0605 - StayHome!

The exhausted OO and the entire Staff have returned, with some difficulty, to the safe haven of Anguilla, where the only real threats are hurricanes and the depredations of the Water Department. We offer you, Innocent Readers, the following advice: Stay Home! The combination of ultra-low airline fares, bankrupt airlines, and the total incompetence of airline and airport management results in a travel experience closely modeled on the Abu Ghraib model, though with less nakedness. As usual, where there is an need for advice, we stand ready to provide it, but first, a modicum of complaint.

After the expenditure of some US$20 million on upgrading the Anguilla airport, American has scheduled only one flight, at a time when no connection can be made to or from U.S. cities. Shame! The blame may be that the Government here didn't provide refueling facilities, or it may be that American doesn't know its business, or both. Anyway, this requires that all trips be via ferry and taxi to the St. Maarten airport, overcrowded and rather surly. Did AA or the AXA Gov't arrange special airport ferries? No way – they don't work like that. Not good at all for the coming seasonal flood of tourism.

At one airport (BOS) there were five passport inspections. One was repeated within six feet. Asked why, the last passport-looker said: "Oh, he isn't Federal". At Boston, the six-thirty a.m. check-in at US Airways was a scene from Darfur – total mob scene, baggage in windrows, a handful of exhausted (and, surprisingly, quire agéd) clerks trying to cope and failing. Coming into BOS on US Airways quite new and shiny shuttle from DCA, the baggage was somehow misdirected and passengers stood around haplessly, hopelessly.

Quite plainly, neither airports nor check-in procedures are designed for an era of terrorists. It should be possible to have a safety check-in and inspection and ticketing combined, and send passengers to their gates briskly. We don't need five identity checks – maybe something like the inky fingers of the Iraq elections? What we need is some intelligent re-design here.

Despite the best efforts of airports and airlines to discourage travel, the sheer volume of passengers is incredible, and, in many cases, so is the quantity of baggage they drag along. The reason for the great number of travelers is that fares are incredibly cheap. Apparently, moving household goods as passenger baggage is also cheap. We have sought the advice of an expert in money matters (our Revered Investment Guru) who says that many airlines are in bankruptcy, some twice, and others are sliding there. Now, Readers, think hard, if fares are cheap and planes are overcrowded, what would you do if running an airline?

Sorry, that's not what they do. They don't raise fares, they cut them. They fire some worker, and cut salaries for others. Their baggage rooms must look like a circle of Hell. What is needed when a business model doesn't work is to change it. In this case, the needed change is to RAISE FARES! Sorry about that. Fuel surcharges work in trucking goods, why not in schlepping passengers? Put some thought into streamlining airline procedures. Hire some more workers where needed, and, yes, eliminate duplications.

The problem is not with the harried clerks and the airline crews. Mostly, they are trying. We have one hopeful sign: on the flight from PHL to SXM, the stewardess curled up with the new Harry Potter. Beats stale pretzels.

Next time: FoodFad (maybe) [OO #606]

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