Winging It: Readers challenge US Airways strides

Last week was a good one. No more airlines said they wanted to merge, volcanic ash didn't force massive flight cancellations across Europe, and long tarmac delays were reported to be down sharply in March, just as tough new rules to prevent them were about to take effect.

That makes this a good time to look at recent developments on several topics I have dealt with in columns or the Winging It blog recently.

As expected, a few of you disagreed strongly about my judgment in the May 3 column that US Airways has made significant strides in recent years in providing better service at Philadelphia International Airport. (All old columns are archived on the blog: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/wingingit/)

Most of the messages recounted bad experiences with long flight delays or cancellations, wayward baggage, and changes to the Dividend Miles frequent-flier program.

Several frequent fliers who once were heavy users of US Airways said they avoided the airline now after too many problems with punctuality, lost bags, and indifferent service. One reader who recounted tales of woe opened and closed his message with "Pray for me . . . I travel on US Air."

Another reader chastised me for even raising the subject of US Airways' service because of the benefits its Philadelphia hub brings to the region. One frequent flier who also comments regularly on the blog said he had found US Airways' fares and its connections to the West Coast were usually better than those offered by Southwest Airlines.

A few readers sympathized with the traveler who was forced to use a US Airways ticket she had bought for travel to London for a domestic trip because of US Airways' strict policy on rebooking within 14 days without paying a $250 change fee.

She and two friends, all flying from different U.S. cities on nonrefundable tickets, canceled the London trip because of the disruption to European flights caused by volcanic ash. The other travelers' airlines were more flexible in the way the value of their tickets could be used for future flights.

On another topic, the proposed merger of United and Continental, and its implications for the stand-alone status of US Airways and American Airlines, discussed in last week's column, didn't generate much reader comment.

That's to be expected, given that a United-Continental marriage could take months to complete. Many observers, like those I quoted last week, said they believed that mergers of the older legacy airlines were inevitable because mergers were the only way for them to survive.

But approval of the merger by the Obama administration's Justice and Transportation Departments is by no means certain. Expect hard questioning, too, by members of Congress from both sides of the aisle in hearings this spring and summer.

According to Hubert Horan, a consultant and former airline executive who opposes the merger, federal regulators need to look at how much long-haul, intercontinental airfares have increased since the launch of big airline alliances.

All of the world's major carriers are now members of three global alliances that, to varying degrees, allow them to coordinate fares and schedules, sell one another's tickets and generally try to operate flights as if they had formally merged.

Horan, in a draft of a research paper he is writing on industry consolidation, estimated that airline customers paid between $5 billion and $8 billion more for overseas tickets from 2004 through 2008 than they would have if these "colluding alliances" didn't exist.

Horan contends that while some aspects of the partnerships, such as frequent-flier program reciprocity, aren't anticompetitive, the alliances primarily benefit airlines and not their customers because of their power to determine fares and flight schedules.

Although Horan focused on the effect of transatlantic alliances, he agreed with others who said they believed domestic competition would suffer as well from more airline mergers.

Low-cost airlines such as AirTran, Southwest, Spirit and JetBlue can provide competition on many popular routes, but there is no way around the fact that their route systems don't provide the coverage the big legacy carriers do.

That thought was in mind when Southwest announced last week that it would start service next year to two more airports with high fares and little service, Charleston and Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C.

Greenville/Spartanburg, in particular, is typical of places where Southwest likes to fly. It's 80 miles from US Airways' Charlotte, N.C., hub, and 140 miles from Delta's hub in Atlanta, close enough to guarantee it will attract hordes of customers seeking relief from the high fares traditionally charged by the bigger airlines at their hubs.

But Southwest service to two more smaller cities will provide only a limited amount of competition in one region to airlines with a worldwide reach.

A last thought: Federal data on airline on-time performance show that tarmac delays of three hours or more dropped in March to 25 from 88 the same month a year ago.

Do you suppose the decline had anything to do with the $27,500-per-passenger fines airlines will have to pay for stranding passengers on the tarmac?