The Airline Industry

The airline industry is in horrible shape, and it's not because of 9-11, and it's not because of the economy. It's because there is little or no innovation in this industry. The airlines are like cows, big and slow moving. Let me illustrate.

Yesterday, I was scheduled to fly from Philadelphia to Chicago and then on to Milwaukee. The flights were nicely spaced so as to accomodate reasonable delays. As I sat in my gate, rumors began to spread: "the weather in Chicago is terrible." Those are words no traveler with a connection flight wants to hear. Sure enough, the Philadelphia airport, which isn't the smoothest running in the first place, turned into gridlock. So I and a new friend got into Chicago thinking we'd missed our connection to Milwaukee. We got in to learn that our flight had been delayed. We ran to the gate, and were told that the bus to our plane had just left. Since it was the last flight of the night, they pitied us and called it back. After we got on the bus, it sat for another 20 minutes as it waited for people from a few other planes that were late. By the time we got back to Milwaukee, it was so late that we had to get someone to open the gate at the head of the concourse so we could leave.

So, what's the moral of the story, you say? Well, there is a lot of money to be made by the airline that can first figure out a more flexible way to run planes than the old hub and spoke. Currently, weather at one airport can throw off much of the country's air travel, but the airlines don't need to think out of the box and come up with new ways to make sure it's travelers get from point a to point b on time. They have a nice governmental safety net should they run into major problems. Gone bankrupt? Get the gub'mint to bail you out. That safety net needs to go away. Once it does, the risk of failure becomes much more real, and the airlines will become much more efficient in an effort to get the air travelers' dollars.