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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
We're about to elect a new president. Will he have the will to take on the serious issues affecting air travel?
By Patrick Smith
Read more: Technology & Business, John McCain, Flying, Airlines, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot, Barack Obama, 2008 election
Oct. 31, 2008 | Before we get going, let me tie up a couple of loose ends from last week's column about the travel habits of Americans (or should I say nontravel habits), which got something of a quarrel going on the letters board.
"Lots of Americans don't travel overseas, true," begins one of the posts. "But then people from other nations don't either, or if they do mostly it is just organized vacation tourism, which is not really Paul Theroux-style traveling."
I couldn't disagree more. Certainly there are plenty of foreigners who, like their American counterparts, travel primarily in search of sun, surf and relaxation; in essence the beach resorts of Goa, India, or Phuket, Thailand, aren't a whole lot different from, say, Cancun. But the minute one departs from the proverbial beaten path, he or she is struck by the dearth of American tourists as compared with those from other nations: Brits, Dutch, Australians, Germans, Israelis, Japanese. Nations like Australia and Holland have relatively tiny populations, yet per capita they travel far more widely than we do. I have been on numerous group adventure tours -- in Egypt, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and elsewhere -- and frequently, out of 10 or 15 people, I was the only American. You notice this even in parts of Latin America, only a few hours' flying time from the U.S. mainland. Granted, most foreigners receive considerably more vacation time than we do, and our continent's geography, bookended by a pair of large oceans, makes long-distance travel difficult. But at heart the issue is less of practicality than of a peculiar American insularity and inertia.
I also need to disagree with the reader who objects to the use of the term "American" in reference to citizens of the United States -- the argument being that "American" pertains to the inhabitants of all the Americas, North and South. Technically this is correct, and there are a few places, particularly in Latin countries, where describing oneself as American will result in some confusion. But for the most part, all around the globe "American" is the common and accepted term for a U.S. citizen. The meaning of the word has evolved over time, and there is nothing ignorant or offensive about it. Contending otherwise is pedantic and a waste of time.
Everyone down with that? Good.
Moving on, this is my last column before next week's electoral apocalypse, and I'll try to address a question that various readers have sent my way of late. Namely, how will a change of presidential administrations -- including, so it seems at this juncture, a likely change of parties -- affect air travel for the average United Statesian, er, I mean American?
Not to sound cynical or to undermine my belief that we should, as a nation, be scrupulous at the ballot box, but my answer is a big, fat, Who the hell knows? I see no major changes ahead, regardless of which candidate prevails.
To a degree, however, that depends on which sorts of incidents and crises the airlines have to deal with in the months ahead. Presumably, Republicans would be more sympathetic to large-scale mergers or acquisitions, for example, and less sympathetic to the problems of strikes, mass layoffs, etc.
Though not necessarily. The airline business exists in a parallel universe of sorts, where traditional party-line decision making doesn't always apply. We remember Ronald Reagan's mass firing of on-strike air traffic controllers in 1981, a salvo that paralyzed airports for days and threw thousands of government professionals out of work. Then again, it was Bill Clinton who prevented American Airlines pilots from striking in 1996, using executive power to force a 60-day mediation period. Another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, unshackling domestic airlines from their government minders and letting loose a hurricane of free-market competition. Three decades later, for all its patriotic rhetoric and big-business bluster, the Bush administration and, for a time, a Republican-dominated Congress, haven't been friendly to the airlines, their employees or their customers.
There are numerous issues in serious need of attention, but whether they receive it, in a time of more urgent national problems, is maybe a long shot.
For one, our air traffic control system needs extensive upgrades. Like much of America's infrastructure, it is outdated, inefficient and prone to expensive failures. But where the billions necessary for an overhaul might come from is anybody's guess. There are ticket taxes and surcharges already in place for this purpose, but they are woefully insufficient. Can we raise them without causing an outcry, and by how much?
No less important is a means of encouraging the nation's airlines to better rationalize their schedules. Congestion and delays are caused not only by those aforementioned ATC shortcomings but by the self-defeating scheduling practices of the airlines. This reality is unacknowledged by most regulators, and occluded by flak and propaganda thrown up by industry lobbyists. What's needed is a Department of Transportation with some teeth, willing to take a fresh look at the problem. Will we get one?
On the environmental front, would an Obama administration move forward with a European-style clampdown on air traffic? Europe's Greens have prepared a slew of punitive measures engineered to stifle growth of commercial aviation, ostensibly to curb carbon emissions. Could it happen here, with a more carbon-sensitive Congress and president? I'd say that's highly doubtful in a slowing economy, with a population that by and large won't admit there's a carbon problem to start with. In any case, the environmental footprint of aviation is routinely distorted and remains very small in comparison to other polluters (deforestation, commercial buildings, automobiles). If we are serious about climate change, aviation is pretty far down the hierarchy of threats.
Then, of course, there's the issue of airport security. There are some who hold out hope that regime change, so to speak, might result in an overhaul of the Transportation Security Administration's ludicrous and wasteful policies. The concourse checkpoint charade, and its obsession with scissors and shampoo bottles, needs to be dismantled, with a greater emphasis returned to explosives screening, particularly at overseas airports. Unfortunately, until a jetliner is bombed from the sky, I don't see this happening. There are too many people, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, not to mention the bureaucrats within TSA itself, who believe in the current protocols. TSA has dug itself in, and I have a hard time believing that Obama or anybody else will have the tenacity to uproot or fix it. Public pressure, not political pressure, is what's needed, and the traveling public has been either too apathetic or too browbeaten to care. "The only thing that will help create a new security paradigm," says Perry Flint, editor of Air Transport World magazine, "is when enough people simply stop flying."
Meanwhile those "registered traveler" machines are popping up at airports now, with their iris scanners, providing expedited security screening for those who enroll. Rather than fix a broken system, Americans can now pay to avoid it. If that's not the security-industrial complex in full splendor, what is? And we're stuck with it, I'm afraid.
So, that said, even if there's little change on tap, I suspect that a John McCain victory, at least on paper, holds the potential for greater impact. And for airline workers especially, that impact would mostly be negative.
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