Unfriendly Skies

Filmmaker Peter Charley arrived at the United Airlines check-in at San Francisco International Airport half an hour before his 11 a.m. flight to New York. The slow-moving line took nearly 30 minutes to clear. He then spent an additional 20 anxious minutes passing through security, expecting to miss his plane. But as usual, the departure was delayed. Relieved, Charley buckled into his seat and waited for takeoff. And waited. The pilot finally explained that his windscreen wiper needed fixing. Charley and other passengers fumed while mechanics fiddled. It took more than an hour before he was airborne.

Then the trip really began going sour. Without explanation, all passengers were told to leave the plane during a Denver stopover. Another hour passed. After reboarding, they waited 40 minutes for takeoff. By the time they reached New York at 1 a.m., four hours overdue, La Guardia's runways were closed for the night, and the jumbo jet was diverted to Kennedy. At La Guardia, Charley's girlfriend Melanie waited for three hours before learning what had happened. Poor Charley had almost become the jet-age version of the 1959 Kingston Trio hit about the "man who never returned." Declared Charley: "If I had any choice, I'd never fly again. It is a gauntlet of frustrations, insults and hassles."

As a record summer of domestic air traffic nears its Labor Day-weekend climax, millions of irate and weary passengers are echoing Charley's sentiments, recounting similar stories of sitting in stuffy airports or in cramped airliners stalled at terminal gates or queued on taxiways. The Federal Aviation Administration reports that delays in the first seven months of this year have climbed fully 30% over the same period last year.

So far this month, an average of 1,258 landings or departures were delayed each day at 22 U.S. metropolitan airports. While that is less than 8% of the roughly 16,000 flights scheduled daily, the problem is especially bad at certain key airports. The number of late flights at New Jersey's Newark airport is running 40% above last year's and is the highest in the nation: an average of 146 delays for every 1,000 takeoffs or landings. Other laggards include New York's La Guardia (91 delays per 1,000 operations), Boston's Logan (72), New York's Kennedy (71), San Francisco International (62) and Chicago's O'Hare (48). Delays have become so routine during peak travel hours that AT&T advises its executives flying to meetings to allow an extra three hours' traveling time.

An ever growing flying public is becoming painfully aware that some curses have accompanied the blessings of airline deregulation. Bargain fares and upstart airlines have increased bookings from 319 million passengers two years ago to an expected 410 million this year. What was long an elitist and expensive but comfortable means of transportation has been transformed into a democratic, cut-rate mass-transit system that is straining to serve the hordes of new passengers.