Airlines expect more crowds
Heading off for a two-week business trip, Gary Hacker made it aboard his 4 p.m. flight to Chicago – but his 50-pound Samsonite suitcase wasn’t as lucky.
United Airlines had two other flights within hours from Washington Reagan National to Chicago, but Hacker’s bag didn’t arrive at his hotel until 5 a.m., a few hours before the software trainer had a business meeting.
“I was in casual clothes. I had no change of underwear, no contact lens solution and I had a meeting the next morning,” said Hacker, of Washington, D.C., who plans to stuff more clothes into a larger carry-on bag in the future.
His flight in late April was a preview of the woes awaiting travelers during the busy summer travel season. Passengers planning travel in the next couple of months should brace for long lines in the terminal, tight quarters on board, delayed flights and mishandled luggage.
Nearly 207 million passengers are expected to travel this summer, about 2 million more than last season, according to the Air Transport Association.
While a headache for travelers, crowded planes signal that airlines have made strides in reorganizing their operations and improving their bottom lines. For years, the carriers have suffered financially because they operated too many flights with too many oversized, fuel-guzzling planes. Now they have trimmed flights and parked oversize jets to get more passengers in their seats at a lower cost.
In April, United filled a record 83 percent of its seats, a 3.4 percent increase from the same month a year ago. Northwest, American, Continental and US Airways filled 80 percent or more of their seats.
At Delta Air Lines, tighter schedules and smaller aircraft resulted in 4,315 paid customers getting bumped from flights in the first three months of the year – nearly double the number Delta bumped during the same period a year ago.
Airline spokeswoman Gina Laughlin said Delta has since corrected the problem, which she called a “one-time event.”
Travel experts say airlines this summer will be slower to cancel flights for mechanical problems because of the difficulty they would have in finding available seats on alternative flights. As a result, passengers could face more and longer delays.
“If it takes six hours to fix a plane, people are going to have to wait,” said Terry Trippler, an analyst with Cheapseats.com.
“Two years ago, airlines would have canceled flights and rebooked people on another airline. Now there’s no place to put them. They have to operate those flights.”