Brace yourself for a summer of miserable air travel.
Planes are expected to be packed fuller than at any time since World War II, when the airlines helped transport troops. Fares are rising. Service frills are disappearing.
Logjams at airport-security checkpoints loom as the federal government strains to keep screener jobs filled. The usual violent summer storms are expected to send the air-traffic control system into chaos at times, with flight delays and cancellations cascading across the country.
And many airline employees, after years of pay cuts and added work, say they are dreading the season ahead. Those workers – and there are about 70,000 fewer of them than in 2002 – will be handling more than 100 million more passengers this year than they did four years ago.
The friendly skies, indeed.
“Everybody’s stressed. Everybody’s feeling it,” said Bryan Hutchinson, a former baggage handler at United Airlines who now works in a joint airline- union program to counsel workers suffering from stress or other emotional problems.
Above gate B-22 at Denver International Airport, Hutchinson receives a steady stream of burned-out-looking United employees.
Easy days are rare. An arriving plane is delayed. United shifts an outbound flight to a smaller plane. Thirty passengers are bumped. Some become irate.
And at the end of the shift, a gate agent “shows up in my office and says, ‘I’m wacked out,”‘ Hutchinson said.
He refers some workers to mental-health professionals and offers others strategies for coping: Take a couple of deep breaths; go vent to a co-worker.
Passengers feel the stress too. For some, the best coping strategy is to avoid flying.
Randy McCroskey, a consultant who lives in Maryville, Tenn., grew weary of sliding his 6-foot-4, 300-pound body into the seats of the smaller regional jets that increasingly serve Knoxville’s airport.
He says he now drives to see clients as far away as 500 miles. His former limit was 100 miles. That cuts his air travel by more than half.
“Rather than fight through security, not know if I’ll get a seat on a flight, get bumped, it’s easier to just get in my car,” McCroskey said. “When I pull into rest stops, I see the same guys in the bathroom I’d see at hub airports.”
But the airports are still busier, as traffic has risen along with the stronger economy and the recovery from the sharp downturn that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. About 207 million passengers are expected this summer, the Air Transport Association said, roughly 2 million more than a year ago.
And the effects of that seemingly modest 1 percent jump are magnified by the fact that there will be 4 percent fewer flights this summer, according to American Express.
Domestic flights are running about 80 percent full, and that means flights on popular routes are often fully booked. Tim Winship, publisher of FrequentFlier.com, said advance bookings suggest that planes, on average, should be close to 90 percent full this summer.