US Airways will be implementing a new surcharge that 5% the cost of the fare on all US flights on or after May 8. United, Delta and the latter’s subsidiary also introduced bigger fees, raising them on busy day in March or April from $20 to $30.

These surcharges will affect passengers that travel not only during winter, but spring as well. In March and April travelers will be charged for flying around Easter. A $50 surcharge will apply to those flying on Superbowl day – Monday, February 8.

“The number of seats they’ve cut is allowing them to do crazy things,’’ said Tom Parsons, chief executive of the discount travel site Bestfares.com. “They added bag fees and nobody blinked. They’ve got $150 [itinerary] change fees, and now the surcharges.’’

Surcharges on flights during Holidays were applied as early as September and have been extended for the 41 days between Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski declared these surcharges come to match fare increase imposed by Southwest.

Do you think paying more for flying during Holidays is fair?

Low cost big airline companies among them Southwest, AirTran and JetBlue as well as small ones like Frontier, Spirit, Virgin America and Allegiant have enlarged for the last 10 years due to United and other major carriers such as Delta, American, Continental and US Airways.

According to Dan Kasper, aviation economist at LECG, “the deep-market penetration by the low-cost carriers” is considered to be the main thing occurred in the airline industry over the past decade.

One should say that the regrouping led to high fuel costs and a recession-forced slump in travel and as a result conventional airlines had to pay extra expanses. Moreover, only low-cost airlines earn constant profit and besides expand their routes.

Low ticket prices are considered to be the evident appeal of the discount airlines. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Airline Data Project low-cost airlines manage about 30% of the USA’s domestic air travel market at present but the percentage was much lower if refer to the year of 1999, i.e. under 10%. But still such carries as Delta, American, United, Continental and US Airways provide more seats at discount prices in comparison with the low-cost carriers.

Because of diminished spending on domestic air travel the situation became worse in America. According to some figure the ratio dropped to an all-time low – 0.51% of GDP. One should admit that that the fall in the ratio started in the third quarter of 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks happened. MIT’s Airline Data Project database shows that the highest ratio was in the second quarter of 2006.

Low wages for airline pilots aren’t a surprise to anyone, since the situation existed for years and it only got worse as the economical recession hit the airline industry. Salaries have been reduced so much that they have been the cause of strikes all over the world. But how much do pilots really earn these days? FltOps were the ones to first tackle the issue releasing a salary survey that took into account major US airlines.

Airline pilots earn considerably more if they have seniority or if we take into account overrides, overtime, special credits or per diem. Airlines taken into account are: AirTran, Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, FedEx, JetBlue, Southwest, United, UPS and US Airways.

The highest paid airline pilots work at Southwest Airlines. The company has a first-year minimum of $49,572 and hires more experienced pilots on average. US Airways pays first year pilots the lowest wage out of all surveyed airlines (a minimum $21,600 a year). The wage assumes 72 hours per month, a large part of this being flight preparations or overnights.

The lowest salary for an experienced captain is $123,480 at JetBlue Airways while the highest if found again at Southwest, at $181,270 a year. Airlines that offer higher wages in the US are UPS and FedEx, with a minimum of over $200,000 a year.

Delta Airlines, American, United and Continental pays aircraft captains a minimum between $156,000 and $167,000 per year.

The refurbished plane is a Boeing 737-700, which cost the airline $40 million; to make it “greener”, they equipped it with a variety of eco-products, from life vests to carpeting. Replacing standard products, with these ones would mean a reduction of about five pounds of weight per seat, meaning 472 pounds for the entire plane.

A plane 472 pounds lighter translates into 9,500 gallons of fuel savings per year, said Marilee McInnis, a Southwest spokeswoman. Southwest Airlines operate 540 aircraft which could save $10.3 million per year. “It you estimate $2 per gallon, which is conservative … that becomes $19,000 per aircraft per year,” McInnis said.

The products will be tested for 6 months to see how well they are received by customers and how reliable they are and based on this, the company will decide whether to include them on all Southwest flights or not. (via Dallas Tribune)

According to Southwest, the company suffered only a small third-quarter loss and they didn’t expect a decline in business travel. The income of all airlines has been affected by the vanishing business traveler phenomenon. These losses have been tempered by introducing fees for new ancillary services.

Gary Kelly, Southwest’s chairman, president, and CEO considered that except baggage fees there are other additional revenue opportunities that can be made use of. He is convinced that such frequent flier program as “Rapid reward” would change the situation in many airline companies.

Gary Kelly said that Southwest Airlines Company would rather look for more opportunities to offer a wider range of services to customers so that they would have a wider selection of options to spend more money with the company. For that reason the frequent-flier program suited their strategy.

Earlier it was noted that Southwest started to apply new tariffs in cases when children fly alone and pets travel in the cabin, the latter was prohibited before. If compare price tickets of Southwest and other airlines one can say that this year prices are lower than a year ago. Also due to discounts planes were full despite the fact that many passenger were going on their vocations.

It was reported by the company that about 17 percent of passengers paid the full amount of the ticket price which is a decrease against the same period of the last year when it was 24 percent.

In the third quarter Southwest in Dallas lost $16 million. Last year Southwest lost $120 million during the same period.

As traffic rose 4.7 percent for the quarter, some routes of Southwest became unprofitable and were retrenched, this decreased the capacity by 5.8 percent for the quarter. It was calculated that the cost of flying one person one mile became much higher, i.e. it rose 6.6 percent without factoring in the fuel from a year ago. According to Southwest the trend would continue to rise as the company was cutting fourth-quarter capacity by 8 percent.

Overall, the airline capacity this year is expected to decrease by about 5 percent as compared with the last year.

Original Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Southwest-chases-other-addons-apf-1979370124.html?x=0&.v=14

The first sign is the decrease of domestic seats on sale for October: less than 21%, according to OAG, one of the most important aviation-data firms. And since this is not enough, companies intend to reduce much more flights this winter. Big airline carriers are canceling their less lucrative routes and pushing the ticket prices higher, hoping that they will crowd their planes, although the economy is still weak.

Another trend noticed in the airline industry is a slowly but surely shift to the low-cost practices. Major airlines, operating international flights used to carry more than 83% of the domestic passengers in 2001. Nowadays, the same airlines take 61% of the travelers, while the regional and the low-cost companies grew to 39%. These usually operate smaller planes and this means not just traffic jams in the main airports, but also uncomfortable seats, poor customer services, smaller bathrooms and bumpy flights.

The cuts are obvious: the nation’s biggest airlines – Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines reported a 26% shrunk of their domestic capacity, since 2000. By contrary, the most important budget airline, Southwest Airlines announced increases of 70% for the passenger traffic, since the beginning of the decade.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

This money-saving move comes in response to declining traffic on all flights due to economical recession. Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said that they don’t need to serve both limes and lemons.

“At the end of our 3,200 daily flights, we found an excess of lemons and needless waste. It not only reduces waste, but we’re going to save $100,000 annually,” Hawkins said.

This is not the only change you will see in Southwest’s catering service. They are also planning to include a full-beverage service on early morning flights, rather than only orange juice, coffee and water. Here’s an excerpt of the official announcement from their blog:

To ensure that we are meeting Customer expectations and minding costs, we continually review our onboard menu – drinks, snacks, etc. – taking into consideration both Employee and Customer feedback as well as the actual usage of each product over a period of time.

As a result of this review process, we recently updated our onboard wine selection and, beginning October 1st, we will begin offering Michelob Ultra in addition to our existing selection of Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Heineken.

(via: The Dallas Morning)