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Flying For Fun and Profit
Opinion · February 8, 2002

When it comes to air travel, the thrill is gone. Flying just isn't fun anymore. But that's more than a morale problem for the nation's airlines - it's a money problem. The dreadful, humorless state of the aviation industry is keeping them from a recovery.

The formerly polite passengers have been replaced by travelers like Pablo Moreira Mosca, a 29-year-old bank employee from Uruguay who is accused of kicking in a cockpit door on a United Airlines flight from Miami to Buenos Aires last week because he "wanted to destroy everything."

The once civil security guards have lost both their manners and sensibility. How else can you explain the airport employee who ordered Rep. John Dingell to drop his pants after the congressman's artificial hip set off a metal detector at Washington's Reagan National Airport recently?

And the flight attendants who once made air travel a pleasure for everyone now refer to passengers as "the enemy" and indiscriminately expel travelers from flights for second-guessing their absolute authority to rule the cabin. Innocent passengers such as Akiko Mitsui, Pamela Batch Garza and John Kish - all kicked off their flight for "crimes" that ranged from asking for a flight attendant's name to allegedly bringing too much luggage on board - now think twice before buying an airline ticket.

The slide began years ago, when the federal government deregulated the airline industry, but after Sept. 11 things took a turn for the worse. Air travel became a nightmare that people went out of their way to avoid. According to a survey released last week by Protocol Communications, business travelers are using e-mail, conference calls and other Internet resources as air travel substitutes, while many leisure travelers said they were also having second thoughts about getting on a plane. Of course, quite a few of the travelers surveyed are worried about safety - and rightfully so - but it's also obvious that they want to avoid the overall air travel experience.

The results are clear. Last year, the major airlines lost an astounding amount of money. Leading the pack was United Airlines, with $2.1 billion in losses and US Airways, which ended the year $1.9 billion in the red. In fact, not a single major carrier - not Continental Airlines, not Alaska Airlines - made a dime last year.

Except one.

It's the kind of airline where flight attendants add comments like this to the safety instructions: "In event of a water landing, please remember paddle, kick, kick, paddle, kick, all the way back to shore." Or where the pilots make announcements such as: "Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but they'll try to have them fixed before we arrive." Its current chairman, in fact, was once called "the high priest of ha-ha."

I'm talking about Southwest Airlines, which made $511 million profit last year, despite the bad economy and despite Sept. 11. Granted, it's a well-run airline with many reasons for its 29 consecutive years of profitability. But one of those reasons, without a doubt, is that it's fun. Complaints about abusive flight attendants are rare. In more than a decade of covering the airline, the only grievance I've gotten about a Southwest crewmember involved a flight attendant who laughed at a passenger instead of with her.

The airline does get its fair share of unruly passengers. In August, 2000, a traveler died on a Southwest flight after he became combative and was subdued by as many as eight of the plane's 120 passengers. Authorities said they believed the man, Jonathan Burton, died of a heart attack.

But Southwest hasn't lost its sense of humor. Its crewmembers aren't angry and vindictive. They're self-deprecating, funny and often charming. They try to make the flying experience enjoyable, despite the small seats and peanuts served for snacks. Could it be that easy? The airline industry would have us believe that the solution lies in boosting yields and improving margins and in better marketing. I'm not so sure.

I think the answer is a lot more obvious than that. Just make air travel fun again.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.