Airline Industry Problems and Motorcoach Opportunities

As devoted National Bus Trader readers well know, this is not the first installment about these opportunities I have written for National Bus Trader (see https://transalt.com/article/drivers-v-robots-part-2-the-nature-of-modern-travel/; https://transalt.com/article/expanding-the-mode-split-dividing-line-part-1-exponential-airline-industry-corruption/; https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-1-magic-corridors/; https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-2-the-magic-coach/; https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-3-the-gains-of-winning-the-cost-of-failure/, and https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-4-service-concepts/). National Bus Trader virtually spoon fed the industry with a clear vision of where to place their vehicles, how the vehicles should be configured, and how to design their routes and schedules. Perhaps the spoon should be placed (or shoved) somewhere else. No dialog seemingly circulating about this opportunity was my excuse, this year, for not attending January’s UMA Conference.?????

Thankfully, the national media continues to pound away at the travesties of U.S. commercial airlines (see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/opinion/faa-air-travel-regulation-outage.html). The decades of corruption by the airline industry are finally catching up with it. But the obvious solution that National Bus Trader has shared with its readers over and over and over again have not materialized. Even the scalding NYTimes article noted (motorcoach industry readers should take a sober look at that article) failed to even hint at the obvious solution. Frankly the “obvious solution” deserves its own acronym: The OS. Why not? Google has become a verb.

?In this installment, I intend to reiterate some important points about the OS, to expand upon previous ideas written about it, and to outline the specifics of the solution including and beyond those already addressed in previous National Bus Trader articles. Without doubt, this is the time. This is the motorcoach industry’s moment. And for this industry’s survival and prosperity – and for many other reasons including wasted energy, foul air quality and the impact of the deterioration of commercial airline travel on those who genuinely need it – there is a pressing need for some long-overdue action by the motorcoach industry, its lobbying organizations and its regulatory agencies.

Limpy and Wimpy

Those following the news (and National Bus Trader articles) should know that, in 2021, half of all flights, worldwide, were cancelled. Half! National Bus Trader readers should also know the airlines screwed up a few months ago by failing to include USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg on its DNFW (Do not f---- with) list – and cancelled a flight of his, stranding him, and ruining an important day of work in our field. In milquetoast retaliation, Mr. Buttigieg ordered the Transportation Security Administration to promulgate regulations requiring these crooked airlines to refund the air fares of those passengers whose days, nights and agenda were ruined by this greedy corruption – effectively eliminating “non-refundable” flights when their cancellations were the fault of the airlines.

How terrific: A refund, often a few hundred dollars -- after ruining the traveler’s day, perhaps stranding him or her overnight (if he or she can even find a hotel that actually answers its telephones and has any vacancies, or otherwise sleeping on the terminal floor), and often sentencing him or her to a next day of bouncing from gate to gate as he or she is short-listed on one stand-by flight after another. The metal armrests on every seat at every gate no longer merely keep the homeless from spending the night in the terminal. They now sentence air travel victims to sleep on the polished granite terminal floors. Even those crummy blankets and pillows (which some airlines today actually charge for!) are unavailable for these travelers stuck on the ground.

·????????How about a requirement for spare aircraft?

·????????How about fines?

·????????What happened to the custom of bygone days where one missing a cancelled flight was transferred to a similar flight of a fellow-airline – much less free of any additional fees?

·????????How about something more than a crummy refund?

For those who forget, at least one former administration (Reagan) did not put up with nonsense like an air traffic controller’s strike. He fired every air traffic controller in the country. During the time a new, nationwide crew was trained to take over, I do not recall a single plane crashing into a fellow aircraft in the sky. With altimeters, assigned corridors, pilot’s vision and communications, this would have been a moonshot. So calling for some actual discipline and responsibility – mostly financial -- by the airlines should hardly be cause for alarm.

Before President Reagan, it was actually President Carter who eliminated the Civil Aeronautics Board (in 1978) – ostensibly feeling it was unneeded. Another baby step in the U.S. Jobs Elimination Program, mischaracterized and disguised as “deregulation,” was actually justified by the lie that it would create jobs. Phooey (for those obsessed with the need for clean language). As the NYTimes stated (1/13/23):?

The C.A.B., while hardly perfect, governed the airlines to ensure that a nationwide air network was maintained, ensured that airlines were earning reasonable profits and able to make necessary capital investments, and set cost-based fares and rules for fair competition. Under the C.A.B., airline bankruptcies and mergers were rare, flight cancellations and disruptions were rare, airlines never needed nor requested federal bailouts, and the United States maintained a near-universal air transportation network that covered rural and lower-population regions with lower, cost-based airfares. (Nowadays, airfares in rural and smaller markets are the highest in the country.) With none of these things any longer true, and as we endure a never-ending chain of crises….?

This segment concluded with the statement that, “it is clear that the deregulation experiment …needs to be rethought.” My, does it ever. Describing the current state of airline mismanagement, irresponsibility and reckless disregard, the NYTimes did not spare the airline industry’s feelings:

The airlines have no spare capacity, and passenger loads are at?record?highs, which means that one failure will cascade across the system. Despite having the authority to investigate and fine airlines?for unfair and deceptive practices, the Department of Transportation and its subsidiary the F.A.A., have deferred to the private sector for decades, and have done little to rearrange market incentives that lead to these problems.

Our existing political and regulatory system around the airlines likewise does not provide many pathways for addressing these problems. The airlines are?not a consistently profitable industry, shown by their need to come?hat-in-hand?for a?bailout?at any sign of economic turbulence. Yet it is to the airlines and their executives we often defer for solutions.

The private sector is a core part of the dysfunction. Airlines for America, the industry’s main lobbying group, has consistently stated it supports NextGen in principle but has?frequently lobbied against it, arguing it would require investments in upgrading equipment on aircraft. Airlines have been lobbying against the upgrades to F.A.A. satellite-based systems, often wanting to avoid making the?capital investments?in aircraft that comply with the new system.

Yes: The NYTimes actually noted that, unlike most other transportation sectors, airlines have no spares! Imagine operating a transit or paratransit system, or a large motorcoach operation, with no spares. Such an approach is unthinkable. While a vehicle may occasionally break down, passengers are almost never stranded – much less HALF their trips cancelled. It is hardly comforting that, in many of these cancellations, passengers are bumped to other, highly inconvenient, often long, connecting flights with long layovers without their permission. Otherwise, the NYTimes article concluded with the statement that, “We haven’t had a national discussion for 44 years about the state of air travel. It’s time to have that discussion, rather than playing whack-a-mole with each crisis as it arises.”?

The Need and the Satisfy

The “need” is clear. And it is finally being recognized formally. And loudly. Here are some of the components of the “satisfy:”

·????????Fewer flights -- including eliminating those altogether that can be more-sensibly be provided by other modes. In the 1970s, planners often discussed what was referred to as “The 500 Mile Rule” – meaning, no flights that short. Perhaps that distance is a bit extreme. But how about no more flights from Philadelphia to Atlantic City (62 miles apart). No more flights from San Francisco to Sacramento (88 miles). No more flights from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore (38 miles apart).

Just think of these flights in terms of energy. Try this: With your three-year-old steering, give his or her little red wagon (which has no brakes) a hefty shove and see how far it travels. Now: With as many friends and neighbors as you can muster, see how high you can toss it into the air (with or without your child as its passenger). No aircraft uses a gram of fuel to land. But a Boeing 747 consumes a gallon of fuel per second during take-off. A packed motorcoach may consume eight gallons per hour (only a few seconds of which are consumed during each “take off” from various stops). So: How stupid is stupid? How stupid is really stupid? Where were our regulatory officials and congresspersons in fourth grade when they should have been taught long division? Does anyone care? ?

·????????A requirement for spare aircraft – either per airline per terminal, or via some sharing arrangement among airlines at each commercial airport. Since passengers often enter the planes from a gangway, do they really care what name is painted on the exterior of the fuselage?

·????????Monitoring and enforcement -- with hefty fines for lies about the reasons for flight cancellations – like “weather” or “maintenance” when the reality is that most flights are cancelled because they are simply not full. One must find it fascinating that such shenanigans occurred in the heart of a COVID epidemic that killed over a million Americans – perhaps in some perverted killing-spree competition with AMTRAK (see https://transalt.com/article/covid-19-shenanigans-and-liability-part-2-making-money-by-compromising-health/).

·????????The replacement of countless flights with more appropriate modes (see https://transalt.com/article/expanding-the-mode-split-dividing-line-part-1-exponential-airline-industry-corruption/).

Why do we need fewer flights? Try these reasons:

·????????We are wasting customers’ time and money.

·????????We are pouring a small lake’s worth of unneeded gunk into the air every day.

·????????We are wasting an enormous volume of precious, costly energy – much less at a time when its shortage is triggering inflation – a cost fewer and fewer Americans (and obviously others) cannot afford.

·????????A replacement of many jumbo jets with smaller, electric-powered aircraft.

Regarding the latter, one recent estimate claimed that a small, battery-powered plane could travel coast-to-cost for $20 – while it would cost a Cessna $600 in fuel. Such disparities are not new to Americans: A study performed in 2013 based on an examination of 20 AMTRAK lines (noted in a National Bus Trader article whose link was provided above) found that the savings for traveling by motorcoach compared to AMTRAK ranged from $17.03 to $422.39 per passenger trip.?The “S” word – ‘subsidy’ -- that has eluded the motorcoach industry for its entire existence needs to be used, where appropriate, to replace this avalanche of corruption, waste and stupidity.

After 9-1-1, the airline industry came begging to Congress for a $15B bail-out. Then-Senator Jay Rockefeller (D, WV) practically spat on the ground as his angrily announced that his Committee wouldn’t give them a nickel. He was overruled in less than a week. Only Southwest Airlines – which actually made a profit in 2001 – was not among the beggars. Yet look at the mess Southwest made this past January!

Subsidies for the motorcoach industry need not become the slippery slope that operating assistance slithered the transit industry into: A near-total dependence on subsidies. For those readers in the public transportation field not paying attention, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Commission (WMATC) -- with the nation’s second-highest fare recovery ratio (25 percent) will, this coming July, eliminate fares altogether. The District will likely need to engage some of Putin’s Wagner Group African mercenaries to beat the homeless off the subway seats they would otherwise use for beds. (Having just eliminated a full fourth of its operating revenues, WMATC would likely find Pinkerton Guards unaffordable.) ?Otherwise, one could easily foresee a tripling of the bus fleet to accommodate peak hour demand. A class action lawsuit like BRU v. LACMTA (CA, 1999) – where the court ordered the County’s transit agency to purchase an additional 3200 buses – could reemerge. One can envision sch lawsuits cropping up all over the country, as transit agencies with far lower “operating ratios” begin cancelling fares – as Kansas City Regional Transit (with an operating ratio of 8 percent) did a year before COVID emerged. That transit ridership declined by 10 percent, nationwide, each of the two years before COVID, is an important lesson about slippery slopes.

This lesson is important for the motorcoach industry. Blaming the decline in transit ridership (during a period where more and more families’ and individuals’ incomes shrunk) on mode splits to Uber or Lyft are disturbingly na?ve. The principal reason so many riders stopped using transit is because the quality of service – including deplorable on-time performance – reached a point where many riders were willing to undergo considerable hardships to avoid having to put up with it.

Keep in mind that, during the two years preceding COVID, working “remotely” from one’s home was hardly a trend, much less a movement. Frankly, traffic in most cities (San Francisco excepted) is worse now than before COVID. In contrast, traveling on a souped-up, luxury motorcoach with features no commercial aircraft remotely has (see https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-2-the-magic-coach/) for a mid-distance trip that took a third or a fourth the time of a commercial airline trip would hardly represent a decline in service quality. That the fares would also be considerably less is hardly a footnote. Subsidizing a small portion of these trips in low-density, out-of-the-way areas could not remotely comprise a slippery slope. Frankly, in the right places (see https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-1-magic-corridors/), the trips would be profit-making bonanzas.???

What is needed, plain and simple, are more motorcoaches – particularly if intelligibly modified (again, see https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-2-the-magic-coach/) -- and fewer mid-distance flights.

Roots and Routs

I have often noted, in articles for National Bus Trader, that so many things which lie beyond the control of public transportation affect it. Among these forces, as also noted in past National Bus Trader articles, were:

·????????The formal-while-unwritten U.S. Jobs Elimination Program (the JEP), which began in 1973 when, in response to that year’s “energy crisis,” gas stations in 48 states (all but New Jersey and Oregon) eliminated “pump jockeys.”?

·????????The maldistribution of wealth (the MOW) that began when President Reagan reduced the top tax rate from nearly 60 percent to 15 percent, replete with gaping loopholes which Today’s Congress still refuses to close.?

·????????The lack of competition (the LOC) that exploded around 1990 when regulatory agencies began failing to enforce anti-trust regulations. How many readers think that it is a good thing that “Google” has become a verb?

Getting back to the New York Times, the article noted that, “despite a taxpayer bailout of $54 billion, the airlines sought to limit labor costs to favor investment compensation even though they were nearly insolvent.” How comforting. Now corporations are volunteering to become poor in order to make their shareholders rich.

The Satisfy

To reign in the inequity and multi-varied insanity wasting untold millions of hours of their customers’ time and likely billions of dollars of their money annually, needlessly spewing lakefuls of gaseous manure into our air every day, and squandering untold volumes of unrecoverable and increasingly-scarce energy, here are many or most of the things that are needed:?

·????????A single centralized, user-friendly nationwide motorcoach availability database (like Travelocity or Expedia) – funded either through a tiny surcharge paid by every motorcoach passenger or, God forbid, by some USDOT agency.

·????????A formal study to define and recommend?“optimum” dispersal points, positioning and routes for optimum coverage of all service areas where travel by commercial airline is not feasible, much less patently unreasonable (again, see https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-1-magic-corridors/) ?– giving the industry a boost by identifying how to optimize ridership and profits by working as a team rather than just competing piecemeal for cherry-picked routes.

·????????A requirement for all commercial airlines to have spare aircraft – either their own or through some sharing arrangement at every commercial airline terminal.

·????????At least one OEM offering a motorcoach modified to provide superior benefits to its passengers that compare favorably to those provided to both coach, and even First Class, commercial airline passengers. How many aircraft have comfortably-sized restrooms? How many have showers? How many have fully-reclinable seats? How many have closets? How many allow flight attendants to microwave gourmet food that could be effortlessly delivered to motorcoaches at every rest stop? Imagine what would be affordable if one did not have to spend money on the vehicle defying gravity.

·????????Subsidies – as noted, not remotely a slippery slope (like that experienced by transit, as it was misgoverned and mismanaged into decline twice (first in the early 1960s) by hapless transit agencies and toothless regulatory agencies?

·????????Serious regulatory involvement – not the regulatory abyss of impunity and corruption described by the NYTimes: “Despite having the authority to investigate and fine airlines?for unfair and deceptive practices, the Department of Transportation and its subsidiary the F.A.A. have deferred to the private sector for decades, and have done little to rearrange market incentives that lead to these problems.?The airlines are?not a consistently profitable industry, shown by their need to come?hat-in-hand?for a?bailout?at any sign of economic turbulence. Yet it is to the airlines and their executives we often defer for solutions.”

·????????A motorcoach planning function within FMCSA (if not a separate, small administration) – to balance off the clout of the FAA and provide technical assistance (like the Transportation Research Board and its Transportation Cooperative Research Program do for the transit industry and an infinite number of highway-improvement stakeholders) to the motorcoach sector, such that American travelers are provided with a balance of customer-friendly, ?air-quality-sensitive and energy-conscious mix of services.

·????????Finally, some responsible prudence with, and oversight of, AMTRAK, including the replacement of branch lines requiring enormous subsidies with motorcoach service that would require either trivial subsidies (in comparison) or, in many places, no subsidies at all.

In more simple terms, as summarized earlier, we need fewer flights, spare aircraft, monitoring and enforcement, and the replacement of ill-conceived, unneeded, harmful – and frankly, stupid and corrupt -- commercial flights with travel by modes that have none of the commercial airline industry’s problems, which bear none of its economic and non-economic costs, and which, for far less of all these costs, can provide far superior service. ?

Conclusions and Forewarnings

The NYTimes article cited and quoted from above ended with the conclusion that, “In both the airline industry and the regulators overseeing it, we jump from crisis to crisis without solving any underlying problems. Last summer’s mass cancellations, the Southwest meltdown,?numerous other airline I.T. outages, and now this F.A.A. outage show we need to rethink how we do air travel in the United States.

Remember the “old days,” when many transit riders were referred to as “transit-dependents?” That a full fifth of these “dependents” abandoned transit in the two years before COVID is worse than an embarrassing statistic. It illustrates the reason that an alarmingly-increasing percentage of Americans feel that the country is “falling apart.” It may fall apart despite anything we do sensibly in our failing public transportation industry. But the failure need not occur in the motorcoach industry if it is given the tools identified above.

One cannot fix the world in one swoop – even while, in the Nuclear Age, we can easily destroy it with one. But small and moderate components of it can absolutely be fixed through intelligent thought and a willingness to rid a major industry and its regulatory agencies of sloth, corruption and stupid thinking. Perhaps this installment, and others preceding and succeeding it in National Bus Trader, can serve as part of a roadmap to this future. Or perhaps they can at least serve as steppingstones.