Joe Brancatelli's comments on the airline industry

[PurduePete]

As you may or may not know, Joe Brancatelli is a travel columnist for USA Today. He recently had a column published that expressed his views on government regulation of the airline industry (he's against it, BTW)...

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/b...on_N.htm?csp=34

Included in his comments about the DOT, Joe had this to say about NWA...

As everyone on the business-travel planet knows, Northwest Airlines cancelled more than 1,200 flights toward the end of June when management incompetence left it with too few pilots to staff its scheduled flights. Desperate to avoid the harsh media scrutiny that a wave of late July cancellations would inevitably bring, Northwest is exploiting a loophole in DOT rules.

For reasons known only to bureaucrats, any flight cancelled more than seven days before departure is not counted against an airline's cancellation rate in the DOT's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. So Northwest is pre-canceling hundreds (perhaps thousands) of flights in July, making sure to do it eight days or more before departure. That will assumedly allow Northwest to avoid a noticeable late-July meltdown and duck the attendant negative media coverage. And it is all legal, up to DOT snuff.

Anyone care to comment on this issue? Do you think it's a shrewd business move on the part of NW, or is it another way that NW has found to exploit the system to their advantage?

Since we're getting to the end of another month, we'll soon see if the "reported" cancellations come close to their record total for June...

 

[ExAF]

They have already started canceling in July a week out for this reason. More than a week it is a "schedule change," less than a week, it is a "cancellation." Problem solved!

 

[Spock]

It's another way that NW has found to exploit the system to their advantage! :down:

 

[Bear96]

From a passenger service and operations point of view, if they know they won't have enough people to staff the schedule and cancellations are inevitable, isn't it better to proactively cancel flights as far in advance as possible so people know about changes to their plans?

Doesn't knowing this in advance make things easier on crew, airport and reservations staff, etc. too?

 

[groundcontrol]

From a passenger service and operations point of view, if they know they won't have enough people to staff the schedule and cancellations are inevitable, isn't it better to proactively cancel flights as far in advance as possible so people know about changes to their plans?

Doesn't knowing this in advance make things easier on crew, airport and reservations staff, etc. too?

I'm going to say yes.
But why the problems in the first place?
Oh ya...mis-management...duh

 

[jenny@nw]

wha? No comments from the "Brown-nosed" team?

 

[ExAF]

From a passenger service and operations point of view, if they know they won't have enough people to staff the schedule and cancellations are inevitable, isn't it better to proactively cancel flights as far in advance as possible so people know about changes to their plans?

Doesn't knowing this in advance make things easier on crew, airport and reservations staff, etc. too?

Short answer, yes; but I doubt their motivation is customer service. They don't want to cancell anything if they can help it. I think their motivation is to keep as much egg off of their faces as possible. That's why they want to wait until the very last second to cancel without it being a "cancellation" and call it a "schedule change." There are many things that can impact the schedule.