The Flying Book

by David Blatner

  Successful luggage-handling systems move your bags at almost exactly the same speed that you move through the airport, so bags don’t arrive too late to make your flight or too early—perhaps making a connecting flight that you don’t.

  Being Careful

  Along the way to the airplane, your bags are also scanned for contraband such as drugs and explosives. While some airports outside the United States still only X-ray bags, American airports are now employing trained “sniffer” dogs, X-rays, and devices based on computed tomography (CT) scanners, like those in hospitals. Each minute, these devices build “slice” images of about nine pieces of luggage and then automatically compare them to the CT properties of known explosives. The devices can fog your photographic film (even inside lead bags), so most professional photographers carry their film in clear plastic bags and ask that they get hand-checked at the security gate. (The X-ray machines at the passenger security checkpoints are much less powerful, and typically only fog film after many passes.)

  Someday airlines will offer time travel. You can go to the future year 2090 to visit your progeny, but your luggage will wind up in the Middle Ages.

  —Frank Romano, technology columnist

  While 99.5 percent of bags arrive on the same aircraft as their owners, in 2001, there were 2.2 million reports of mishandled (lost or damaged) luggage in the United States, for an average of 4.55 pieces of luggage per 1,000 passengers. Some airlines tend to track people’s bags better than others—Alaska Airlines, for instance, averages less than half the national rate. The good news is that 80 percent of lost bags are retrieved successfully within a day, and 99 percent arrive at their proper destination within five days.

  However, if the machine does find anything suspicious, the bag gets automatically transferred to another location for a more detailed search, usually done by hand with you watching.

  Also, ever since terrorist bombings in the 1980s, airlines are hesitant to allow a passenger’s bag to fly without the passenger on board, too. If someone checks in a bag but never boards the aircraft, the airline may pull that bag off before takeoff. Some airlines are taking this process further, giving the baggage handlers handheld bar code scanners that can wirelessly communicate with the central computer to compare each bag with each passenger’s boarding status.

  Lost Luggage

  With all that computerized technology, how could anything go worng? Obviously, in the real world the system is never perfect; tags are misread, bags are routed to the wrong airplanes, and some luggage is simply lost in the shuffle. It’s not uncommon for a cart driver to take a corner too quickly and have one or two bags fall off onto the tarmac. In an automated system, an odd-sized bag may fall off a conveyor belt and have to be later retrieved by hand.

  Because most luggage mishandling occurs when bags are transferred from one airplane to another, the best way to avoid losing your bags is to fly nonstop. Of course, that’s rarely practical these days, so here are a few more tips:

  Make your luggage really stand out. Paint fluorescent colors on the side or tie on colored bands. (Use a color other than red, which is overused.) Or perhaps just buy brightly colored bags; they’re not fashionable, but they’re hard to miss.

  Always remove extraneous tags before checking your bag; they might confuse the bar code readers.

  Check in an hour or more before your flight, and make sure you have at least an hour layover between flights when connecting, especially when transferring from one airline to another.

  Hold on to your claim checks (they’re usually stapled to your boarding pass) until you have your bags back. You will need them if anything goes wrong.

  Personalize your luggage. You’d be surprised at how many people take home a bag that turns out to be someone else’s. Be sure that your name and address are on a tag or label on the outside of the bag, preferably where it cannot be torn off accidentally. Also, put more identifying information (perhaps even your itinerary) inside each bag.

  When you check in your bag, make sure to confirm your final destination with the airline representative. Is it San Jose, California (airport code: SJC), or San José, Costa Rica (airport code: SJO)? If you’re transferring from one airline to another, or making a connection in a different country from your origin, your bags may only be checked to the intermediate point.

  Don’t lock your bags or put valuables in them. Security personnel sometimes need to search through checked baggage. Consider packing objects you don’t want touched in clear plastic bags. Also avoid packing food or drinks in your bags, as organic items may be flagged as suspicious.

  Finally, don’t put anything irreplaceable in your checked bags. Only about .005 percent of bags are permanently lost, but that’s still enough that you should be wary. Airlines in the United States don’t have to pay you more than about $1,250 if they lose your bag on a domestic flight. (You may have to prove the value of the contents.)

  International conventions, however, state that airlines only have to pay $9.07 per pound (or $20/kg) for bags lost on international flights—that’s about $180 for a twenty-pound bag! The courts have upheld this limit, even in a case where an airline lost a professional courier’s bag containing $2 million in cash. Fortunately, you can often buy “excess valuation” insurance when you check in (but even this wouldn’t have covered the unfortunate courier’s loss).

  Carry-on Baggage

  Since you shouldn’t put your valuables in checked baggage, you’ll need to carry them on board with you. Here, too, the airlines have detailed restrictions, such as the maximum size and weight of your carry-on bags. Note that different airlines and different countries have different restrictions; for instance, you may be allowed to bring a bag aboard on the long flight to Australia and later have to check it in on domestic flights within the continent.

  The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration provides a list of items you shouldn’t carry on board with you (see www.theflyingbook.com for a link to the FAA Web site), including: pepper spray, drain cleaners, bleach, house paint, solvents, hairspray (containers bigger than sixteen ounces), strike-anywhere matches (a small number of regular matches are okay), or sharp objects like knives, scissors, corkscrews, and disposable razor blades. Most likely, the items will just be confiscated, but you can actually be slapped with a hefty fine for each violation if you’re found to be willfully breaking the law.

  Checking your bags with the Sky Caps at the curbside is often faster and more convenient than standing in line at the airline check-in counter, as long as you don’t have to make any changes to your prepurchased ticket. Some Sky Caps are employed by a specific airline, whereas others work for a collective of airlines at the airport. The Sky Caps’ name probably originated from the “Red Caps,” the porters employed by the railroads.

  You have probably heard that airport police officers often rely on “sniffer” dogs to find illegal drugs or explosive chemicals. Lesser known are the dogs trained to find large amounts of currency passing undeclared from one country to another.

  It seems obvious, but you can’t carry firearms or ammunition on board. (Every now and again people will honestly forget that they have a gun in their bag; don’t be one of them.) You can pack an unloaded firearm in your checked baggage, but you must declare it when you check in.

  One of the most frequently asked questions at security checkpoints is whether the X-ray machine will damage data on disks and laptops. X-rays don’t hurt digital media at all, but magnetic fields do. Fortunately, the X-ray machines in most Western airports are well shielded from stray magnetic fields created by their motors, so you don’t have to worry. In eastern Europe and developing nations, it may be worth ensuring that these items are checked by hand instead. By the way, the metal-detection devices (magnetometers) that you walk through do create a magnetic pulse, so take that floppy disk out of your pocket.

  One more tip: It’s worth keeping your carry-on bags locked or at least difficult to open, especially on long international flights. So
me unscrupulous people make a living stealing from carry-ons while the airplane is dark and most passengers are asleep. It is also not unheard of for people to slip drugs into another passenger’s carry-on bag to better the chances of getting them through customs (only to be stolen back later).

  Deregulation and Ticket Prices

  Do you long for the “old days” when every seat on an airplane sold for the same amount, and that amount was based on how far you flew? Today, airline ticket prices fluctuate daily—sometimes even hourly—so that you may pay more than $1,000 more for your ticket than the person next to you, or you may pay twice as much to travel 500 miles as you would to travel 3,000 miles. These gross inconsistencies may leave you feeling that the airlines are being unfair in their pricing (unless you’re the one with the lower-priced ticket). But fear not; the airlines are being consistent. They’re consistently trying to make as much money as they can.

  A Short History Lesson

  Between 1934 and 1978, airline fares in the United States were strictly regulated by the government’s Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The CAB didn’t actually set ticket prices, but airlines were not allowed to change their airfares without the board’s permission. While the CAB would let airlines raise fares to cover costs, it rarely let an airline reduce its fares. Not only couldn’t the airlines compete based on fares, but the CAB itself stifled growth, stopping airlines from entering certain markets, fearing that excessive competition would be bad for the American public. The result was high ticket prices, so only business travelers and relatively wealthy people were able to fly.

  Regulation did have its benefits, though. The CAB insisted that airlines fly direct routes between cities, even if those routes weren’t popular and the airplanes had to fly less than half full. Also, the airfares were based on the distance between the cities, so flying from San Francisco to New York was more or less the same price as flying from San Francisco to Hartford, Connecticut.

  If we went into the funeral business, people would stop dying.

  —Martin R. Shugrue, vice-chairman of Pan Am, describing how bad business was before the airline went out of business in 1991

  If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.

  —Comedian Mel Brooks

  Since airlines couldn’t change their fares, they had to offer other incentives. In the 1950s and early 1960s, airlines tried to sell seats based on how fast they could fly. Advertising “we get you there faster,” they pushed their new jet airliners at full throttle. Unfortunately, they soon found that it was an incredibly inefficient use of fuel to fly any faster than about Mach .85 (about 560 mph or 910 km/h). So in the 1960s, airlines began to compete based on better service. Some installed piano lounges and encouraged passengers to sit around large circular tables; others made their young female flight attendants wear sexy uniforms.

  Deregulation

  By the 1970s, airlines began lobbying the government to dismantle the air travel regulations and let them compete in any way they saw fit, including setting their own airfares. They insisted that unregulated airline travel would be good for the public, pointing toward the great success of a small “discount fare” operation called Southwest Airlines, which had avoided federal regulations by flying only within the state of Texas. By 1978, they had won their argument with Congress, and President Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act into law that year.

  As strange as it seems, airlines regularly sell more tickets for some flights than there are seats available. They do this on purpose because a surprising number of people don’t show up to flights for which they have a reservation or ticket. Some business passengers book multiple flights near the same time, in case one gets canceled or they’re running late. Other passengers simply don’t make it to the gate in time. In fact, some estimates suggest that about half of all reservations are canceled or turn into no-shows, and as many as 15 percent of the seats on a fully booked flight would go empty if the airline didn’t overbook. When too many people do show up, it can be expensive for the airline, but in the long run the company still comes out ahead.

  Since then, a number of interesting changes have taken place. First, air fares tumbled drastically on heavily traveled routes, like the one from New York to Chicago. On the other hand, air fares increased on lesser-traveled routes, even when they cover short distances, such as from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. So while the average price per mile is now significantly lower than it used to be (leading more people than ever to travel by air), passengers outside major metropolitan areas often have to pay more for less service.

  In 1978, many people prophesized that the relatively safe airline industry would become dangerous in the postderegulation era, because airlines would cut their safety standards as they cut their airfares. Surprisingly, air travel has actually become safer since deregulation; equipment failures and human errors have all decreased, while air travel has dramatically increased.

  Less clear, however, is the question of whether competition has actually increased or decreased. There is fierce competition for major routes like the one from New York to London. But there is often little or no competition at other airports. Some small airports that were once served by several airlines now have only one to choose from—and passengers must pay whatever that airline demands. Other larger airports have become hubs for one or two particular airlines. For instance, it’s difficult to fly out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, unless you fly on Northwest Airlines, which owns almost all the gates.

  Competition in the United States has also decreased in the past quarter century as six of the eleven major airlines that existed in 1978 have either gone out of business or merged with other companies: Braniff, Eastern, National, Pan American, TWA, and Western. Of the twenty-six regional airlines that formed after World War II—like PSA, Piedmont Airlines, and Flying Tigers Cargo—only US Airways still exists (though it has filed for bankruptcy at the time of this writing). Today, fewer than ten airlines control almost every route in the United States.

  Average Price to Fly Round-trip from Seattle to Los Angeles:

  Year Price Price Adjusted for Inflation

  1936 $113 $1,354

  1958 $97 $559

  1970 $142 $609

  2002 $260 $260

  As it turns out, one of the main factors deciding an airline’s fate was how smart it was about pricing its tickets.

  Perishable Inventory

  To understand how airplane tickets are priced, you have to realize that airline seats are as perishable as fruit in a grocery store. Airlines can only make money when they fill seats on airplanes, and the moment an airplane takes off, any seat that isn’t filled is a missed opportunity, like a pear becoming spoiled before it’s sold. To maximize profits, the airline needs to fill the airplane while charging as much as it can for each seat. But it knows that it can’t fill airplanes by charging full fare.

  The trick, then, is to find the balance between filling the airplane with discount air fares (which probably wouldn’t generate enough revenue to make the trip profitable) and selling only a portion of the plane’s seats at full fare. Airlines know they can charge a business traveler more than the average tourist is willing to pay. They know that people who purchase tickets two days before a flight are more desperate than people who bought them a month earlier. They know that at certain times of the year some travel destinations are more popular than others.

  So airlines use all this information to maximize their profits. They offer lower-cost incentives to get people to fly during less popular times (such as Tuesdays and Wednesdays). They charge lower fares to fly into a lesser-used airport like Baltimore’s, which is an hour outside Washington, D.C. They offer incentives to buy less flexible, nonrefundable tickets that are purchased as far in advance as possible. They may offer an incentive to stay over a Saturday night, which is unattractive to business fliers.

  This explains why a business executive who needs to be on a certain flight the next day will be charged an enormo
us rate while someone surfing the Internet for good deals can get on the same flight for a fraction of the cost. By agreeing to fly on any flight at any hour, the surfer is a prime target for cheap fares that will fill soon-to-perish seats.

  Note that large airlines also use incredibly complex “yield management” software to constantly track and analyze the demand for tickets and compare it to historical data. If one flight starts to sell faster than expected, the software raises the price of the tickets. If another flight is selling slower than it has in the past, the computer may lower the price to encourage more sales. These changes are often made on a daily basis, and sometimes even multiple times each day. When the airlines tell you that a ticket’s price is not guaranteed until you buy it, they really mean it!

  This kind of analysis can occasionally create bizarre situations where it is actually less expensive to fly a long distance, with one or more stopovers, than it would be to fly directly to one of those stopover cities. Nevertheless, over time these sorts of schemes have increased revenues by at least 7 or 8 percent, and they are now used by hotels, car rental agencies, and other companies that have similar “use it or lose it” inventories.

  Answers to Common Air-Travel Questions

  (From a piece by Dave Barry originally published in the Miami Herald, June 12, 1998)

  Q. Airline fares are very confusing. How, exactly, does the airline determine the price of my ticket?

  A. Many cost factors are involved in flying an airplane from Point A to Point B, including distance, passenger load, whether each pilot will get his own pilot hat or they’re going to share, and whether Point B has a runway.

  Q. So the airlines use these cost factors to calculate a rational price for my ticket?

  A. No. That is determined by Rudy the Fare Chicken, who decides the price of each ticket individually by pecking on a computer keyboard sprinkled with corn. If an airline agent tells you that they’re having “computer problems,” this means that Rudy is sick, and technicians are trying to activate the backup system, Conrad the Fare Hamster.