SAN FRANCISCO – Airline service workers at San Francisco International Airport voted overwhelmingly yesterday to authorize a strike at one of the busiest airports in the country. Workers who came out to vote on Thursday said that they were fighting against declining standards of service and security at the airports. Poverty-level wages and lack of access to affordable family health care are causing record turnover rates among workers and driving a race to the bottom in service and safety standards.

Workers called on airline giants such as American, Cathay Pacific and United to take a leadership role in calling for higher standards for service and security.

Workers employed by contractors Prime Flight and G2 Secure Staff voted yesterday to authorize a strike. Employees of a third contractor, Air Serv, are also in negotiations at the airport.

CRISIS IN AIRLINE SERVICE INDUSTRY

Low wages and lack of healthcare are driving a turnover rate among airport service workers that is as high as 50% per year in some jobs. This negatively impacts service and security at California airports. High turnover in the industry prevents security officers and other passenger service workers from getting the experience and training they need to adequately protect and provide quality services to airline passengers.

At SFO, airline service workers such as security officers, janitors, passenger service workers, cabin cleaners, ramp and cargo crew, on average, earn less than $12.00 an hour, putting them well below the $54,000 per year that the Economic Policy Institute says is necessary for a family of four to survive in California. In addition, none of the service workers have access to affordable family health care.

“We are the face of the airlines. We are the people that passengers see every day,” said Patrick Jack, who provides skycap services for American Airlines through his employer G2 Secure Staff and has worked at the airport for 19 years. “We are taking a stand for better service, better airport security, and for quality jobs.”

Airline service workers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) voted overwhelmingly yesterday to authorize a strike at the nation’s fifth busiest airport. Workers said that they were fed up with declining standards of service and security at the airports. According to the workers, inadequate training, lack of proper equipment, poverty-level wages and lack of access to family health care are causing record turnover rates among workers and driving a race to the bottom in service and safety standards.

The LA Times reports:

[Union spokesperson] Chavez said workers are paid an average of $10 an hour and 97% have no family healthcare. As a result, job turnover rate has gone up to 50% in some cases, he said.

“It’s really driving a race to the bottom in terms of service and safety standards,” he said.

The 95% approval vote gives union negotiators the go-ahead to call a strike at any time, Chavez said. The workers union has been in talks with airline subcontractors, who hire for the service jobs, since July, Chavez said.

While workers expressed anger at their employers who have stalled negotiations and threatened workers who show support for the union, they also called on airline giants such as United, American and Southwest to take a leadership role in calling for higher standards for service, security.

“The airlines can do a lot better to improve services to their airline passengers and airport security, while at the same time make these good jobs for our families and our communities,” said Fanny Fuentes, who provides wheelchair assistance to passengers with disabilities and seniors at Northwest Airlines. Fuentes, like most airport service workers, earns only $10 an hour and does not have adequate individual or family healthcare.

In a recent survey of airport workers by the Los Angeles Alliance for New Economy, 75 percent of wheelchair attendants surveyed reported problems with broken or malfunctioning wheelchairs and nearly a third reported that a passenger has been in danger due to equipment problems or lack of training.

Improvements to training, proper equipment, a livable wage and family health care coverage could be implemented for a cost barely noticeable to passengers. Less than 25 cents per ticket would improve passenger service and airline security. Despite raising ticket prices by an average of $200 and instituting a range of new fees, airlines have been unwilling to make this minor investment in the workers who directly impact overall travel-experience of their passengers.

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 represents about 5,000 airport service workers in California. SEIU is currently in negotiations with subcontractors including ABM, Aero Port Services, Air Serv, , Aviation Safeguards, G2 Secure Staff, Lee’s Maintenance, One Source, Primeflight, Service Performance Company, and World Service West. These subcontractors service American, United, Southwest and other airlines and perform the majority of the security, janitorial and passenger service work at LAX,
SFO, San Jose and Oakland airports.

You have probably seen the latest United Airlines commercial at the 2008 Beijing Olympics: a woman says goodbye to her husband for a business trip, leaves her heart behind as a token of her love, only to be reunited with her husband, all thanks to United Airlines.

That’s nice.

Anita Cabral’s real-life, horrific story of a family reunion with United Airlines, on the other hand, is heart-breaking.

According to a San Diego Union-Tribune report, Ms. Cabral had hoped to reunite her grown children and her terminally-ill ex-husband:

Cabral had meticulously planned this vacation, built around a family reunion in Hawaii and a chance for her grown children to see their father, Cabral’s ex, who was in a hospice dying of cancer.

Eight people were making the trip: Cabral, her husband, her brother, her son, her daughter and her daughter’s husband and two children.

One year out, they wrote a five-figure check to reserve a five-bedroom, five-bathroom beach house. They bought their tickets from United six months early. They booked a jungle excursion, a luau, a trip in a glass-bottom boat.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and they had a big investment in it, emotionally and financially. They even had it insured.

And all that planning unraveled in just a few hours.

On the eve before their big trip, according to the report, some members of Ms. Cabral’s family could not check in using United’s website. After making excuses, United finally confessed: they had been bumped from the flight and their seats had been sold to other people. Gerry Braun of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote:

United – after holding their money for six months and bumping them from the flight on the eve of takeoff – had no plan to help Anita Cabral and her family.

Alternative flights were proposed. But they separated the party of eight into pairs, and staggered their arrivals over several days, and sent them to different islands (leaving them to fend for themselves).

[Ms. Cabral's] 7-year-old [granddaughter] has special needs and had not flown before. Both of her parents wanted to be with her. But that counted for nothing.

In the end, the best United could offer was a flight that arrived five days into their weeklong vacation.

Click HERE to read what happened to the Cabral family.

On Wednesday, 2,500 service workers at LAX will vote to determine whether to go on strike.

The workers, who have been negotiating their contract since May, are employed by airline subcontractors to provide passenger services to several major airlines, such as United, American, and Southwest. A Los Angeles Times story reports:

The union members include service workers employed at both the airport terminals and on planes in jobs such as security, wheelchair assistance and airplane cabin cleaning. The union is pushing for higher wages, improved medical coverage and more training, equipment and staff support, said Mike Chavez, a union spokesman.

He said although workers are employed by contractors, the responsibility lies with the airlines that hire the contractors.

“The airlines need to take some leadership,” Chavez said. “They have a role in saying what their contractors should be doing.”

Click HERE to read the report.

In a bizarre incident on August 3, 2008, a row of seats slid back on a United Airlines flight, crushing passengers sitting in the row behind.

According to the news report:

“The screaming was horrible,” said the passenger, who added that four or five people got off the plane with police and paramedics after the flight returned to Sea-Tac. Airport officials say one passenger sitting in the fourth row was taken off the plane to Highline Community Hospital.

Click HERE to read the news report.

photo credit: photographia

Steve Surjaputra at Tripso wrote about the airline subsidies report released by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and Working Partnerships USA. Here are some of what he highlighted from the report:

From the first days of flight up until the 1970s, taxpayers, through the federal government, provided more than $155 billion in direct support for the aviation industry. Even after deregulation, federal and local governments have continued to provide infrastructure support, tax exemptions and low-cost financing….

Since 2002, in California alone, the airlines received approximately $487 million in state and local subsidies that included tax exemptions and low-interest bond financing. For example, the airlines are exempt from state sales taxes on jet fuel purchases for some flights. This exemption for international flights will cost the state and local governments more than $800 million from fiscal year 2005 to 2009. Despite this, the airlines still want to expand the exemption for out-of-state domestic flights.

Click HERE to read his post, “After years of airline subsidies, how about a payback for taxpayers?”

On July 30, United Airlines filed a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction against the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and a group of UA pilots for allegedly abusing sick-time.

Holly Hegeman at PlaneBuzz.com offers some perspectives on the allegations.

[B]ased on conversations we were having with folks close to the situation, and comments from subscribers, it was pretty obvious that a situation was developing at United that resembled, in many aspects, the showdown between pilots and management at Northwest Airlines last summer.

… if you have pilots who refuse to pick up extra flying, along with higher than normal sick time calls, and you’ve got flying schedules maxed out because of summer schedules — all the ingredients are there for an opportunity to force the airline into flight cancellations.

According to various news reports, United officials say talks between the airline and its pilots’ union broke off last week before the airline filed the lawsuit. The Pilot’s contend that United appears intent on driving down standards for pilots. This seems to be par for the course, with United, as we’ve reported previously on How Was Your Flight. Ms. Hegeman posted an email she received from APLA’s Master Executive Council that may give insight into the pilots’ side.

To summarize, United’s managers will force pilots to work extra days with longer hours, they will bully pilots to prove their non-fitness to fly at their own expense, they will attempt to take away pass travel for you and your family, they will attempt to diminish Captain’s authority, they will take away United mainline flying and give it away to Express, and then they will either furlough you or surplus you at the end of the season.

Click HERE to read Ms. Hegeman’s post.

photo credit: Cubbie_n_Vegas

U.S. airlines are finding more and more ways to save money in this volatile environment. The latest: not carrying enough fuel on a flight.

According to a post by Paul Soglin:

In these pricey times, while the airlines are unforginvg to passengers who need to rebook a flight, have two suitcases to check, or forget to keep thier mileage account current, the carriers haul as little fuel as possible to reduce weight and save money.

Someone miscalculated and we did not have enough fuel. No rebates, no coupons, no extra miles were offered. All we got was the official apology from the pilot who pointed out that “It is better to be on the ground and wishing you were in the air than being in the air and wishing you were on the ground.”

Click HERE to read the post.

photo credit: lemoncat1

Portfolio.com’s business travel columnist, Joe Brancatelli, wrote an excellent article that sums up all of United Airlines’ troubles, perhaps best conveyed in its title: Worst. Airline. Ever.

He offers one of the best summaries of United’s woes in 2008:

Just 29 months removed from the longest, costliest, and least-effective bankruptcy in aviation history, the nation’s second-largest airline is once again facing a financial abyss. United’s first-quarter net loss of $537 million was more than its two main competitors combined. Last month it paid a huge premium to avoid a default on its loan covenants. Its 4 percent decline in passenger traffic in May was twice as steep as that of any of its competitors. Last week’s announcement that it would ground 100 aircraft, reduce capacity by 10 percent, and shed thousands more workers was startling given the huge contraction it already experienced while in bankruptcy. A 19-month search for a merger partner resulted in rejections from Continental Airlines and US Airways, a carrier that was desperate to sell itself to United just eight years ago. The airline’s shares slid into single digits last week from a 52-week high north of $50.

More importantly, he pinpoints United’s failing performances to its 2002 bankruptcy:

Despite a 38-month stay, hundreds of millions of dollars of employee concession, and the largest pension default in corporate history, United emerged as a fiscal and operational mess. Worse, the airline’s new chief executive, Glenn Tilton, a former oil-company executive, embraced every old, failed idea ever tried by big network carriers.

The failure of United’s executives to lead the company out of financial and performance troubles has been well observed by industry analysts and passengers, and Mr. Brancatelli offers a clear analysis of the airline’s failing strategy:

Instead of a simple, cost-effective and passenger-friendly roster of in-flight services and streamlined fleet operations, United left bankruptcy in February 2006 with 26 separate in-flight seat configurations. It dabbled in everything from the upmarket P.S. to the downmarket Ted. It had five types of narrow-body jets, four types of wide-body aircraft and eight flavors of regional jets. Travelers were confronted with flights outfitted with an ever-shifting mix of one, two, three, or even four classes.

This strategy is part of the five-year plan of reorganization offered by Tilton and chief financial officer Frederic Brace, based on the prediction that crude oil would average $50 per barrel. According to the article, at the time this plan was announced, crude oil was already selling above $65 per barrel.

But a simple failure like that hasn’t stopped United’s executives from giving themselves handsome compensations. Like the article said:

no matter how rough the ride for United’s employees and passengers, it will continue to be smooth sailing in the executive suite.

Click HERE to read the entire article.

photo credit: Cubbie_n_Vegas

In an era of nickel-and-diming by the airlines, passengers are seeing all kinds of fees being placed on their flights – 1st baggage, 2nd baggage, leg room, snacks, etc. Every airline has its own fee scales, and it can be confusing – not to mention costly – for passengers.

Fortunately, Rick Seaney, the CEO of Farecompare.com and airline industry expert, has put together a convenient chart of all fees that U.S. airlines charge the passengers. Click HERE to see the chart.

photo credit: Alan Nakkash