Airlines and airports have been generating headlines quite a bit recently, from crashes to near-misses to layoffs. And that includes here in Arizona, where a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board last week found a jet that was involved in a crash at Scottsdale’s Airport had a problem with its landing gear; a crash at the Marana Airport is still under investigation.
At the same time, cuts in the federal government are affecting the FAA and an airline with a major presence in Phoenix recently announced layoffs.
Brett Snyder, also known as the Cranky Flier, runs a blog about the airline industry and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Brett, nice to talk to you again. Thank you.
BRETT SNYDER: Yeah, thanks for having me back on.
BRODIE: So there has been, as I referenced, quite a bit of discussion about airline safety with near misses and actual crashes going on, and a lot of discussion about is this happening more frequently now or maybe are we just hearing about it more. It seems as though the data suggests that there are not more incidents of of this kind of thing happening now. Is that is that your read on it as well?
SNYDER: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, look, aviation has become so safe in the United States that when there is an accident, then the media turns its focus toward what's happening. And so, things like, for example, the go around in Chicago recently, if you saw that video of a Southwest airplane. Those are fairly routine things that happen and you just don't usually hear about it, but we're at this point now where there have been a couple of very high profile accidents and so people are paying closer attention to it.
BRODIE: What kind of impact, if any, do you find that having on sort of the traveling public or maybe the way that that airlines are doing their business?
SNYDER: Well, I don't think it's really changing anything in the way the airlines are doing their business, but for the traveling public, certainly there are some people who they're feeling more anxious about it, no question about that. Whether that means that they're rethinking their trips or delaying them or choosing to drive instead, it's probably too early to really know if there's any meaningful impact, but, you know, that this has happened before.
It's just been a really long time since we've had a fatal accident in the United States. So, people tend to forget it and, and it'll probably get back to normal as soon as things calm down in terms of demand.
BRODIE: OK. In terms of some of the cuts that have been coming from the federal government, I referenced the FAA dealing with some layoffs, mostly as with other agencies, sort of what are called probationary employees, you know, a year or less or so on the job. What kind of impact might that have on the FAA and and potentially on travel?
SNYDER: I wish we knew what kind of impact all of this was going to have, right? It's all happening very quickly. So, you know, the FAA is saying they're not eliminating any safety specific positions, but there are what I might call safety adjacent positions.
So it sounds like some of the roles that have been eliminated, for example, are people who do maintenance on safety systems. And so technically they are not directly safety related but if systems go down and need maintenance and they can't get them up as quickly again, then it could, you know, certainly cause delays or, depending upon the system, it could have some impact, right?
So we don't really know, what that impact would be, but it, it shouldn't impact, for example, air traffic controllers or people that are directly related to that, that everything's just happening so quickly in the federal government right now that it's, it's hard to really pinpoint exactly what this means.
BRODIE: Well, given that uncertainty and you reference the speed with which a lot of this is happening, how is the industry trying to adapt and maybe try to figure out what the impacts might be?
SNYDER: Look, I mean, the airlines all have people in Washington that are on the ground that are trying to make sure that they're on top of all of this as it's happening, but they're also just trying to be responsive as well.
Really interesting note from last weekend is that for May travel, American Airlines obviously has a big hub in Phoenix, but also has the largest airline at Washington's close in National Airport. They actually substituted a lot of smaller aircraft for larger ones in Washington, suggesting that there may be less demand in Washington with all the changes that are going on. So, you know, they're trying to react as quickly as they can, but each week brings something new.
BRODIE: Yeah, that is interesting. So Brett, I want to ask you, speaking of another airline that has a major presence here, Southwest announced some pretty substantial layoffs coming up. What does that tell you about maybe the state of Southwest, maybe the state of airline, the airline industry more broadly?
SNYDER: Yeah, they did. They announced a pretty significant layoff to non-union non frontline workers, so mostly headquarters staff, things like that, and it's the first one, and they're more than 50 years of existence, so it's a really big development for Southwest. I don't think that this really says anything about the industry more broadly. This is really about Southwest itself.
You have an activist investor that started to build a stake in Southwest last year. It sees an airline that it thinks is underperforming. It thinks it can make a lot more money if Southwest just starts making change. And I guess this kind of ties to what we're talking about the federal government. They're trying to make things change very quickly. And so this is one of those things that has, has been a result of that and it certainly has an impact on the culture at Southwest since they've never done this before.
But you know, what, what this means is this the end of change is there more coming? We don't really know, but I would, I would put my money on more change coming until they're able to get short-term results that are better so they can make their money as an activist investor.
BRODIE: Sure, lots of lots still to keep our eyes on there.
