Airline Industry

The U.S. airline industry has been on a hiring trend lately, but don't expect that to continue too much longer. For the ninth straight month, the airline industry added full-time employees in August, with employment numbers up 2.8% from the same month last year, according to the U.S. Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In August, commercial passenger airlines employed 388,523 full-time workers in the U.S., up 10,688 workers from August 2010, according to the bureau.

Can an all-you-can-fly, membership airline get off the ground? A team of brothers plans to launch a Santa Monica-based airline to serve executives and others who are willing to pay a monthly membership fee for unlimited travel up and down the California coast. The concept is not new and has been fairly successful primarily with larger, commercial airlines. Santa Monica-based Surf Air plans to begin accepting members Thursday to fly between Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Monterey and Palo Alto starting in May. The airline would charge members a monthly fee, starting at $790, for unlimited flights between the four destinations on small eight-passenger aircraft.

The terrorist attacks that shocked the nation 10 years ago today devastated few industries as much as the airline business. In the decade that followed, U.S. air carriers have been battered by a sharp drop in demand, soaring fuel prices, wars, an outbreak of the deadly SARS virus and a stinging recession — forces that have led to billions of dollars in industry losses. Taxpayers and passengers have also had to pay in cash, delays and frustration: Air passengers shell out $1.8 billion annually in new airline fees to help fund $57 billion in airport security improvements mandated by the federal government over the last decade.

The U.S. airline industry has been on a hiring trend lately, but don't expect that to continue too much longer. For the ninth straight month, the airline industry added full-time employees in August, with employment numbers up 2.8% from the same month last year, according to the U.S. Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In August, commercial passenger airlines employed 388,523 full-time workers in the U.S., up 10,688 workers from August 2010, according to the bureau.

The airline industry ranks lower than many in customer satisfaction, and the score has been falling, an annual survey indicates. Average customer satisfaction scores, 2000 (on 100-point scale) Scheduled airlines ............63 TV broadcasting ...............64 Newspapers ....................68 Motion pictures ...............68 Hospitals .....................69 Hotels ........................72 U.S. Postal Service ...........72 Telecommunications ............72 Electric utilities ............

As more carriers try to match the success of low-cost king Southwest Airlines, they're flying an airplane that's already the industry workhorse: the economical Boeing 737. Boeing has delivered more than 2,500 of the squatty-looking planes since their debut in 1967, making the 737 commercial aviation's top seller. Another 440 are on order at the Boeing plant in Renton, Wash. The aircraft is flown by 159 airlines worldwide.

President Bush signed a bill providing $15 billion for the airline industry hit by job cuts and plummeting ticket sales since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "The terrorists who attacked our country on Sept. 11 will not shut down our vital businesses or thwart our way of life," Bush said in a written statement from his Camp David retreat in Maryland.

Tuesday evening's crash of an American Eagle propjet on a short flight from Greensboro to Raleigh, N.C., is the latest in a series of setbacks for the newly beleaguered commuter airline industry. The last two months have not been good ones for a segment of the transportation industry that until recently has enjoyed spectacular growth with deregulation. Last year, commuter planes carried some 50 million customers.

Airline chief executives, meeting Sunday as a group for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, face further losses on top of last year's $17 billion unless they shrink the industry by a third, analysts said. British Airways, AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and other major carriers won't return to profitability by trying to fill their planes and win market share with low ticket prices as they are now, said Chris Tarry, an airline analyst at Commerzbank.

The Air Line Pilots Assn., which Friday joined management of UAL Corp. in a bid to buy the airline company, has never been a traditional blue-collar labor union. Most of its members have college degrees. Many own businesses on the side. And the pilots are among the nation's best-paid union laborers with annual salaries topping $80,000. But it is still a labor union.

The terrorist attacks that shocked the nation 10 years ago today devastated few industries as much as the airline business. In the decade that followed, U.S. air carriers have been battered by a sharp drop in demand, soaring fuel prices, wars, an outbreak of the deadly SARS virus and a stinging recession — forces that have led to billions of dollars in industry losses. Taxpayers and passengers have also had to pay in cash, delays and frustration: Air passengers shell out $1.8 billion annually in new airline fees to help fund $57 billion in airport security improvements mandated by the federal government over the last decade.

The faces of passengers at airports may not always show it, but satisfaction with airline service is on the rise, according to a new survey. But the 2011 North American Airline Satisfaction Study by J.D. Power & Associates was not all good news for the airline industry: Passengers remain unhappy about rising airfares and fees, particularly those charged by the major carriers. Overall satisfaction with airlines in 2011 improved to an average of 682 on a 1,000-point scale, up 10 points from 2010, according to the survey of more than 13,500 passengers who said they flew on a major North American airline between July 2010 and April 2011.

The world's largest airlines collected an estimated $21.46 billion in passenger fees and other extra revenue last year, about double the amount collected in 2008, according to a new study. For some airlines, revenue generated from extra fees, the sale of frequent flier points and commissions for booking passengers into hotel rooms and rental cars now represents between 15% and 30% of all airline revenue, according to the report by IdeaWorks Co., a Wisconsin consultant on airline fees, and Amadeus Corp., a Madrid technology company for the travel industry.

Alaska Airlines Chief Executive Bill Ayer pilots a rarity in the airline industry — a carrier that has made it through a turbulent decade without filing for bankruptcy or merging with another airline. He plans to keep it that way, despite speculation that the Seattle airline is too small to operate alone. "The history of mergers in this industry is not a good one," said Ayer, Alaska's CEO since 2002 and CEO of Alaska Air Group Inc. "There have been rumors about somebody buying Alaska Airlines as long as I've been here, and probably longer than that.

For the third year in a row, Virgin America has been named the greenest airline operating commercial flights in the U.S. by Greenopia , a Santa Barbara-based research and eco-consumer advocacy group. Continental Airlines was named the greenest of the major carriers. Delta Air Lines got a nod for showing the most improvement in sustainability in the last year. To measure the overall "greenness" for its recently released ratings, Greenopia looked at factors such as how transparent the company is about its energy consumption; how easy it is for passengers to purchase carbon offsets; how much recycling is done on flights; and how much the company spends to research alternative fuels.

April Fools' has been a busy "news" day for the airline industry. In the name of fun, many carriers worldwide are announcing groundbreaking innovations aimed at improving the passenger experience, cutting costs and even defying the laws of physics. Earlier, I wrote about Ryanair's move to offer child-free flights . Here's a roundup of more April Fools' airline news/gags: -- In a post on its blog, Southwest announced that its team of scientists (the kind who study time travel, not the kind who build planes)

Donald F. Craib Jr., retired chairman and chief executive of Allstate Insurance Group, on Tuesday was named chairman and chief executive of Trans World Airlines. Craib, 68, will replace William Howard, 72, who joined the airline in July as it was preparing to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Howard said he resigned after his primary goal of getting the airline out of Bankruptcy Court was accomplished.

Automation in the travel industry has soared in the last couple of years, but travelers seem to want even more. About 70% of travelers say they are ready to use self-serve devices to board planes, check bags, change flights, rent cars and book hotel rooms, according to a recent survey of nearly 2,500 airline passengers worldwide. That percentage is a sharp increase from 2009, when 58% of travelers surveyed said they were willing to use self-serve technology. The results come from surveys taken at airports around the globe ?

If you think airline passengers are already feeling cramped, check out the SkyRider, a seat that resembles a padded saddle and lets airlines squeeze in up to 40% more travelers per flight. The seat has not been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration or purchased by any major airline, but it drew crowds when it debuted this week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center. With the U.S. airline industry still staggering from $58 billion in losses since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the new saddle seat represents the latest idea for wringing as much revenue as possible out of each flight.