December 10, 2007

They’re going to start launching something which I think is a long time in coming: Wi-Fi service on the planes. Not cell phone service, but Wi-Fi service.

JetBlue’s going to do it for free, especially if you have a Blackberry, then other airlines like American will probably kick in with a nominal charge between $10 and $20 dollars.

What’s cool about is that you can answer email. What’s also cool about it is that you’re not going to be on the cell phone bothering everyone else on the plane where fights will break out if you start talking to people with loud voices. So get ready for it.

It will be interesting to see how many people will follow JetBlue’s lead, simply because they’re offering it for free. I happen to believe it should be offered for free everywhere, especially in hotels.

It’s counterintuitive the way Wi-Fi is being offered. Why is it free at Hampton Inns, but the Ritz Carlton wants $17 bucks a night? It makes no sense because the technology doesn’t cost anybody anything anymore; it’s value added.

Again, one little caution: It’s going to be offered by JetBlue, only if you have a Blackberry for the moment (or a Yahoo Mail or Messenger account), then it will expand. Sooner or later you’ll be able to wire in and get your email and answer it, which is a great way to be productive on flights.

Because after all, with the exception of JetBlue and maybe Delta that has some in-flight video, there’s not a whole lot to do on planes except sleep and dream about the food they would have served you in 1947.

WOEFUL TRAVEL STATISTICS

It’s in December now, we’re getting ready for the holidays, but it has not been a holiday for the airline industry the entire year. Overall on-time performance sank to an all-time low—68 percent—as low as it was in June for on-time performance.

Between January and June, American Eagle lost over 132 thousand suitcases. That’s with 9 million passengers over that span of time. That’s the equivalent of losing one bag on every other flight. Not a good record.

We all know about the Valentine’s Day debacle with JetBlue, and then, one of my favorites, Continental flight 1669 from Caracas, Venezuela to Newark, back in July. It wound up in Baltimore, where passengers sat on the tarmac for five hours before getting let off the plane, only to spend two more hours being detained and questioned by police after protesting their “captivity”. That was fun.

And 20,000 passengers, on a security screening delay. It’s just getting crazier and crazier and crazier. And even though a lot of airlines, including Delta, have announced they’re cutting back flights in the fourth quarter—well of course they’re cutting back flights in the fourth quarter; nobody’s flying that much.

Traditionally, fourth quarter and first quarter flights are always cut, what Delta is not really talking about is that they’ve already announced, internally at least, they’re going to add flights at Kennedy starting in June and we’re going to be back where we started. So go out there and get a copy of War and Peace, because you’re going to be reading it this summer while you’re sitting on the tarmac.

I want to hear from you guys if you think you’ve got a solution. I’ve got a couple of solutions for it, airlines never want to listen to me, one is of course portable stairs—that’s right, portable stairs—we don’t need a jetway to get off the plane. We don’t need a jetway to get on the plane.

That’s how we started flying in this country; we actually walked out on the tarmac, and got on the plane. Jetways are not necessarily for our benefit if we can’t get on the plane. George Bush opening up military airspace means nothing if the airlines don’t schedule realistically and you can’t get up in the air to begin with.

WILL NEW YORK’S PASSENGER BILL OF RIGHTS PASS THE TEST?

And, there’s one more thing coming: We’re only two-and-a-half weeks away from a huge court test. That’s right, because on January 1, the New York state law kicks in.

It was passed unanimously last August and signed into law by Governor Spitzer: a Passenger Bill of Rights for the state of New York. And what that bill of rights says is that if you’re delayed for more than three hours on your flight on the ground, the airline can be fined up to a $1,000 per passenger per flight. That’s a heavy duty fine if they don’t get you back to the airport and feed you and do everything short of bathing you.

Now, under deregulation, the airlines will argue that the federal government has jurisdiction here, not local authorities, and they’ll want to test the case. The only way they can test the case, of course, is if New York decides to enforce it. Well, you know they’re going to do it.

One bad weather day in New York, one day of horrendous delays on the runway in New York, and guess what’s going to happen—New York is going to come in there, and basically seize and fine airlines, and it’s going to end up in the courts.

And we’re going to see some great drama. I predict that will happen on January 4 or 5, right when people are returning from their holiday vacations.

I really do believe that every local authority has the right—not to enforce unilateral rules on any other jurisdiction—but in terms of health and safety and the welfare of their citizens, to determine how many planes a runway can handle at any given hour. And, if the airlines are scheduling 45 departures on a runway at La Guardia, and the runway can only hold 30 an hour even in good weather, I think the local authorities are well within their rights to tell the airlines they have overscheduled.

Because that’s just in good weather, can you imagine what happens in bad weather? So they were already building into their system delays. That’s not fair. They’re fudging their schedules.

Every time I’m on a plane, the flight attendants are told by the pilot “be prepared for an early arrival,” which of course never happens, I have to ask the question: early compared to what?

Compared to 1978 when the planes landed 40 minutes earlier than they’re landing now anyways?

Bottom line is they’re fudging the schedule, and they’re doing it because they already know that you can’t schedule 45 8 a.m. departures when the runway can only hold 30. And that’s just in New York.

This is true in Los Angeles, in Miami, all the major cities, where everybody says they want to leave on the first flight of the morning. Local authorities need to divide these slots out and basically give them out saying to United, you can leave at 8:07 a.m., and American can leave at 8:11 a.m., and Delta can leave at 8:14 a.m., and we don’t really care if you fly a little RJ (regional jet) with Captain Skippy or a 747, we’ll leave the choice of aircraft up to you, bottom line is you get to pick the aircraft—we get to pick the time.

That’s what’s going to have to happen, otherwise, we’re all going to be stuck on the runway.

From the Dec. 10 show of Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio.

Read more from Peter’s blog, the Travel Detective Files.

Learn about your rights–and responsibilities–as an airline passenger with Rule 240 Explained.