Date: May 8, 2007
Source: New York Times
Author: Joe Sharkey

REMEMBER the summer of 2000, when delays, cancellations and work slowdowns by pilots sometimes brought the air travel system to near collapse?

Well, indications are that we are also going to remember the summer of 2007. Again, delays are accumulating. With no slack in a tightly constricted system, bad weather is routinely creating chaos and stranding people on parked airplanes that can't find a takeoff slot or a gate to get back to.

Will this be the summer - when a peak travel season meets a tottering system - that finally breaks the poor camel's back?

"Well, it's possibly going to be a nightmare," said Tim Kirkwood, changing metaphors.

Mr. Kirkwood was a flight attendant for 25 years with T.W.A., and then for another three years with American Airlines after it bought T.W.A. Along with thousands of other American flight attendants, he was laid off four years ago as the industry struggled to cut costs and regain footing after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Kirkwood, 53, wrote a book in 2002 called "The Flight Attendant Job Finder and Career Guide," which is now in its third edition. Mr. Kirkwood also has a Web site, www.flightattendantcareerguide.com.

Despite what may lie ahead, he says he is ready to suit up again for the summer of 2007. He said he starts training as a JetBlue Airways flight attendant next month and expects to be back in the air by July.

Here are the three biggest changes he'll encounter:

• Domestic airplanes more packed than ever, with the percentage of seats filled - what is known as the load factor - running in the range of 85 percent. That means, as it has for many months, that most planes will be flying with every seat full on popular routes.
• A shrunken capacity on domestic flights, as major network airlines have dispatched bigger planes to more profitable international routes.
• Customers who are more unhappy than ever at the effort it takes to fly.

Underscoring the worsening conditions are a series of major incidents in the last six months, where passengers were unable to get off parked planes and suffered without food or water, while toilet conditions deteriorated, for 10 hours and more. The most recent occurred on April 24 in Austin and San Antonio, Tex., where bad weather stranded airplanes on ramps, unable to take off or find a gate to return to the terminal.

These delay fiascos have prompted a grass-roots movement to pressure Congress to pass legislation that would force airlines to get passengers off stranded planes after a certain period of time. Airlines would also have to make sure passengers on long-delayed planes had adequate food and water, and were compensated for long delays and cancellations.

The industry says airlines should be able to police themselves, without a federal law. But that was what the industry successfully argued in 1999, after a series of lesser incidents that stranded passengers on planes for long hours during bad weather.

"If the industry does not take action to address these issues, then Congress will," Jerry F. Costello, an Illinois Democrat who heads the House Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee, said at a recent hearing.

Whatever the industry and Congress do, all indications are that it's going to be a rough summer. My strongest advice is this: Always get to the airport two hours before departure, and try to plan connecting flights with extra time built in to anticipate at least routine delays.

Meanwhile, hope that your fellow passengers can grin and bear it. Hope that a degree of civility prevails. For hell, as Jean-Paul Sartre might have said had he been flying today, is that slob in the middle seat next to you.

Ask Michele Norris, a consultant who travels at least 100,000 miles a year, mostly on transcontinental and occasionally on international flights. Recently, she was in a window seat on a full flight from Newark to San Francisco, next to a man who opened his laptop on his tray table and began watching a hard-core pornographic DVD.

"It was hard to ignore, with him sitting that close," said Ms. Norris, who finally got up and asked a flight attendant what could be done, since she didn't want to engage the man. The answer: Nothing.

Mr. Kirkwood sympathized. "Typically, there isn't much you can do that won't come back to haunt you later with some lawsuit or trouble," he said. "It could be like, 'You didn't recognize Ron Jeremy?'" he said, referring to the porn industry star.

Ms. Norris said she just felt under visual assault, in tighter quarters than people are usually accustomed to sharing with strangers.

"I was go glad when his battery finally died," she said.