"You know what FAA stands for? Find Another Airline," Jay Leno quipped last night. His comedy writers must have been Los Angeles International Airport -- or some airport -- yesterday, when American Airlines canceled a thousand or so flights, a number that might be approached today.
I was at LAX myself, saved from the worst of the chaos because I was returning to Denver on United and because I shared a cab with my friend Laura Daily, a freelance travel journalist who specializes in consumer and service articles and who, in her own travels, has mastered the strategies and tactics for finding the quickest, the easiest, the least expensive, the most hassle-free -- and who should be writing a blog herself to share her secrets.
Laura had somehow found out that although we were heading for Terminal 7, the security lines were much shorter at Terminal 6. The two are connected and just a short walk apart. We breezed through security, but once inside, heard horror stories about the security line we didn't stand in. Her flight and mine were both full, and from other nearby gates, I heard United calling for volunteers to take a bump in exchange for a free roundtrip ticket for a future flight. United was carrying some American passengers, as well as ferrying their own and American crew.
The television news and newspapers across the land have reported on this latest cause for travel delays and frustrations. According to the New York Times:
"Air travelers, whose plans have already been disrupted by thousands of
canceled flights recently, may face continued chaos in coming weeks as the
Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines expand their scrutiny of
passenger planes.
"The groundings at airlines like American, Alaska, Delta and Southwest
resulted from a broader round of inspections, ordered by the F.A.A.,
to determine whether the airlines have complied with past directives to check
airplane structures, wires, electronics and other components.
"A second wave of audits began on March 30 and will continue through June
30. Laura J. Brown, a spokeswoman for the F.A.A., said it could not rule out
further groundings. 'We don’t know,” she said. “We find what we find.'
"That will do little to reassure travelers, who face difficulties
switching to other flights because planes are generally flying full on popular
routes.
"The agency turned up new problems Monday, when nine MD-80 jets operated by
American failed an F.A.A. check, prompting American to ground 300 planes.
American canceled more than 1,000 flights on Wednesday, on top of 430
cancellations on Tuesday, while its fleet of MD-80s was inspected.
"American Airlines canceled more than 900 flights Thursday to fix faulty
wiring in hundreds of jets, The Associated Press reported, and Daniel Garton, an
executive vice president of American, said that cancellations could extend into
Friday.
"Airports hit hardest by the canceled flights were Dallas-Fort Worth
International, O’Hare in Chicago and La Guardia."
There's no traveler on the planet who wouldn't rather be delayed than dead due to the crash of a plane that timely inspections and proper maintenance of critical systems could have prevented. Hopefully the wiring on the audio system of two of the three planes I flew on my latest Denver-Las Vegas-Los Angeles-Denver flight itinerary was no indication of the more important wires. On one flight, I got no audio at all. On another, the impossible-to-adjust volume of my seatmate's audio was so high that it blared through his headphone jack and could be heard across the aisle -- and his was the window seat.
The FAA's mandated inspections added to several bankrupt airlines (Aloha, ATA, SkyBus -- so far), high jet fuel prices, travelers' expectations of discount air fares that no longer come close to covering most airlines' operating costs and a deepening recession, do not bode well for air travel in the near future.
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