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The Mullings Dog Days Tour

Friday August 16, 2002

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From San Antonio, Texas
National Republican Lawyers Association
• I am embarking on the "Mullings Dog Days Tour" which will place me aboard - this is no exaggeration - 19 flights over the next two weeks, so the current news regarding the commercial airline system in the U.S. of A. is of some modest interest.

  NOTE: There will be a travelogue attached to this travel. All of the fun, the misadventures, and the crankiness which you have come to enjoy. Stay tuned for the first installment on MONDAY! Click here to read previous Travelogues.

• Happily, I am flying Delta on 16 of those 19 flights. Two are aboard Northwest Airlines which I once vowed never to fly again so long as the earth spun through the solar system but, as there is no other convenient way - or INconvenient way - to get to Fargo, I am stuck.

• The final one is Southwest from San Francisco to LAX. 44 bucks. I love Southwest. Air Taxi.

• Over the past few days here is the news from America's airlines:

  - US Airways has declared bankruptcy
  - American Airlines announced 7,000 layoffs and a reduction in flight schedules
  - United Airlines warned of an impending bankruptcy if its employees don't follow its pilots and accept wage and benefit cuts
  - Spirit and National Airlines have been refused loan guarantees from the Feds; and,
  - Delta has announced that they will begin charging $40 for a third checked bag, thus beginning what I fear may be a long slide from a passenger to a cargo carrier.

• America's airlines have been in trouble since the first guy, in the first fabric-covered biplane, charged the first OTHER guy for a ride; thus establishing the air transport industry.

• The airline industry - like the telecom and the dotcom industries - has focused on revenues.

• Remember, during the dotcom boom, because there were no profits (and would never BE any profits), the touters touted revenue, revenue, revenue as the only measure of success.

• When I was a teen in New Jersey we had a high school basketball coach who preached defense. Every shooter will get into a slump, he would warn the players. But good defenses never have a slump.

• A similar mantra could be developed for major corporations: Every business sector will have a revenue downturn; but good expense controls never have a downturn.

• So, the airline industry will be moving from a revenue-generation model to an expense-control model. Fewer flights mean fewer baggage handlers, fewer catering people (same number of meals but fewer people needed to deliver them), fewer gallons of fuel, fewer flight crews, mechanics, gate agents, and the rest.

• It will also mean - for the actual passengers - longer waits between flights at hubs, and fewer flights to non-hub cities. Airlines which used to match each other flight-for-flight and market-for-market, will now take less revenue on fewer planes to fewer places thus improving the bottom line.

• This will lead to higher ticket prices as supply (fewer planes) and demand (a steady or growing number of passengers) work their inevitable magic.

• Don't think individual members of the House and Senate will miss the fact that they can impact routes.

• Need a little tiding-over money? No prob. Senator Robert Byrd - chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee - will invite you in for an informal chat about providing the funds, if you will provide the good folks of Appalachia with a little better schedule in and out of, say, Parkersburg, West Virginia. There will be 535 of those good ideas in the House and the Senate.

• Another effect will be the way airlines treat frequent flier miles for free travel. I guarantee you - remember where you read this first - all airlines will soon begin charging a fee, starting in the $15 to $25 per ticket range, and increasing every few months from that point forward, for the privilege trading in your miles for a ticket.

• Dee-fense. Dee-fense.

• On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: the history of the phrase "Dog Days", the complete travel schedule, my high school basketball team history, as well as the usual stuff.
  --END --
  Copyright © 2002 Richard A. Galen

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