Appearances can be deceiving.
While airports will be jammed starting Wednesday with travelers scurrying home for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, airlines are operating far fewer flights than in holidays past, and ticket prices are lower than they’ve been in the past 20 years.
As a result, the Air Transport Association said, “Many flights will appear full even though overall passenger volumes are still running 10 to 15 percent below 2000 levels.”
Not since 1983, when the average price for a 1,000-mile trip dropped to $104.57, have airfares been so low. Industry officials said passengers paid an average of about $110 for a ticket this year. Two years ago, the same ticket would have cost $150.
“There is a crisis in the industry,” said Donald Carty, chairman and chief executive of American Airlines. “Most carriers are planning less capacity for 2003 than they had in 2002.”
Still, some travelers at Chicago’s busy airports find it hard to believe that airlines are in trouble. “I think they are doing pretty good, and there are a lot of people on every flight,” said Jordan Taylor, 19, a student at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., as he waited for his bags at Midway Airport.
On top of that, Taylor said he is paying three times the price to fly to Chicago to visit his brother this year. This year his ticket to Midway aboard American Trans Air cost $320.
About 280,000 passengers will pass through Chicago airports Sunday, up slightly from last year, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Nationally, an estimated 1.4 million people will be flying that day.
Airline officials, pleased that traffic at the nation’s airports will be heavy this Thanksgiving, nevertheless said their problems are real.
“There will be a lot of full flights, but if people are just looking at that they might conclude that things are fine, but that masks the reality,” said Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for United Airlines.
US Airways, the nation’s seventh-largest airline, is operating under bankruptcy protection, while United, the nation’s second-largest, says it will file for Chapter 11 protection if it isn’t granted a government loan guarantee.
US Airways also said Tuesday that it will lay off an additional 2,500 people over the next three months, and American Airlines warned this week that it may be forced to seek work rule changes or wage concessions from workers.
The numbers are stark. United now is operating 25 percent fewer flights than it was before last year’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and American, the world’s largest carrier, is operating 11 percent fewer flights.
The transport association, which represents many of the nation’s largest airlines, is projecting industry losses for the year in excess of $9 billion; for the first nine months, losses amounted to $6.5 billion.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the incoming Senate majority leader, says some additional help to the industry may be needed.
Congress adopted a $15 billion bailout for the industry last year, $5 billion of which was doled out as grants, to compensate the airlines for the four-day shutdown of the aviation system after the attacks.
Even people who are frequently around airlines and their customers question the severity of the industry’s financial woes.
“They’re selling tickets, they’re doing business. If they ain’t [turning a profit], they’re telling somebody a story,” said Ronald Scale, a foreman for the Chicago Aviation Department at Midway Airport.
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Yet after 12 hours in United planes–Maui to Chicago, with a brief layover in Los Angeles–Nancy Smith, 62, was willing to cut the airline industry some slack.
“The industry is trying to make the best of a difficult situation,” she said. “They’re trying to be more efficient. People in general are. We’re all in this together.”
Smith, an interior designer, said the plane was about one-third full when it left Maui, but filled to capacity for the Los Angeles-to-Chicago leg of the trip.
Smith was more critical of the way ticket prices fluctuate without notice.
“I fly to Chicago from Maui four times a year,” she said. “A round-trip ticket ranges from $700 to twice that. This trip cost about 20 to 25 percent more than the last time I made the trip.”
Her husband, Joel, a certified public accountant in Barrington, was just as critical of the price fluctuations.
When booking a trip to Washington recently, he chose a later flight because, at $900, the first flight of the day cost $650 more.
“Deregulation is the problem,” he said. “The industry should be regulated again. What other form of public transportation constantly varies the price from Point A to Point B?”