texas, where a co-pilot guided it to a safe landing.

As the airline's emergency response team gathered around a 24-seat conference table, the shades were lowered to darken the room. Soon, all eyes shifted to the main wall, where the company's Twitter feed was projected in large letters.


"That's how we got a lot of the early customer responses and their experiences," said JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin. "As customer stories started coming in, we knew it was far more than just a medical emergency."


Close connections with customers and a willingness to embrace popular technology is vintage JetBlue. It was the first airline to equip its entire fleet with seatback TV screens. Flight attendants pass out food during a delay; some even offer massages.


Into its second decade, however, JetBlue is not the darling it once was, with passengers or with Wall Street. Previously known for being inventive, contrarian and taking customer service to a new level, JetBlue has more recently made headlines for long delays that caused passengers to be stranded for hours.


While last week's pilot meltdown was viewed as a rare incident that could happen on any airline, it could chip away at JetBlue's reputation even though the carrier still maintains a relatively high level of customer service.


JetBlue loses few bags. Nor does it cancel many flights or oversell seats, government figures show. But its planes are older and require more work, competitors have shaped up, and the business is as tough as ever, with soaring fuel costs, higher fares, crowded markets and a weak economy.


"I think in many respects they've matured and part of the maturation process is when you're a ten-year-old company, you have ten-year-old company costs. You're not growing as rapidly as you used to," said Robert Mann, an industry consultant and former airline executive.


Jet Blue shares were trading at under $5 this week, far below their peak of about $30 in October 2003 after adjusting for stock splits.

JetBlue is well managed and financially healthy, experts say, with a market value of roughly $1.4 billion. The airline captures about 5 percent of the U.S. market by revenue through 750 daily flights to 70 cities on 172 Airbus and Embraer jets.

But JetBlue is now facing head winds that will further test its strategic vision, employee morale and its service culture.

For starters, JetBlue's big overseas shareholder, Lufthansa , floated notes last week that give investors the option of a cash payout or JetBlue stock in 2017. The $311 million offering signaled possible willingness by Lufthansa to cut its nearly 16 percent stake in its New York partner, depressing JetBlue's stock. JetBlue posted higher-than-expected profit of $23 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. But rivals who used to lose tens of millions of dollars each quarter have made money, too. JetBlue's stock trades at roughly 9.4 times projected 2012 earnings, while multiples for other major carriers range from 12.4 for Southwest Airlines, to 5.1 at United Continental to 3.9 for US Airways.

A leading airline analyst, Dahlman Rose & Co's Helane Becker, has a "sell" rating on shares of JetBlue, one of only two airlines with that recommendation from her. The other had been Pinnacle Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy on Monday.


Becker says JetBlue has a respectable balance sheet and good management, and she believes the company has potential to do better. Bu t for now, she is sticking with early first-quarter analysis that noted competitive pressures JetBlue faces from Delta Air Lines at New York's John F. Kennedy airport.

Becker also said maintenance requirements on JetBlue's aging fleet would likely affect earnings growth this year.

JetBlue said it is sticking to its growth strategy despite heightened competition. "I am respectful of healthy competition, but I also believe there are plenty of customers in this industry," said JetBlue's chief administrative officer, Jim Hnat. "If you do it right you can win customer loyalty based upon brand and experience."

UPSTART, SETBACKS
JetBlue was founded in 1998 by David Neeleman, a frenetic former executive of Southwest Airlines, which succeeded with a simple operating philosophy and low fares. At JetBlue, Neeleman stressed better travel through informality and customer service for its core leisure markets.

JetBlue was aggressively marketed, costs were kept low, and it grew fast - a new plane every 10 days from 2000 to 2005. Unions, a force in the airline business, were not part of the mix. Neeleman wanted a team-based culture.
JetBlue went public in April 2002 and won the affections of Wall Street, with the company's shares more than doubling in their first year and a half on the Nasdaq.


Planes were new, and routes were direct and not always contested. JetBlue made money while much of the industry collapsed into insolvency. Attempts by rivals to mimic it with spinoffs failed. JetBlue was a "giant slayer."

Then its operational shortcomings caught up with it.

A 2007 Valentine's Day ice storm in New York led to nearly 1,200 flight cancellations over several days and stranded passengers on planes with no food, water and overflowing toilets. A humbled Neeleman lost his job.

JetBlue was again in the news in August 2010 when a flight attendant, upset after an altercation with a passenger, bolted from a plane by deploying and sliding down an inflatable chute.

Then in October 2011, five JetBlue planes sat on a snowy tarmac in Hartford for hours, dredging up difficult memories for the company of Neeleman's downfall.

Explanations vary as to why JetBlue makes unwanted headlines - three times now in less than two years. Joanna Geraghty, JetBlue's chief people officer, said geography plays a role.

"The Northeast market is highly congested and highly competitive," she said. "And the concentration of our network is Northeast and South focused, so if you get something like a Hurricane Irene, that can have a pretty strong impact on our operations."

JetBlue's huge Twitter following also plays a role, Geraghty said. "If there's a hiccup, it gets played out in the media far more than other airlines'," she said.


CHALLENGE FOR WORKERS


Two of the events, including last week's emergency landing, involved the emotional health of workers during a stressful time for the airline industry.


"In the last year or two, passengers and crew members are acting as if they're under a lot of stress," Mann said. "There's nothing about JetBlue, but it suggests to me that the entire transportation system is just wound a little too tight."

JetBlue noted that it is the only airline that has video surveillance inside some of its planes (Airbus A320s). Cameras were installed primarily to keep tabs on passenger behavior (or misbehavior). But when Osbon left the cockpit last week, those cameras proved invaluable for another reason - the copilot was able to see the tumult in the cabin and galley on a video display without leaving the cockpit, and make the pivotal decision to lock the cockpit door.


The cabin surveillance system is a huge asset," said JetBlue Captain David Scott, who until recently was chairman of the airline's pilot values committee.

Hnat said JetBlue's growing pains were "natural" and helped it refocus. He characterizes its current state as a "growing-up phase" during which JetBlue will still seek to shake things up but not merge with another airline or change its culture.

Gary Chaison, a labor expert at Clark University, believes non-union employees at JetBlue must feel more pressure with profits shrinking, airline bankruptcies again making headlines, and more industry consolidation still possible.
"I think the workers are operating under some stress because they know the corporate culture says they are a joint partner in the company. They enjoy a special status, but I think they see it as not going to last forever," Chaison said.


JetBlue's Scott said pilots feel more secure after negotiating a new deal with management last November that built new safeguards into every pilot's contract with management.

"The biggest fear of a pilot is to be furloughed or let go," Scott said. "We're scared of a sale." One of the new provisions gives JetBlue pilots a voice in managing the seniority lists if the company is bought or merged. "It was a big deal," he said.


In the past, JetBlue grew just by adding new destinations. That's become tougher now. Former Continental Airlines Chief Executive Gordon Bethune said many attractive markets are already pretty full, and JetBlue's biggest rivals are in better shape and much tougher competitively than they were a decade ago.


Tere is no place to put an airplane where they don't have competition. It's harder to grow," he said.

Beyond Mile-High Grub: Can Airline Food Be Tasty?
Jim Wilson/The New York Times


The catering of a jet in Houston. To lure high-paying customers, airlines are upgrading meals in their upper-class cabins, despite many logistical challenges.


At low elevations, the 10,000 or so taste buds in the human mouth work pretty much as nature intended. With an assist from the nose — the sense of smell plays a big role in taste — the familiar quartet of sweet, bitter, sour and salty registers as usual. Tomato juice tastes like tomato juice, turkey Florentine like turkey Florentine.


But step aboard a modern airliner, and the sense of taste loses its bearings. This isn’t simply because much airline food is unappetizing, although that doesn’t help. No, the bigger issue is science — science that airlines now want to turn to their advantage as they vie for lucrative business- and first-class travelers.


Even before a plane takes off, the atmosphere inside the cabin dries out the nose. As the plane ascends, the change in air pressure numbs about a third of the taste buds. And as the plane reaches a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, cabin humidity levels are kept low by design, to reduce the risk of fuselage corrosion. Soon, the nose no longer knows. Taste buds are M.I.A. Cotton mouth sets in.


All of which helps explain why, for instance, a lot of tomato juice is consumed on airliners: it tastes far less acidic up in the air than it does down on the ground. It also helps explain why airlines tend to salt and spice food heavily and serve wines that are full-bodied fruit bombs. Without all that extra kick, the food would taste bland. Above the Atlantic, even a decent light Chablis would taste like lemon juice.

“Subtlety is not well served at altitude,” says Andrea Robinson, a sommelier who has selected wines for Delta Air Lines since 2008.


The science of airline food, which Delta, Lufthansa and other airlines have studied assiduously for years, has opened a new front in the battle for passengers in the upper-class cabins. Until recently, airline food seemed in terminal decline — another victim of widespread cost cuts in this long-troubled industry. Industry experts trace the problem back to 1987, when American Airlines removed a single olive from its salads to save a little money.
Anyone who has flown coach in recent years knows what happened next. Catering budgets were cut drastically. Free meals disappeared from cattle class. It might seem hard to believe, but flight attendants once whisked racks of lamb down the aisles on silver trays. Today, they hawk chips and soda.


But after years of belt-tightening, airline executives are investing again to attract business passengers willing to pay a premium for tickets, and food is a big part of that effort. This includes devising new menus and even hiring celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay, of “Hell’s Kitchen” fame, to consult. The motivation is obvious: business and first class account for about a third of all airline seats but generate a majority of the revenue. Keeping high-end customers is crucial to the bottom line.

THE industry can’t afford missteps. Airlines suffered mightily as travelers pulled back after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks. In the decade that followed, domestic carriers lost a combined $60 billion as competition intensified and fuel prices rose. For many carriers, bankruptcy was the only option. American Airlines was the most recent major airline to do so, last November.

After so much turbulence, airlines are trying to chart a more profitable course through mergers and a renewed focus on business and first class. Many have installed flat-bed seats on some domestic flights, fancier entertainment systems and Wi-Fi.


But in the kitchen, science is still working against airlines. To crack the taste code, Lufthansa, the German airline, went as far as enlisting the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, a research institute near Munich. Among other things, the airline wanted to know why passengers ordered as much tomato juice as beer — about 423,000 gallons of each annually. The answer was that for many passengers, tomato juice apparently has a different taste in different atmospheric conditions.


“We put a lot of effort in designing perfect meals for our clients, but when we tried them ourselves in the air, the meals would taste like airline food,” says Ingo Buelow, who is in charge of food and beverages at Lufthansa. “We were puzzled.”

So are many other people.
“Ice cream is about the only thing I can think of that tastes good on a plane,” says Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “Airlines have a problem with food on board. The packaging, freezing, drying and storage are hard on flavor at any altitude, let alone 30,000 feet.”


The journey from recipe book to industrial kitchen to a plane in midflight is fraught with peril. It’s not just a culinary feat — it’s also a logistical nightmare. The $13-billion-a-year airline catering industry serves millions of meals daily worldwide. It must maintain supply chains, standards and quality under a variety of local conditions.


“The cooking is the easy part,” says Corey Roberts, a chef based in New York with LSG Sky Chefs, the biggest catering company. “What we have to worry about is the logistics of getting the correct meal on the correct flight, on the right trays, into the right galley, at the right time. It’s a logistical puzzle of juggling all these meals, every day, for hundreds of flights.”
Catering facilities are part restaurants, part industrial production halls where thousands of workers grill, fry, bake, simmer, boil, poach, beat and braise. Food safety standards require all meals to be cooked first on the ground. After that, they are blast-chilled and refrigerated until they can be stacked on carts and loaded on planes. 
Our chefs are like portrait painters,” says Peter Wilander at Delta. “They can get pretty creative. But we need to translate that into painting by numbers.”


In 2010, LSG Sky Chefs produced 460 million meals for 300 airlines in 200 flight kitchens in 50 countries. GateGourmet, the No. 2 caterer, served 9,700 daily flights in 28 countries.


Once all the food is aboard, airlines face another hurdle: planes don’t have full kitchens. For safety, open-flame grills and ovens aren’t allowed on commercial aircraft. Flight attendants can’t touch food the way a restaurant chef might in order to prepare a dish. Galley space is cramped, and there’s little time to get creative with presentation.


So attendants must contend with convection ovens that blow hot, dry air over the food. Newer planes have steam ovens, which are better because they help keep food moist. Either way, meals can only be reheated, not cooked, on board.


“Getting any food to taste good on a plane is an elusive goal,” says Steve Gundrum, who runs a company that develops new products for the food industry.
STILL, there was a time not so long ago when airline food could seem very special. Mr. Gundrum recalls, for example, that he had his best airline meal aboard a British Airways Concorde 25 years ago. It was grouse cooked in a wine reduction, accompanied by little roasted potatoes.


Today, airlines want to recreate some of those glory days in their upper-class cabins, with American carriers — trying to bounce back from years of financial cutbacks — aiming to catch up with foreign rivals’ international service.


And some of those foreign carriers have been raising the stakes. The menu at Air France, for instance, includes Basque shrimp and turmeric-scented pasta with lemon grass. The dishes were created by the chef Joël Robuchon, who has collected a total of 27 Michelin stars in his career. The airline’s roster of chefs also includes Guy Martin, the chef at le Grand Véfour, and Jacques Le Divellec, who runs a restaurant that bears his name in Paris.

Air France isn’t alone in reaching out to celebrity chefs. Lufthansa teams with chefs from the luxury hotel chain Mandarin Oriental to prepare meals for its flights between the United States and Germany. Singapore Airlines, meanwhile, has published a book of in-flight recipes from 10 chefs, including Mr. Ramsay. Its business- and first-class passengers can pick their meals from an online menu 24 hours before takeoff. The airline offers a braised soy-flavored duck with yam rice — a specialty from Singapore — or a seafood thermidor with buttered asparagus, slow-roasted vine-ripened tomatoes and saffron rice.


Korean Air owns a farm where it raises beef and organic grains and vegetables for its in-flight meals, including bibimbap, a Korean classic of rice, sautéed vegetables and chili paste that the airline serves in coach. The farm has more than 1,600 head of cattle and more than 5,000 chickens destined for meals in first class.

And the catering business of Emirates Airlines, in Dubai, handles 90,000 meals a day and bakes its own bread, crumble cake and pecan pie. It also prepares nearly 130 different kinds of menus daily. It offers Japanese and Italian dishes, for instance, and has 12 regional Indian cuisines. Eighteen workers spend their days just making elaborate flower designs out of fruit.
American carriers, while elevating their international food service, have generally shunned such refinements on domestic flights. But Peter Wilander, managing director of onboard services at Delta, wants to bring some glamour back.

Last year, Delta hired Michael Chiarello, a celebrity chef from Napa Valley, to come up with new menus for business-class passengers flying on transcontinental routes — New York to Los Angeles and New York to San Francisco. It was not the first time that Delta had worked with a renowned chef. The airline has served meals created by Michelle Bernstein, a Miami chef, since 2006 in its international business class.


“Our chefs are like portrait painters,” Mr. Wilander says. “They can get pretty creative. But we need to translate that into painting by numbers.” That process began last May, when Mr. Chiarello met with executives and catering chefs from Delta at a boxy industrial kitchen on the edge of the San Francisco airport to demonstrate some of his recipes. Among the dozens of dishes he tried were an artichoke and white-bean spread, short ribs with polenta, and a small lasagna of eggplant and goat cheese.
“I am known for making good food, and airlines generally are not,” says Mr. Chiarello, who is also the author of a half-dozen cookbooks, the host for a show on the Food Network, and a former contestant on “Top Chef Masters” and “The Next Iron Chef.” “I probably have a lot more to lose than to gain doing this.”

Huddled around him, white-toqued chefs from Delta and its catering partners weighed each ingredient on a small electronic scale, took scrupulous notes and pictures and tried to calculate how much it would cost to recreate each dish a thousand times a day.
It took Mr. Chiarello six months to come up with the menu. He tested recipes, picked seasonal ingredients, considered textures and colors and looked at ways to present his meals on a small airline tray. Then Delta’s corporate chefs had to learn his way of cooking and serving. Bean counters — the financial kind — priced each item. Executives and frequent fliers were drafted to taste his creations.
There were a lot of questions. How should cherry tomatoes be sliced? (The answer: Leave them whole.) What side should a chicken fillet be grilled on? (Skin first.) How many slices of prosciutto can be used as appetizers? (Two large ones, rather than three, struck the balance between taste and price.)
FOR airlines like Delta, these are not trivial matters. A decision a few years ago to shave one ounce from its steaks, for example, saved the airline $250,000 a year. And every step of kitchen labor increases costs when so many meals are prepared daily. An entrée accounts for about 60 percent of a meal’s cost, according to Delta, while appetizers account for 17 percent, salads 10 percent and desserts 7 percent.


Delta also calculated that by removing a single strawberry from salads served in first class on domestic routes, it would save $210,000 a year. The company hands out 61 million bags of peanuts every year, and about the same number of pretzels. A one-cent increase in peanut prices increases Delta’s costs by $610,000 a year.
Others are catching on. United Airlines said in February that it would upgrade its service to first- and business-class passengers and would change the way it prepares meals “to improve the quality and taste.” It also said it would start offering a new ice cream sundae option with a choice of six toppings on international flights. On domestic flights, premium passengers will get new snacks, including warm cookies.


At Bottega, his high-end restaurant in Yountville, Calif., Mr. Chiarello specializes in modern Italian flavors, with a focus on fresh ingredients and an obsessive attention to detail in the kitchen and in the dining room. His staff is meticulously trained and has an intimate understanding of the dishes and wines served. And Mr. Chiarello is the undisputed boss of his kitchen.
Translating that in an airline setting is arduous. Delta sent some of its flight attendants based in New York to Mr. Chiarello’s Napa restaurant, and organized Webcasts so others could hear him talk about his food. It also introduced new silverware and trays in time for his new three-course meals.
Delta hopes that passengers will come back if they have a good meal. But for chefs like Mr. Chiarello, airline cooking will always pose challenges.
“If I put a sauce on a plate at my restaurant, I bark at the waiters to hold the plate straight so it doesn’t spill,” he says. “But you can’t bark at the pilot to fly the plane straight, right?”

10 best domestic, foreign airports for flier freebies



By Gary Stoller, USA TODAYUpdated 5h 56m a


North Carolina's Charlotte Douglas airport, frequent business traveler Kathryn Alice likes the rocking chairs, occasional free concerts and the grand piano where "passersby are welcome to sit down and tickle the ivories."

Alice, a vice president in the publishing industry in Los Angeles, says airports need to increase free services and activities for families traveling with children and other fliers.


"Perks like free Wi-Fi and aid to overburdened travelers ease the pain of travel, and small comforts go a long way toward making the traveler feel cared for," Alice says.
"Anything that gives travelers a taste of the local culture or a personal greeting upon arrival adds to the favorable experience of an airport and the city or country where it's located."

Though a growing number of airports provide free Wi-Fi, airports and their retail tenants are looking to make a dollar off a captive audience of travelers.
Freebies are scarce, but, when provided, they can make a lasting impression.
Frequent flier Murray Cook, whose company builds and designs sports fields, will never forget the freebies at Cuba's Havana airport.
"Once you arrive, you are taken to a waiting area where they bring you rum, Cokes and, if you like, a cigar," says Cook of Roanoke, Va.


Travelers may not find another airport with complimentary items such as those in Havana, but they can take advantage of other unique freebies at airports worldwide.


At USA TODAY's request, travel publisher Frommers.com went on the prowl to find the 10 best freebies at U.S. and foreign airports.


Here is what Frommers.com found:

U.S. airports


•Chicago O'Hare: Children's play area. Plenty of airports have play areas, but the one called "Kids on the Fly" in Terminal 2 is more than 2,000 square feet, airport-themed and designed by the Chicago Children's Museum. The area has a play helicopter, play airplane, play check-in counter and a collection of giant Legos for making towers.
•Fort Wayne, Ind.: Cookies. This cheerful little airport draws passengers away from Indianapolis and Detroit by being easy to navigate and quick to get in and out of — and by offering free cookies. Volunteer hospitality hosts welcome passengers with a fresh-baked cookie.


•Honolulu: Outdoor gardens. The airport makes the most of its paradise location with beautiful Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian gardens. In the Chinese garden, there is a statue of Hawaii-born Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China. The serene Japanese garden has great benches to relax on, and the Hawaiian garden has tranquil lagoons, bubbling springs and cascading waterfalls. Go at night when the luau torches are lit, casting a magical hue over the garden.


•Los Angeles: Shoe shine. Five shoe-shine stands offer free service with a smile in Terminals 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Tips are accepted, so be generous if you get a good shine.


•New York JFK: iPads. Delta has installed 200 iPads at restaurants near the gate areas of Terminals 2 and 3. You can use them to order food, surf the Web, check e-mail, stream videos or check the weather at your destination.


•New York LaGuardia: Newspapers and magazines. Before a Delta Shuttle flight at the Marine Air Terminal, stock up on reading matter, including New York newspapers and such
•Reno-Tahoe: Local phone calls. Spent your last dime on slots? That's not a problem if you have a friend in the area. Local calls are free at several airport phones; Wi-Fi is free, too.


•San Francisco: Yoga room. The nation's only airport yoga room is just past security in Terminal 2. There are chairs, mats and mirrors to practice your poses.

•St. Louis: Coloring books and crayons. Kids can pick up a set of crayons and an airport-theme coloring book with pictures of behind-the-scenes airport activities. Keep an eye out for historic, 1930s-era aircraft hanging from the ceiling near the security checkpoint, too.
•Washington Dulles: Aviation museum. A 50-cent bus ride can bring you to an incredible free museum a few miles south of Dulles in Chantilly, Va. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center blows other little airport museums out of the water. It has giant hangars stuffed with such items as an SR-71 Blackbird, the space shuttle Enterprise and the Enola Gay.

Foreign airports


•Amsterdam: Library. Schiphol airport is big for layovers, and the Dutch are big on reading. The library is a showcase for Dutch culture, with Dutch literature, Dutch music and its own Twitter feed. Nine of 25 seats have iPads.

•Copenhagen: Strollers. Changing planes with a baby is a pain if you've been forced to check your stroller. Parents going through Copenhagen can take advantage of the airport's free strollers, which can be left at a departure gate.


•Hong Kong: Video games. PlayStation gaming systems are scattered throughout the terminals — in the arrivals and departures halls and past security on the north and south concourses.

•London Heathrow: Coloring books and crayons. Customer service agents at several counters throughout the airport hand out airport-theme coloring books, crayons and stickers.


•Munich: Showers and coffee. Taking a shower can be a real boon if you've just gotten off an overnight flight and need to be alert. Even if you can't face up to the shower, there's free coffee at various stations throughout Munich's Terminal 2.

•Seoul Incheon: Culture. The airport is filled with cultural attractions — a museum of Korean history and culture, a stall where you can dress in traditional Korean clothes and get your picture taken, and a stall where you can join a class making Korean handicrafts.


•Singapore: Movies. Terminal 3's movie theater screens big-name Hollywood flicks such as X-Men: First Class 24 hours a day. If you want to stream your own movies, there's free Wi-Fi throughout the airport, as well as 500 free Internet kiosks.

•Taipei Taoyuan: City tours. The Taiwan Tourism Bureau offers free morning and afternoon tours of Taipei from the airport. The morning tour visits an ancient temple and a pottery-making center; the afternoon tour visits another temple, Taiwan's tallest skyscraper and the home of Taiwan's president.


•Tallinn, Estonia: Skype calls. In April 2011, the first free Skype video chat booth popped up at Tallinn's airport, and you can use it to make unlimited, free video calls worldwide. If the line is too long, you can send an e-mail from 14 free Internet kiosks or hook up your laptop through the airport's free Wi-Fi.


•Toronto City Airport: Passenger lounge. The hub of Porter Airlines, this airport on an island that's a brief ferry ride from downtown is delightful, but it's made even more special by Porter's lounge. Regardless of ticket price, everyone flying on the airline gets free coffee, tea, soft drinks, snacks, Wi-Fi and comfy chairs.

So Long Continental
United absorbs much of Continental this weekend



This weekend, United Airlines makes changes that mean most of Continental fades away
By Joshua Freed, AP Airlines Writer
Associated Press – 33 minutes
The last Continental flight takes off on Friday, and the airline that was once one of the nation's biggest will all but disappear into United Airlines.
United and Continental merged in 2010, but until this Saturday, passengers almost could have missed it. The big change occurs early Saturday when United combines passenger reservation data from both airlines into one massive computer system. That means one frequent-flier program and one website. Tickets will be issued under United's name only.


The switch is a huge undertaking that has its risks. Any hiccups could mean delays throughout the airline's system. That's why United conducted four dress rehearsals with executives staying overnight at headquarters to make sure things went well.


Here are the changes:


CONTINENTAL'S LAST FLIGHT


Continental flight 1267 is scheduled to depart from Phoenix at 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday. It's set to arrive in Cleveland as United 1267 Saturday morning.
The airline will stop using Continental's "CO" code. That means no more Continental Airlines tickets, or flights — even though the Continental name is still painted on some planes.


AT THE AIRPORT
The names of both airlines have been on signs at gates at its 10 hubs. By Saturday, it's aiming to take down the "Continental" signs at all 372 airports it serves.


Until now, each airline issued its own tickets, and passengers had to use separate ticket counters. Now, it will no longer matter which ticket counter travelers go to. Gate agents should be able to book travelers on flights across the combined airline, which will be a big improvement any time a blizzard or thunderstorm snarls travel.


The change will also mean that airline workers can send planes from either airline to any of their gates. Previously, gate computers had been connected to separate reservation systems and they couldn't handle planes from the other airline.


FREQUENT FLIERS


The systems are combining under the name of United's MileagePlus frequent-flier program. Travelers who have accounts at both airlines will essentially be credited for their Continental OnePass miles in their combined MileagePlus account. But their MileagePlus account numbers will be those from OnePass.


As for passwords, PIN numbers and addresses — some of those will transfer and some won't. United has emailed frequent fliers about the details.


WEBSITE


United.com becomes the website for the combined airline. But its look and feel is the old Continental.com. Passengers will be able to use it to check in, regardless of which airline issued their ticket.


The websites are set to go dark at 2 a.m. EST Saturday. United is aiming to have the switch done in time for travelers to check in for 6 a.m. EST flights. The airline says travelers who check in on the old United.com for Saturday flights should see their check-in transfer over to the new system.


WHAT CAN GO WRONG


Plenty. There's a reason United held those dress rehearsals. Five years ago, US Airways Group's reservations system merger with America West went haywire. Hundreds of check-in kiosks didn't work, forcing passengers to use ticket counters. The snafu delayed flights around the US Airways system for days.


Virgin America's switch to a new reservation system in October caused problems that lingered for months.


"This transition is extremely complex and there is a strong likelihood for significant flight delays and cancellations," the head of the Air Line Pilots Association's United unit in San Francisco warned pilots in an email.
Jay Pierce, the head of the ALPA unit at Continental, said in an interview that the airline "actually has done a fairly decent job of advising all the employees that there's a potential for disruptions and possible problems." The company has asked employees not to use their discounted travel benefit over the weekend, to help keep volume low, he said.
The airline moves an average of 264,000 passengers per day. It picked a Saturday for the switch because traffic is as much as 15 percent lighter than on weekdays. It further reduced the number of United flights because those are the flights that are switching to Continental computers.
"We have tested an incredible amount of scenarios across the enterprise and I feel very, very comfortable we will be able to service customers better starting this weekend," said Martin Hand, United's senior vice president for passenger experience.


BEHIND THE SCENES
United must still schedule flight crews from each airline separately because it doesn't yet have union contracts to cover the combined groups. US Airways has been operating that way since its 2005 America West merger.


Pilots from both United and Continental have already been using the "United" radio handle with air traffic controllers, and flight attendants have been announcing flights onboard as United flights, even if passengers walked past a "Continental" sign to get on the plane.


The parent company's name, United Continental Holdings Inc., stays the same.

Boeing 747 Tries to Stay Relevant




By Ted ReedStaff Reporter
TheStreet.com – 1 hour 22 minutes
CHICAGO (TheStreet) -- Once viewed as the world's premier airplane, the Boeing 747, after four decades of flying, now fills a very narrow niche.


The 747 has seen its mission shrink as competing aircraft have become available during the past two decades. The Airbus A340 entered service in 1993 and can fly longer trips. The Boeing 777 entered service in 1995 and is more fuel efficient. The A380 entered service in 2007 and carries more passenger.


Boeing introduced the 747 in 1970 and reshaped global aviation. Four decades later, the plane has lost ground to competitors -- perhaps best illustrated by Singapore Airlines' recent announcement that it will make its last 747 flights April 6, after operating the aircraft for 38 years.


In its glory, the 747, the first widebody aircraft, began flying for Pan American World Airways in 1970. Boeing has produced more than 1,400 of them. Last October, it delivered the first 747-8, the latest model, to Luxembourg's CargoLux. The first passenger version was sold Tuesday to an unidentified VIP customer. Cargo airplanes account for 60 of the 96 orders for the 747-8.


"The 747 has truly become a niche airplane," aviation consultant Scott Hamilton says. "That is part of the progression for an aging airplane. It's still a good cargo airplane."
The 747-8 "was basically a tactical response to the A380," which came to market in 2000, Hamilton says. "Had it been on time, it probably would have been more successful." Instead, the first delivery was two years late.


The 747's decline as a passenger aircraft is perhaps best illustrated by Singapore Airlines' recent announcement that it will make its last 747 flights April 6, after operating the aircraft for 38 years.


For years, Singapore was the world's largest 747 operator, with 37 aircraft flying from the Singapore hub. But Singapore was the launch customer for the A380 and now flies 16 of them. It also operates five A340-500s and 77 Boeing 777s. In other words, all three 747 replacements are in the Singapore fleet.


"The 747 doesn't have range to go from Singapore nonstop to some destinations we serve," Singapore spokesman James Boyd says. That shortcoming made Singapore a leader in operating flights under aviation's "fifth freedom" right, which enables a carrier flying from its home country to a second country to make a passenger stop in a third country.


Singapore's four U.S. destinations provide examples of the shift. On the Singapore-Newark route, the 747 made a fuel stop in Amsterdam. But in 2004 Singapore replaced the 747 with an A340-500 and dropped the stop, because the A340-500 flies nonstop on the 10,381-mile route, the longest in commercial aviation. The aircraft has just 100 seats, all business class.


On the Singapore-Frankfurt-New York Kennedy route, the carrier began A380 service in January, replacing a 747-400 but keeping the intermediate stop.
Twice-daily Singapore-San Francisco flights were operated with an A340 and a 747. In 2009, the airplanes were replaced with 777-300 extended-range jets that stop in Seoul and Hong Kong.


Singapore-Los Angeles is operated with an Airbus A340-500 and is the world's longest-duration flight at 18 hours and 30 minutes, making it about 40 minutes longer than the Newark flight. In 2004, the A340 replaced a 747 flight and a Taipei stop was eliminated. Also, an A380 replaced a 747 last year and operates Singapore-Tokyo-Los Angeles.


Boeing says it's too early to count the 747 out. "There is still quite a significant market for the airplane, and orders will continue to pick up as it enters service and people see what it can do," Boeing spokesman Jim Prouix says. Over the next 20 years, Boeing sees a market for about 800 aircraft with more than 400 seats or equivalent cargo space. "The 747-8 is a very strong competitor for those markets, and of those 800 airplanes, roughly 250 are for freighters -- of which we offer the only one," he said. 
The Boeing 777 has around 300 seats, while the A380 has around 500. "The 747-8 slots right in between," Prouix says.
BB&T Capital Markets analyst Carter Leake is a fan of the 747-8. "I think the A380 was a decade too early," he says. "The 747-8 was the right move. The 747-400 (the previous model) was not competitive against the 380. You had to defend the space." The 747-400 was the previous model;


Prouix notes that since the 747-8 entered the market in November 2005, it has accumulated 131 orders and commitments, while the A380 has sold 121 airplanes. "More than half of the A380 order book came in before we even entered the market," he says.


Among U.S. carriers, the 747 has not been popular in recent years. "It doesn't fit the needs of U.S. carriers, as opposed to flag carriers of other nations, because you have so many interior cities in the U.S. that now have overseas service," Hamilton says. By contrast, when Pan Am and Northwest placed early 747 orders, service across the Atlantic and Pacific occurred from a very few airports, and big planes could be filled.

Today, United and Delta are the only U.S. passenger carriers operating 747s, generally on Asian routes. United has 23 of them, averaging about 16 years old. Delta has 15, acquired with Northwest.


Delta, in particular, sees a long life for its 747s and is upgrading the interiors with full flat-bed seats and other amenities. The upgrades, it says, "will make the 747 the premier aircraft in our international fleet." 
-- Written by Ted Reed in Charlotte, N.C.

Factory, design flaws caused A380 cracks



Reuters – Thu, Jan 26, 2012
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Airbus acknowledged a combination of manufacturing and design flaws on Wednesday as it confirmed the discovery of more examples of wing cracks on the A380, while insisting the world's largest airliner is safe to fly.


A top executive said the European planemaker had come up with a solution to the cracks on a small number of parts inside the superjumbo's wings, which prompted European safety authorities to order inspections last week.

Airbus confirmed a Reuters report that more examples of the cracks had been discovered during the compulsory inspections, but declined to give further details before a Friday deadline for completing an initial phase of checks.
"The A380 is safe to fly," Tom Williams, executive vice president of programs at Toulouse-based Airbus, said.
The cracks were caused by factors including the choice of aluminum alloy for some of the 4,000 brackets in the wings as well as a type of bolt that put too much stress on the metal.


Engineers have ruled out metal fatigue, Williams said.


Airbus moved to shore up confidence in the world's largest jetliner amid a drip-feed of disclosures about cracking on components used to fix the outside of the wing to its ribcage.


Williams flew to Dublin to give an unscheduled address at an industry conference to dampen any concerns about safety.


European authorities have ordered inspections on almost a third of the superjumbo fleet, or 20 aircraft, after two types of cracks were discovered within weeks of each of other.


Since then, similar cracks have been found inside the 9,100-square-foot wings of at least one of the superjumbos examined under the directive, industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
Airbus officials said that having understood the problem, they expected most of the aircraft being tested would show similar evidence of cracks, but that repairs would solve this well before they became a potential hazard.

It declined to say which airline had reported cracks during inspections but the spotlight is expected to fall on Singapore Airlines, which has said it is inspecting six aircraft under phase one of checks involving the most heavily used jets.
The airline opened up the debut A380 service in December 2007.


TECHNICAL FIX
Singapore Airlines said it was carrying out inspections as required and would give an update once they were completed. The checks involve emptying and venting fuel checks for about 24 hours followed by a visual check via a manhole under the wing.
The cracks first came to light during repairs, lasting over a year, on a Qantas A380 severely damaged by a dramatic engine explosion in November 2010 that punched holes in the wing.


At first engineers were unsure what had caused the cracks but the initial microscopic flaws led to the discovery of a second and potentially more serious type of crack, some of them up to two inches long, in the central part of the wing.


The findings caused concern at the European Aviation Safety Agency which turned down Airbus's request for limited extra time to examine the data and ordered mandatory inspections last week.


Designed just before the latest generation of mainly carbon-composite jetliners like Boeing's newly delivered 787 Dreamliner, the A380 is about 60 percent aluminum, the main material used for making aircraft for decades.


"All aluminum structures have cracks. It is the nature of the beast. Each component is designed and modeled according to the desired capacity," Williams said. If one part breaks the structure is designed so that the load is spread elsewhere.


To deal with the unforeseen cracking problem, Airbus is changing its manufacturing processes to ensure smooth operation until at least the next four-year maintenance checks.


Longer term, it plans to switch to a different alloy, restoring the aircraft to its normal lifespan of 25 years-plus.
The wings were designed and built in Britain, which prides itself on state-of-the-art wing assembly. Unions there recently objected to some work being outsourced to South Korea.


Industry executives at the Dublin conference welcomed the clarification and said the problem had been understood.


"When they had the second round of cracks, that got more people's attention and a few airlines were asking questions," an executive said, speaking on condition he was not identified.


An Australian engineering union last week called for all A380s to be grounded pending more investigation. Airbus has dismissed this by saying regulators would be quick to ban flights if they believed safety to be at risk.


(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Gary Hill)

Flight diverts after 'unruly' smoker battles attendant
By Ben Mutzabaugh,
USA TODAY

Updated 17h 55m ago


Passengers on a United flight operated by Continental Airlines made an unexpected stop in San Antonio last night. That came after a man on the flight apparently couldn't make it the whole way to California without a cigarette.
At least that's according to the San Antonio Express-News, which writes:


A Continental Airlines flight traveling from Houston to California had to be diverted here Tuesday evening because of an "unruly passenger" who reportedly lit a cigarette in the cabin and refused to put it out then fought with a flight attendant, officials said.


There were few details on the man's identity, but KHOU TV of Houston says the FBI took him into custody before Flight 1287 resumed its journey to the Ontario airport in Southern California.


The man could face federal charges, San Antonio police Capt. Cris Andersen tells the Express-News.


The incident delayed the flight's arrival by about two hours.


Continental, of course, is now part of a merged United Airlines under the parent company United Continental Holdings. In its story from November, The Associated Press writes that "the so-called single operating certificate means that, as far as the FAA is concerned, United and Continental are one airline."

The World's Longest Flight, in Coach
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
January 19, 2012




Over the Pacific Ocean


It's 2 a.m. aboard Qantas Airways Flight 7 from Sydney to Dallas. The sun is rising. Time for a quick stretch, then a couple of episodes of "30 Rock." Are we there yet?
Five hours remain on the 15-hour trip, the longest flight in the world with a coach cabin. It's an eternity when shoehorned into space with a mere 16 inches of hip width inside the armrests.
Nonetheless, long-haul nonstop flights like this one are increasingly popular among business travelers and high-end tourists who are willing to pay about 20% more to avoid a layover.


Airlines are adding longer and longer non-stop flights but 15 hours in the air can be painful. McCartney on Lunch Break discusses his ride on one of the longest flights in coach and how many episodes of "30 Rock" a person can watch in one sitting.


Qantas launched its Sydney-to-Dallas nonstop flight last year four times a week and will move it to daily service this summer. Delta Air Lines offers Johannesburg nonstop from Atlanta, offering an alternative to European connections. Emirates is expanding its fast-growing network geographically, reaching Los Angeles from Dubai nonstop, for example, and Dallas next month.
"There are a certain amount of people in long-haul markets willing to pay extra to get there quickly, even though it takes a long time," said Bob Cortelyou, Delta's senior vice president of network planning.


The nonstops are possible as more commercial airlines add more ultra-long-range jets to their fleets. The latest offerings from Boeing and Airbus all can travel more than 9,000 miles before stopping for gas. And older models have extended range with strengthened bodies and bigger landing gear and wheels to carry the weight of more fuel. Qantas bought a few 747-400s from Boeing Co. specially fitted with extra fuel tanks to extend their range by about 500 miles, making it possible to reach Dallas from Sydney.
Likewise, passengers are prepared for the long haul.


"You have to know how to pace yourself," said architect and interior designer Beatrice Girelli. For her, the Los Angeles to Singapore 18-hour nonstop she takes about six times a year on Singapore Airlines is like a "spa day." Working long hours on the ground, she finds that time spent six miles above Earth becomes her escape: She sleeps, relaxes, avoids work and enjoys three meals plus Italian or French movies.


Real-estate executive Gerald Giannini, another regular on Singapore Air, has his own routine. Dinner after departure from Los Angeles is followed by a sleeping pill. He wakes up after a full eight to nine hours of sleep—something he never gets even on 12-hour trips to London.


"People hear 18 hours and they freak out. Once you're on it, you understand," he said. "It's a lot less wear and tear on my body than the old way."


Singapore Air pioneered ultra-long nonstops when it began flying 18 hours from both Newark, N.J., and Los Angeles to Singapore seven years ago. Most Singapore Airlines flights stop in Tokyo or Frankfurt to get from the U.S. to the other side of the globe, but the nonstops have found a devoted following among frequent travelers.
The airline launched nonstop U.S. flights offering both business-class and a premium-type coach cabin. But demand for business class tickets was much stronger. For the first time in the airline's history, business class saw higher percentages of seats filled than coach, said Singapore spokesman James Boyd, so the airline switched to a luxurious all-business-class configuration, with 100 lie-flat beds on a plane big enough to carry more than 300 passengers.


Singapore said it charges, on average, about a 20% premium for the nonstop flight over one-stop trips. The flights save about four hours over flights with a Tokyo or Frankfurt stop.


For a trip at the end of this month, for example, the business-class fare from Newark nonstop to Singapore was priced at $8,446 round-trip, while business-class from New York's Kennedy Airport with a stop in Frankfurt for the same dates was $7,446.


The convenience has overcome passenger fears of being airborne so long. Some travelers worried about the safety of flying 15 hours or more. Others worried about dehydration in arid airplane cabins and the risk of blood clots from deep-vein thrombosis.


"Ten years ago, people were hesitant or fearful. Now they're going more and more long-haul. We are seeing more and more acceptance, and fewer queries on the phone" with concerns, said Singapore Air Vice President Mohamed Rafi Mar.


Delta loads up extra water, drinks, snacks and two full meals for passengers on its Johannesburg flights, which actually cover a shorter distance than the Qantas Dallas-to-Sydney flights, but take longer because of wind differences. Also, the cruise speed of the twin-engine 777 is a bit slower than the four-engine 747. The Delta flight is the longest in the world on a plane with two engines.


Flight attendants get two 2½-hour breaks during the flight; pilots work half the flight. Crews have bunks in the ceiling of the 777.


Qantas has six 747s with extended range of about 8,800 miles (7,670 nautical miles) and uses them to fly to Buenos Aires as well as Dallas. The planes take off at speeds 5 knots faster than regular 747-400s because wings have to produce more lift for the heavier plane. Flights from Sydney to London still have to make a stop—no commercial airliner can yet do that without making a stop.


Adding the Dallas flight let Qantas tap into the huge hub of its partner, American Airlines, adding 59 additional routes to the Qantas network. As a result of all those connections, the flights have been performing well since they started in May, said Stephen Thompson, executive manager of global sales for Qantas. Round-trip fares on that route typically cost $1,500 to $2,000. For a trip in early February, for example, a nonstop flight from Dallas to Sydney and back cost $2,052, while connecting service through Los Angeles cost $1,692.


Because of headwinds going back to Australia, the Qantas 747 has to stop in Brisbane for fuel. When weather has been bad, flights have had to make occasional fuel stops, but Qantas said it hasn't been any different than other long routes.


Mr. Thompson said service on the ultra-long flight is much the same as on 12-hour trips to Los Angeles. "The key is to entertain people and get them to relax," he said.
On board the trip in November, Mary Paulus of Okeechobee, Fla., curled up in two seats in coach to sleep. She paid $40 extra to reserve an aisle seat, then had an empty middle seat next to her. She slept, ate and still had time to watch three movies.
"What are you going to do? You know when you get on it's going to be long," she said.


Still, Earl Russell, like so many other passengers, was restless. After being airborne for 12 hours, it seemed well past like time to land, but there were still three hours to go. Mr. Russell, a government employee on his way home in Leavenworth, Kan., tossed a blanket over his head and tried to go back to sleep.


"It's just a very long flight," he sighed.

Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

Non Stop Flights Stop For Fuel
By SUSAN CAREY And ANDY PASZTOR


January 11, 2012


Dozens of Continental Airlines flights to the East Coast from Europe have been forced to make unexpected stops in Canada and elsewhere to take on fuel after running into unusually strong headwinds over the Atlantic Ocean.


The stops, which have caused delays and inconvenience for thousands of passengers in recent weeks, are partly the result of a decision by United Continental Holdings Inc., the world's largest airline, to use smaller jets on a growing number of long, trans-Atlantic routes.


United's strategy works when the winds are calm, and it allows the airline to operate less expensive aircraft with fewer cabin-crew members to an array of European cities that wouldn't generate enough traffic to justify larger planes.


But by pushing its international Boeing Co. 757s to nearly the limit of their roughly 4,000-nautical-mile range, United is leaving little room for error when stiff winds increase the amount of fuel the planes' twin engines burn.


Last month, United said, its 169-seat 757s had to stop 43 times to refuel out of nearly 1,100 flights headed to the U.S. A year earlier, there were only 12 unscheduled stops on roughly the same volume of 757 flights.


Such stops are safer than eating into the minimum amount of reserve fuel pilots are required to keep on board, which guarantees that a plane can fly 45 minutes past its destination or alternate landing spot.


The resulting delays can cause passengers to miss connections; require them to be put up at hotels by the airline; and sometimes prompt them to seek compensation for their troubles.


A United spokesman said the company has been offering compensation as a gesture of good will in situations where customers' experiences warrant it.


Remote Canadian fields at Gander and Goose Bay are the primary places to top off the tanks, but United confirmed that some of its 757 jets were also diverted to Iceland; Ireland; Nova Scotia; Albany, N.Y.; and Stewart International Airport, 60 miles north of Manhattan.


"Headwinds returning from Europe are more extreme than we have seen in 10 years," said a United spokeswoman. For the past decade, December headwinds averaged 30 knots, according to United data. But last month, the winds averaged 47 knots, and, on the worst 15 days of the month, 60 knots.


The winds didn't abate this month. In the first eight days of January, United said it made unplanned refueling stops on 14 flights on the six routes most prone to refueling, including four on the Stuttgart-Newark run, four on Paris-Washington Dulles and two each on Stockholm-Newark and Barcelona-Newark. Those routes tend to be nearly as long as the plane's maximum range.


For remote airports such as Goose Bay and Gander, which have been largely bypassed in recent years by jetliners' longer range capabilities, fueling stops can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in landing fees and other revenue a month.


The United spokeswoman said it hasn't substituted larger aircraft on the affected routes because those planes are being used on other parts of the route network of the Chicago-based carrier, which was formed by the 2010 merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines.


According to industry estimates, a nearly full 757, operating with fewer flight attendants, can be more profitable than a larger plane such as the Boeing 767 carrying the same number of passengers but more attendants.


The refueling-stop issues haven't posed any safety hazards, according to government and industry experts. But a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said agency officials are "aware that United aircraft have made more unscheduled fuel stops this year than last year, and we are looking into the issue." Capt. Jay Pierce, chairman of the pilots union representing Continental pilots, said last week that he asked the union's safety officials to look into the matter.


The fluky weather pattern, which AccuWeather.com meteorologist Henry Margusity blames on La Niña, or cooler-than-normal equatorial ocean temperatures in the Pacific, has also created problems for other airlines using single-aisle 757 jets across the Atlantic.


USAirways Group Inc., which uses 757s between Philadelphia and some European cities, said that in December it diverted four of 112 trans-Atlantic flights due to strong headwinds. Three Amsterdam-Philadelphia flights and a flight from Brussels to Philadelphia gassed up in Bangor, Maine, the company said. Early in January, two more had to stop in Bangor. But the carrier, which has a much smaller European route map than United, has some flexibility to switch to Boeing 767 jets, and a spokesman said it tries to do so in the winter.


AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, which serves six European routes with 757s, said it has had "a few" unplanned fuel stops on westbound flights, but it's "not a daily occurrence." Delta Air Lines Inc., which also flies 757s to Europe, said it didn't experience a single diversion due to fuel constraints in December or so far this month.


United's Continental unit—which relies on 757s to link its Newark, N.J., hub to numerous European destinations—has been most adversely affected. And recently, Continental began deploying some of its 757s on two traditional United routes out of Dulles—to Paris and Amsterdam—that used to be served by larger planes, exposing some westbound fliers to the same diversions that have played havoc with its schedule and reputation.


Jesse Hoy, a TV producer in Los Angeles, was traveling back from Paris with his pregnant wife on Jan. 3 on a Continental plane. Shortly before takeoff, Mr. Hoy said, the pilot said the jet was going to make an unscheduled fuel stop in Gander due to high winds but would try to get passengers to Dulles in time to make connections. Mr. Hoy said the plane landed at 9:50 p.m., the exact time his United flight to Los Angeles was scheduled to take off. The couple didn't make it home for two more days.


The workhorse 757, which entered airline service in 1983 and was produced until 2004, can carry more than 220 passengers in one class. In the U.S., it was initially used for domestic flights, including coast-to-coast trips, and for trips to nearby overseas destinations. But once the FAA in the early 1990s granted airline operators permission to use it on over-water routes, carriers including American, Northwest, US Airways and Continental found the 757 a fuel-effective way to serve cities in Western Europe that had previously been reached with larger, more costly wide-body planes that consume more fuel but have greater range.


Continental's enthusiasm for the 757 came under scrutiny four years ago when federal officials determined the carrier was responsible for nearly two-thirds of all the minimum fuel or fuel-emergency incidents reported annually by airliners landing in Newark. There were minimum fuel issues on 23 flights arriving from Barcelona over the course of a single year. When pilots make those calls, air traffic controllers give them landing priority. The Transportation Department's inspector general didn't find any safety violations, however.


Write to Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com

It's never been safer to fly; deaths at record low



The past 10 years have been the safest in American aviation history; deaths are at record low

By Joshua Freed, AP Airlines Writers
AP – 27 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) -- Boarding an airplane has never been safer.
The past 10 years have been the best in the country's aviation history with 153 fatalities. That's two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.

The improvement is remarkable. Just a decade earlier, at the time the safest, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying — 133 out of every 100 million passengers — from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.

Sitting in a pressurized, aluminum tube seven miles above the ground may never seem like the most-natural thing. But consider this: You are more likely to die driving to the airport than flying across the country. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.

"I wouldn't say air crashes of passenger airliners are a thing of the past. They're simply a whole lot more rare than they used to be," says Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing and director of the Airsafe.com Foundation.


The improvements came even as the industry went through a miserable financial period, losing $54.5 billion in the past decade. Just to stay afloat, airlines eliminated meals and added fees for checked luggage.


But safety remained a priority. No advertisement of tropical beaches can supplant the image of charred metal scattered across a field.
There are still some corners of the world where flying is risky. Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia have particularly high rates of deadly crashes. Russia had several fatal crashes in the past year, including one that killed several prominent hockey players. Africa only accounts for 3 percent of world air traffic but had 14 percent of fatal crashes.


Still, 2011 was a good year to fly. It had the second-fewest number of fatalities worldwide, according to the Flight Safety Foundation, with 507 people dying in crashes. Seven out of 28 planes in fatal crashes were on airlines already prohibited from flying into European Union because of known safety problems. (There were fewer fatalities in 2004 — 323 — but there were also fewer people flying then.)


There are a number of reasons for the improvements.


— The industry has learned from the past. New planes and engines are designed with prior mistakes in mind. Investigations of accidents have led to changes in procedures to ensure the same missteps don't occur again.

— Better sharing of information. New databases allow pilots, airlines, plane manufactures and regulators to track incidents and near misses. Computers pick up subtle trends. For instance, a particular runway might have a higher rate of aborted landings when there is fog. Regulators noticing this could improve lighting and add more time between landings.


— Safety audits by outside firms. The International Air Transport Association, an industry trade group, started an audit program in 2003. Airlines prove to the industry and each other that they have proper maintenance and safety procedures. It's also a way for airlines to seek lower insurance premiums, which have also dropped over the past 10 years.


— An experienced workforce. Air traffic controllers, pilots and maintenance crews — particularly in North America and Europe — have been on the job for decades. Their experience is crucial when split-second decisions are made and for instilling a culture of safety in younger employees. Former US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger — who spent three decades as an airline pilot — was praised for his skill after safely ditching a plane in the Hudson River in 2009. Both engines died because of a bird strike but all 155 passengers and crew survived.
— Luck. Safety experts discount the effect of chance. However, it takes just one big accident — especially now with mega-jets such as the Airbus A380, which is able to carry up to 853 passengers — to ruin an otherwise good period for safety.


"Was Chesley Sullenberger lucky or skillful?" says Perry Flint, a spokesman with the International Air Transport Association. "It was luck that it was daylight, but how many geese do you know that are flying south in the pitch black of two in the morning? So it was also luck that he hit them. Bad luck."


The most recent fatal U.S. crash was Colgan Air Flight 3407, a regional flight operating under the name Continental Connection. The 2009 crash killed all 49 people on board and a man in the house the plane hit.


In fact, all fatal crashes in the U.S. in the past decade occurred on regional airlines, which are separate companies flying smaller planes under brands such as United Express, American Eagle and Delta Connection. The most recent deadly crash involving a larger airline was American Airlines Flight 587 in 2001. It crashed moments after taking off from New York, killing 265.

There have been some near misses.


In April, a Southwest Airlines aircraft had a rapid loss of cabin pressure after part of the fuselage ruptured, leaving a five-foot-long hole in the ceiling. There were no serious injuries.


The prior year, a Southwest jet came within 200 feet of colliding with a small Cessna at a California airport. In December 2009, an American Airlines jet landing in the rain in Jamaica was unable to stop on the runway, crashing through an airport fence, crossing a street, finally stopping on a beach. And in December 2005, a Southwest jet skidded off a Chicago runway. No passengers died, but a 9-year-old boy riding in a passing car was killed.

A poor economy might also have improved safety.
Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, says that during a boom period, airlines tend to quickly grow. That, he says, can mean weaker standards for safety and for pilots.
"We tend to see people being pushed forward perhaps a little too early, before they're ready," Voss says. "There's not as much time for captains to create new captains by tapping a guy on the shoulder and telling him when he's out of line." 

Smoke Screening



As you stand in endless lines this holiday season, here’s a comforting thought: all those security measures accomplish nothing, at enormous cost. That’s the conclusion of Charles C. Mann, who put the T.S.A. to the test with the help of one of America’s top security experts.

 By Charles C. Mann


Not until I walked with Bruce Schneier toward the mass of people unloading their laptops did it occur to me that it might not be possible for us to hang around unnoticed near Reagan National Airport’s security line. Much as upscale restaurants hang mug shots of local food writers in their kitchens, I realized, the Transportation Security Administration might post photographs of Schneier, a 48-year-old cryptographer and security technologist who is probably its most relentless critic. In addition to writing books and articles, Schneier has a popular blog; a recent search for “TSA” in its archives elicited about 2,000 results, the vast majority of which refer to some aspect of the agency that he finds to be ineffective, invasive, incompetent, inexcusably costly, or all four.


As we came by the checkpoint line, Schneier described one of these aspects: the ease with which people can pass through airport security with fake boarding passes. First, scan an old boarding pass, he said—more loudly than necessary, it seemed to me. Alter it with Photoshop, then print the result with a laser printer. In his hand was an example, complete with the little squiggle the T.S.A. agent had drawn on it to indicate that it had been checked. “Feeling safer?” he asked.


Ten years ago, 19 men armed with utility knives hijacked four airplanes and within a few hours killed nearly 3,000 people. At a stroke, Americans were thrust into a menacing new world. “They are coming after us,” C.I.A. director George Tenet said of al-Qaeda. “They intend to strike this homeland again, and we better get about the business of putting the right structure in place as fast as we can.”


The United States tried to do just that. Federal and state governments embarked on a nationwide safety upgrade. Checkpoints proliferated in airports, train stations, and office buildings. A digital panopticon of radiation scanners, chemical sensors, and closed-circuit television cameras audited the movements of shipping containers, airborne chemicals, and ordinary Americans. None of this was or will be cheap. Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security.


To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.


The first time I met Schneier, a few months after 9/11, he wanted to bet me a very expensive dinner that the United States would not be hit by a major terrorist attack in the next 10 years. We were in Washington, D.C., visiting one of the offices of Counterpane Internet Security, the company he had co-founded in 1999. (BT, the former British Telecom, bought Counterpane seven years later; officially, Schneier is now BT’s chief security technology officer.) The bet seemed foolhardy to me. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had just told The Washington Times that al-Qaeda was dispersing its killers all over the world.


From an airplane-hijacking point of view, Schneier said, al-Qaeda had used up its luck. Passengers on the first three 9/11 flights didn’t resist their captors, because in the past the typical consequence of a plane seizure had been “a week in Havana.” When the people on the fourth hijacked plane learned by cell phone that the previous flights had been turned into airborne bombs, they attacked their attackers. The hijackers were forced to crash Flight 93 into a field. “No big plane will ever be taken that way again, because the passengers will fight back,” Schneier said. Events have borne him out. The instigators of the two most serious post-9/11 incidents involving airplanes— the “shoe bomber” in 2001 and the “underwear bomber” in 2009, both of whom managed to get onto an airplane with explosives—were subdued by angry passengers.
Schneier’s sanguine views had little resonance at a time when the fall of the twin towers was being replayed nightly on the news. Two months after 9/11, the Bush administration created the Transportation Security Agency, ordering it to hire and train enough security officers to staff the nation’s 450 airports within a year. Six months after that, the government vastly expanded the federal sky-marshal program, sending thousands of armed lawmen to ride planes undercover. Meanwhile, the T.S.A. steadily ratcheted up the existing baggage-screening program, banning cigarette lighters from carry-on bags, then all liquids (even, briefly, breast milk from some nursing mothers). Signs were put up in airports warning passengers about specifically prohibited items: snow globes, printer cartridges. A color-coded alert system was devised; the nation was placed on “orange alert” for five consecutive years. Washington assembled a list of potential terror targets that soon swelled to 80,000 places, including local libraries and miniature-golf courses. Accompanying the target list was a watch list of potential suspects that had grown to 1.1 million names by 2008, the most recent date for which figures are available. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security, which absorbed the T.S.A. in 2003, began deploying full-body scanners, which peer through clothing to produce nearly nude images of air passengers.
Bruce Schneier’s exasperation is informed by his job-related need to spend a lot of time in Airportland. He has 10 million frequent-flier miles and takes about 170 flights a year; his average speed, he has calculated, is 32 miles and hour. “The only useful airport security measures since 9/11,” he says, “were locking and reinforcing the cockpit doors, so terrorists can’t break in, positive baggage matching”—ensuring that people can’t put luggage on planes, and then not board them —“and teaching the passengers to fight back. The rest is security theater.”


Remember the fake boarding pass that was in Schneier’s hand? Actually, it was mine. I had flown to meet Schneier at Reagan National Airport because I wanted to view the security there through his eyes. He landed on a Delta flight in the next terminal over. To reach him, I would have to pass through security. The day before, I had downloaded an image of a boarding pass from the Delta Web site, copied and pasted the letters with Photoshop, and printed the results with a laser printer. I am not a photo-doctoring expert, so the work took me nearly an hour. The T.S.A. agent waved me through without a word. A few minutes later, Schneier deplaned, compact and lithe, in a purple shirt and with a floppy cap drooping over a graying ponytail.


The boarding-pass problem is hardly the only problem with the checkpoints. Taking off your shoes is next to useless. “It’s like saying, Last time the terrorists wore red shirts, so now we’re going to ban red shirts,” Schneier says. If the T.S.A. focuses on shoes, terrorists will put their explosives elsewhere. “Focusing on specific threats like shoe bombs or snow-globe bombs simply induces the bad guys to do something else. You end up spending a lot on the screening and you haven’t reduced the total threat.”


As I waited at security with my fake boarding pass, a T.S.A. agent had darted out and swabbed my hands with a damp, chemically impregnated cloth: a test for explosives. Schneier said, “Apparently the idea is that al-Qaeda has never heard of latex gloves and wiping down with alcohol.” The uselessness of the swab, in his view, exemplifies why Americans should dismiss the T.S.A.’s frequent claim that it relies on “multiple levels” of security. For the extra levels of protection to be useful, each would have to test some factor that is independent of the others. But anyone with the intelligence and savvy to use a laser printer to forge a boarding pass can also pick up a stash of latex gloves to wear while making a bomb. From the standpoint of security, Schneier said, examining boarding passes and swabbing hands are tantamount to performing the same test twice because the person you miss with one test is the same person you'll miss with the other.


After a public outcry, T.S.A. officers began waving through medical supplies that happen to be liquid, including bottles of saline solution. “You fill one of them up with liquid explosive,” Schneier said, “then get a shrink-wrap gun and seal it. The T.S.A. doesn’t open shrink-wrapped packages.” I asked Schneier if he thought terrorists would in fact try this approach. Not really, he said. Quite likely, they wouldn’t go through the checkpoint at all. The security bottlenecks are regularly bypassed by large numbers of people—airport workers, concession-stand employees, airline personnel, and T.S.A. agents themselves (though in 2008 the T.S.A. launched an employee-screening pilot study at seven airports). “Almost all of those jobs are crappy, low-paid jobs,” Schneier says. “They have high turnover. If you’re a serious plotter, don’t you think you could get one of those jobs?”


The full-body-scanner program—some 1,800 scanners operating in every airport in the country—was launched in response to the “underwear bomber” incident on Christmas Day in 2009, when a Nigerian Muslim hid the plastic explosive petn in his briefs and tried to detonate it on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. It has an annual price tag of $1.2 billion. The scanners cannot detect petn directly; instead they look for suspicious bulges under clothing. Because petn is a Silly Putty–like material, it can be fashioned into a thin pancake. Taped flat to the stomach, the pancake is invisible to scanning machines. Alternatively, attackers could stick gum-size wads of the explosive in their mouths, then go through security enough times to accumulate the desired amount.


Staffing the airport checkpoints, at least in theory, are “behavioral detection officers,” supposedly trained in reading the “facial microexpressions” that give away terrorists. It is possible that they are effective, Schneier says—nobody knows exactly what they do. But U.S. airlines carried approximately 700 million passengers in 2010. In the last 10 years, there have been 20 known full-fledged al-Qaeda operatives who flew on U.S. planes (the 9/11 hijackers and the underwear bomber, who was given explosives by a Yemeni al-Qaeda affiliate). Picking the right 20 out of 700 million is simply not possible, Schneier says.


After the airport checkpoint, an additional layer of security is provided, in theory, by air marshals. At an annual cost of about $1.2 billion, as many as 4,000 plainclothes police ride the nation’s airways—usually in first class, so that they can monitor the cockpit. John Mueller, co-author of Terror, Security, and Money, a great book from which I drew much information for this article, says it's a horrible job. “You sit there and fly and you can’t even drink or listen to music, because you can’t have headphones on. You have to stay awake. You are basically just sitting there, day after day.” Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of turnover—“you’re constantly training people, which is expensive.” Worse, the program has had no measurable benefit. Air marshals have not saved a single life, although one of them did shoot a deranged passenger a few years ago.


Has the nation simply wasted a trillion dollars protecting itself against terror? Mostly, but perhaps not entirely. “Most of the time we assess risk through gut feelings,” says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who is also the president of Decision Research, a nonprofit R&D organization. “We’re not robots just looking at the numbers.” Confronted with a risk, people ask questions: Is this a risk that I benefit from taking, as when I get in a car? Is it forced on me by someone else, as when I am exposed to radiation? Are the potential consequences catastrophic? Is the impact immediate and observable, or will I not know the consequences until much later, as with cancer? Such questions, Slovic says, “reflect values that are sometimes left out of the experts’ calculations.”


Security theater, from this perspective, is an attempt to convey a message: “We are doing everything possible to protect you.” When 9/11 shattered the public’s confidence in flying, Slovic says, the handful of anti-terror measures that actually work—hardening the cockpit door, positive baggage matching, more-effective intelligence—would not have addressed the public’s dread, because the measures can’t really be seen. Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, “Have confidence in Uncle Sam,” when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense. Over time, though, the value of the message changes. At first the policeman in the train station reassures you. Later, the uniform sends a message: train travel is dangerous. “The show gets less effective, and sometimes it becomes counterproductive.”
Terrorists will try to hit the United States again, Schneier says. One has to assume this. Terrorists can so easily switch from target to target and weapon to weapon that focusing on preventing any one type of attack is foolish. Even if the T.S.A. were somehow to make airports impregnable, this would simply divert terrorists to other, less heavily defended targets—shopping malls, movie theaters, churches, stadiums, museums. The terrorist’s goal isn’t to attack an airplane specifically; it’s to sow terror generally. “You spend billions of dollars on the airports and force the terrorists to spend an extra $30 on gas to drive to a hotel or casino and attack it,” Schneier says. “Congratulations!”


What the government should be doing is focusing on the terrorists when they are planning their plots. “That’s how the British caught the liquid bombers,” Schneier says. “They never got anywhere near the plane. That’s what you want—not catching them at the last minute as they try to board the flight.”
To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. And directed against a threat that, by any objective standard, is quite modest. Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.)


During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs. Still more were killed by driving their cars into deer. The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”