The employee reaction is the real wildcard. We saw what happened last summer with unhappy pilots causing delays and cancellations. No telling what this summer will bring. Let's hope that management learned their lesson and delay jerking the unions until after the heavy travel season."This summer should be like any summer, unpleasant and ugly. Stay home," said Michael Boyd, an airline analyst based near Denver. It could be worse if the unions at Northwest or other airlines take out frustrations with proposed deals while on the job.
There have been two major mergers while I've been an agent. American bought TWA and everything went smoothly with that. The long term effect has been mostly centered on St Louis, TWA's major hub. There is still some direct service out of there but most routes connect through Chicago.
The other merger was US Air (the company with a Greek looking logo) buying America West. Of the major airlines they were 1 and 1A in terms of difficult to deal with. Joining forces hasn't really helped that. Still, no major disruptions.
I've had a few people ask me what will happen with Sun Country. We don't book them very often because they're not well set up for business travel. It sounds like they're aware of the problems in front of them, especially high fuel cost. That's a good sign. The worst thing an airline can do is ignore it's problems and hope they go away.
If you're worried about your vacation this summer you might want to take out some travel insurance. Another good tip is to try and avoid flying at the end of the month when pilots start hitting their maximum hour allowances. Also, show up early for those flights. If you've got an assigned seat it will be much harder to kick your butt off of the plane.
Good luck!
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