M. Ventura: The Coming End of Air Travel

Letters at 3AM

Things to come: part I

BY MICHAEL VENTURA


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With its excellent rail system, Europe is far less dependent (internally) upon air travel. That is tonight's subject. More than pump prices, and perhaps more than heating-oil prices, the first drastic change for middle-class and more-or-less affluent Americans will be their inability to fly.

In the last year, the price of jet fuel has risen 50% (NY Times, Sept. 15, p.C1). The airlines have desperately tried to absorb this price hike, keeping fares low and hoping for the best. But those days will be over by Easter, if not Thanksgiving. USA Today, Sept. 15, p.1B: "The airline's jet-fuel bill this year will be about $3.3 billion , up from $2.2 billion last year and $1.6 billion in 2003." That article notes that four of our seven largest airlines are now in Chapter 11: "51% of the USA's top 12 airlines is now operating under bankruptcy protection." The article quotes James May, CEO of the Air Transport Association: "No business model of any airline can survive with sustained jet-fuel prices of $90 to $100 a barrel." Yet those are exactly the prices predicted by many experts in the relatively near future; a major natural or manmade disruption could bring them about in a day. There is no relief in sight. This situation cannot be sustained. The average driver may be able to absorb fuel costs for a few years more, but not the average flier. Within a year – or two, or three? – affordable passenger flight will be history.

What will that mean in real life?

Airfares will skyrocket. Schedules will be pared to the bone. If you're not rich, and if your lifestyle includes hopping planes when you choose – you're grounded. As airlines fail and the surviving carriers cut back, flights will be fewer, especially to smaller cities. Some areas will lose service altogether unless the government mandates that every city of under half a million people must get, say, two flights a week. Conventions and conferences of every description will be beyond the means of any but the wealthy. The average person won't be able to jet to the wedding, sick bed, or funeral of a loved one. Even if you can scrounge the money for a ticket, there may not be a flight. Music and film festivals that can't be sustained locally will be a thing of the past (unless and until rail service is restored). Families will think twice about letting their kids apply to colleges hundreds or thousands of miles from home. Family members who live scattered all over the country will see one another rarely, if at all (again, unless and until rail service is restored). None but the rich will vacation in far-off places – and "far off" will come to mean any place beyond two tanks of gas. The gaudy entertainments that depend on flight in places like Orlando and Las Vegas will dry up and blow away. The real estate value of summer homes or winter playgrounds will fluctuate wildly; those accessible mainly by air will plunge. Flight's ancillary industries – hotels, restaurants – will hit bottom, displacing and impoverishing many hard-working people. Tourism as we know it, an industry merely decades old, will not survive. Nor will such minor luxuries as next-day delivery. Mega-airports and mega-hotels will become ghostly caverns, monuments to a failure of foresight.

What good could possibly come of this? Well, for starters, if it happens soon enough it may save many millions of lives. The Economist, Aug. 6, p.10: "xperts now believe a global outbreak of pandemic flu is long overdue, and the next one could be as bad as the one in 1918 , which killed somewhere between 25 and 50 million people." The Times, Sept. 22, p.12: "Just as governments around the world are stockpiling millions of doses of flu vaccine and antiviral drugs in anticipation of a potential influenza epidemic, two new surprising research papers ... have found that such treatments are far less effective than previously thought." The experts' greatest fear has been that air travel will spread the disease uncontainably before its symptoms are obvious, raising the casualty rate into the hundreds of millions. Without convenient air travel, that's unlikely.

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http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:RUAvnNyhR2oJ:www.austinchronicle.com/cols_ventura.html+Michael+Ventura+air+travel&hl=en

I expect we will see alternatives, though, passenger liners and rigid airships come to mind.

Always been a huge fan and think they would be fantastic.....many people only know of the Hindenburg from the tragedy. What they forget or have never heard of are all of the succesful trips she made from Germany to South America and the US before the tragedy. They were magnificent ships and with improved materials of today they could be even more fantastic. The only thing we would have to give up is the speed with which we wing our way around the globe......but you know, it might be nice for a change to slow it down a bit.

1932-1937
Commercial Airship Service to South America

1932

March - October

Nine Semi-Monthly Graf Zeppelin Flights in Spring and Late Summer - Fall

1933

May - November

Nine Semi-Monthly Graf Zeppelin Flights in Spring, Summer and Fall

1934

May - December

Eleven Biweekly Graf Zeppelin Flights Coordinated with DLH Service and Christmas Flight

1935


March - June


Seven Biweekly Graf Zeppelin Flights Coordinated with DLH Connection Flights to Larahce

July - October

Limited Airmail Acceptance on Graf Zeppelin Flights

October - November

Five Graf Zeppelin Flights in Cooperative Service with DLH

1936

March - June

Limited Airmail Acceptance on Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg

July - November


Thirteen Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg flights in Cooperative Service with DLH and Extended DLH Connecting Flights to the Airships

1937

March - May

Limited Airmail Acceptance on Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg

http://www.napex.org/2002show/2002reserve/reserve2002.html

My recollection was faulty. Thanks!

Seems like the logical alternative (but boy, talk about vulnerability to terrorism...). I very much like the idea of rigid airships coming back into use. I think with a certain inventiveness, we'll see all kinds of odd solutions popping up in the future, many of which will be small-time ventures. And maybe we'll get our solar-powered cars out of all this!

If we ever get a Dem president again maybe we will develop a national rail system like the Federal Highway system. Train travel could be all electric in the future and deliver the same high speeds as air travel. We are going to have to kick start those WPA projects sooner or later.

and insisting that rail capacity be quadrupled by the end of the decade, and Amtrak slowly transition between a rolling stock venture and the administrator for the national passenger track system for regular and high speed rail.

We need a rail system that is the equivalent of Eisenhower's national highway system.

Oh, wait, wrong over-hyped crisis. I agree things will change, but give me a break. This article is making so many wild claims based on one premise, and a flawed one at that: that as gas prices go up so must ticket prices in relation. I find that unlikely. More likely is that the industry will change. Long gone will be the days of getting on a small jet with just 3 other people and flying from, oh say, Missoula Mt to Tallahasee TN. Those flights will no longer make sense. Some airports will die (Missoula being a great candidate), some battles will occur, as regional airports duke it out to be the one left standing (such as Portland ME vs Manchester NH). Long haul flights will all be packed to the gills Super-Duper Mondo Jumbos from Major hub to Major hub. Flights will no longer leave at 8,9,10,11, and 12: just at 10. Some airlines will die. It will become much more common to go to the airport, only to find the airline has changed your flights around, to consolidate passengers on fewer flights.

You might have to Bus it from an airport to your final destination. In fact, I would not be suprised to find airports working with bus companies to get passengers where they need to go.

Airline travel will not go away. It will always be cheap to fly on profitable routes such as NY-LA. Long distances are most easily covered by plane. And as long as long distance hauls exist, disease will spread along them from continent to continent. Once its landed, locals will do the rest.

that bus travel is a joke. If you are in some isolated small town, car travel is the only option.

if you don't know what you're talking abt, say it real loud, and the yahoos will believe it

go shopping for airfares in the real world & the crap abt it'll all be over by thanksgiving suddenly becomes apparent for the silliness -- if not the outright lie -- that it is

there is no god-given law that the airline industry must be a for-profit, it may well need subsidy, but only a pretty silly person would take this to mean that airline travel should only be available for the most wealthy

that would kill our competitiveness in business

oh, and since the dude has never been to europe, i'll give him a hint -- RYANJET

...which don't have the margins to absorb more rises in jet fuel costs. And those costs will never again "go down" in any meaningful way.

So the question does become: How will the airline industry change? Will we be as "free to move about the country?"

Not without the augmentation of rail, more regional buses, etc. It is perhaps true that popular routes will survive -- at least for longer -- but it remains to be seen whether air travel will be as convenient/affordable for working class people.

As fuel prices go up, so does everything else. What sucks is that these oil companies are blocking research into alternate energy sources (or at least attempting to discredit and give them a bad name), because they are just flat out making too much money on it.

fantasy is pretty but american business cannot wait 30 yrs for all the "rails to trails" to be turned back over to the railroads & small towns fight tooth & nail to keep railroads out of their community anyway (noise)

you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube

You can't subsidize at the current rate when you're also financing numerous wars, skyrocketing health costs, massive tax cuts for the wealthy -- while an incresingly restless American populace sees more and more services and infrastructure crumbling...

*Something* will have to give.

The entire U.S. economy is oil based. Our economy is particularly vulnerable to oil problems, not just because we consume so much oil, but also because the oil trade worldwide goes in dollars. Consequently, when the oil trade hampers, our economy takes the punches.

Throwing subsidies at airlines, is roughly akin to printing more money to try and pay off the national debt.

dupe

Non-linear thinking.

Yesterday's solutions don't have to be exactly like today's.

We are at or have passed peak oil production with no slack in consumption.

The airline's days are numbered.

I believe that also.

It will return back to the days of what it was like before all this artificial cheapness - with only exceptional reasons for air travel and for the very wealthy or well connected.

Busses, rail, ships will all have to make a comeback, I believe.

Then again, we just could develope a great new engine to run on a renewable fuel type - stranger and more unlikely and timely occurances have happened in the past.

I will never underestimate the ingenuity of man to progress despite the prevailing sense of doom.

But the next few years could be the biggest slap upside our collective heads in a long time!

Airlines have been simply building a "fuel surcharge" into their fares for nearly a decade now. This is buried in the ticket and most folks don't know about it. But, when you hear "$99 each way" or something like that, you can rest well assured that your ticket will be much more than that in the end.

At present, most domestic airlines add $10 per direction on domestic tickets, and $55-60 each way on international tickets. So, that $199 ticket that is offered from Kennedy to Heathrow is, after taxes, fuel surcharges, insurance surcharges, etc., about $450.

Airlines "hedge" the market for their jet fuel. It's not like they just pull up to the pump and swipe their card at whatever today's rate is. They plan their exact fuel usage months in advance, and they make purchase orders, basically, on fuel futures.


This doom-and-gloom, there-will-be-no-more-airplanes claptrap is scare-mongering nonsense. If all air travel were going to come to a grinding halt, then why is Southwest (the only actually profitable and growing (in terms of routes served) airline in the United States that I'm aware of) even bothering to continue to fly? The logical business choice would be for them to sell off all of those 737s to whomever would take them and close up shop, if the unavoidable end result of their continued operation will be a cessation of flights anyway.


Airlines' problems revolve around their ridiculous business models and idiotic bureaucracy, as well as their apparent concerted effort to screw over their customers. When was the last time someone actually enjoyed or looked forward to flying on Delta or United or American? It's a royal drag. They insist upon making getting any sort of decent fare damned near impossible, and then they treat you like shit once you're aboard the plane. All the while, executives are getting paid $6M bonuses to only lose $1B over the course of a year. How incredibly stupid can a single industry be?


I wouldn't worry too much about whether or not you'll be able to board a plane home for Christmas this year. The airplanes and the airlines will still be there.

"You can have my Hummer keys when you pry them out of my cold dead fingers."

Fuel prices have been through the roof in other countries for years now, and we are gasping in surprise now that we are starting to catch up?

Whenever I go to Europe, I just grab a Euro-pass and take the trains everywhere. They are clean, smooth, electric powered, and far more comfortable than getting crammed into an airplane.

Who, besides a spoiled ass narcissistic little brat has an absolute need to jump on an airplane and be in Vegas in 45 minutes to play the nickel slots as it?

Maybe this is what we need in this country, a little bit of a reality check.

n/t

ride to the strip - or the local supermarket!

Opps - wait again - I don't gamble at all!

Sure like the food, tho (my recently expanding belly will attest to that!)

manufacturers will need to rebuild entire fleets.

But that's NEVER going to happen.

I'm confused... There are literally scores of cheap European Airlines.
Their tickets are unbelievably inexpensive... You can go from London to Spain for literally 18 Euros! Why are they able to make ends meet, but all our airlines are going bankrupt.

Check how inexpensive for yourself:
http://www.attitudetravel.com/lowcostairlines/europe/

to read his argument europe is still in the 1880s & everyone is going everywhere on the train

which is NOT at all cheap by the way, if you can't afford the budget airfares of europe, you sure as hell can't afford the damn train which costs MORE money in many situation

who is this dude kidding?

n/t

i'm sure part of it is the trauma of being in two natural disasters in a few yr's time, one of them of course being katrina

i've just reached a point where i cannot, will NOT tolerate lies

dude is lying, simple as that

he doesn't know europe, he doesn't know what is going on w. railroad industry, he doesn't know what is going on w. the airline industry

i guess i should just let him air his ass in public & make a fool of himself w.out comment but, as i said, i'm not in a space right now where i can suffer fools gladly

we need to start being v. aggressive abt tolerating lies & liars in my humble opinion

i realize we all have to make a living but if yr living is to create lies, why not get an honest job flipping burgers or something useful instead of spreading fear, that is so destructive

I'm sorry you've been through so much trauma, but I don't think getting enraged about something offered for discussion means calling one of the best, undersung columnists in American a "liar" because you have greater faith in the airline industry...

the writer states things about the European travel industry that are blatantly false. It is obvious to anyone that has ever been there.

That European citizens can absorb more energy price increases because they are less personally reliant on oil/gas? That their governments cover health care as a right -- not a privilege -- so their income isn't sucked away by insurance/medical leeches, the way it is here?

than airfare. How is that?

operating.

This has come about only in the last decade or so, thanks to US owners buying into European companies.

Not the only reason, but a big reason.

The number to look at is the fuel cost per fare - something not mentioned in the article. As it turns out fuel is a small part of the price of an airline ticket and even doubling the cost of fuel will have negligible effect on ticket prices.