Dread holiday flights? Airlines work to appease ‘hangry’ travelers

By Lauren Zumbach for Chicago Tribune.

Dreading flying over the holidays, or really anytime? Airlines know it, and are trying to make the journey more bearable, with everything from quicker security screening at the airport to flights that more reliably show up on time — and when they don’t, snacks to soothe “hangry” fliers.

But it may take a while for the efforts to convince travelers like Linda Landrum. The 63-year-old Chicago resident isn’t looking forward to braving the airport crowds on Tuesday with two frozen pies in her carry-on for a Thanksgiving visit to relatives in New York. But Landrum, whose family usually hosts the holiday feast in Chicago, decided it was better than making her 90-year-old mother-in-law arrive at the airport hours early and lug her bags through long security lines.

“It has to be done,” said Landrum.

Summertime, not the winter holidays, is the busiest time to fly. Industry trade group Airlines for America’s summer travel forecast projected 2.51 million people would travel worldwide on U.S. airlines on average each day between June and August, compared with 2.27 million daily over the 12-day Thanksgiving period.

Travel website Orbitz.com predicts O’Hare International Airport will be the busiest U.S. airport at Thanksgiving and second-busiest at Christmas.

With an influx of less-experienced travelers who might be taking a once-a-year-flight home for the holidays, extra baggage from passengers carrying gifts and greater risk of snowstorms that can scupper finely tuned flight schedules, happy can turn to hapless pretty quickly.

Airlines that transport travelers from point A to point B relatively hassle-free win bragging rights and top spots on reliability reports, not to mention loyalty from happy customers. Those that drop the ball risk the very public wrath of stressed-out, short-tempered fliers who take to social media to vent their gripes. The price of delays and cancellations — even when weather-related and not the airline’s fault — adds up fast, from revenue lost when planes sit idle to the cost of rebooking stranded passengers on new flights.

That’s a big incentive for airlines to roll out services to smooth the process.

United Airlines and American Airlinesintroduced a handful of automated security lanes at O’Hare earlier this month. The airlines are hoping to avoid a repeat of May’s lengthy lines that made hundreds of passengers miss flights.

The new lanes are designed to keep holdups from halting the rest of the line. Each lane has five stations where passengers can deposit their luggage without waiting for slower passengers ahead, with bins that are 25 percent larger. A conveyor belt automatically pulls flagged bags into a separate area for inspection while problem-free bags continue rolling down the line. A parallel conveyor belt automatically returns empty luggage bins so agents can focus on the actual screening.

Delta Air Lines, meanwhile, wants to make it easier for customers to keep track of their bags. Delta, which already includes radio frequency identification tags in its bag tags, now will send notifications to passengers who use its app, telling them when their bags have been loaded onto the aircraft and where to find them at the baggage claim. The tags also make it easier for Delta to track down lost bags.

Passengers like flashy perks but care more about whether they arrive at their destination on time, said Bob Mann, president of airline consultant R.W. Mann & Co.

“All you have to do is be late and all that stuff goes down the tubes,” he said.

Across the board, U.S. airlines have been doing slightly better on reliability, according to Airlines for America. About 81.5 percent of major U.S. airlines’ flights arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled time in the 12 months ending in September, up from 78.8 percent a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

During the week surrounding Thanksgiving last year, nearly 17 percent of flights departing from O’Hare took off at least 15 minutes late and about 1.3 percent were canceled, according to Transportation Department statistics. The delayed flights took off about 65 minutes behind schedule, on average.

And while the average flight arriving at O’Hare during Thanksgiving week last year showed up just under a minute early, the 13 percent arriving late were about 78 minutes behind.

Full holiday flights and schedules can make it tougher for airlines to recover from delays, particularly when bad weather knocks out several flights, but 2015 Thanksgiving week departure delays and cancellations were below average for the year at O’Hare.

Industry analysts say airlines often try to boost those on-time numbers with a mix of measures that give some cushion when flights fall behind, such as scheduling longer than necessary flight times, using extra planes and employees, and making real improvements in efficiency.

United has said it thinks becoming a more reliable airline can generate $300 million by 2018 by trimming costs associated with idle aircraft and delays, and by winning back passengers wary of United’s reputation for having more late and canceled flights than some major rivals. In the first 10 months of this year, 14 percent more United flights, including regional carriers, arrived on time compared with the same period in 2014, the airline told investors Tuesday.

United is working on being more proactive about maintenance and cutting the time it takes to get an arriving airplane ready for the next departure, said Chief Operations Officer Greg Hart. The airline has a new playbook for turning around flights landing behind schedule so United can recover, not continue falling behind.

“It’s time we’re going to give back to the schedule. We’re going to fly our airplanes harder,” he said.

When all else fails, airlines attempt to mollify stranded passengers, and food helps.

If an American flight at O’Hare is delayed by two hours or more, for any reason, the airline will bring an assortment of free drinks and snacks to the gate. After three hours, passengers will get a selection of sandwiches, such as breakfast sandwiches in the morning or a turkey croissant roll later in the day, said Dee Hogan, American’s managing director of customer care.

Other major U.S. carriers make fewer outright guarantees, especially when not taking the blame. Delta’s airport customer service employees will sometimes bring out snacks, drinks and games for passengers delayed at the gate, but, like United and Southwest, the airline doesn’t have hard and fast rules spelling out when customers are entitled to extra goodies, said spokesman Brian Kruse.

But as the holiday crowds descend, there’s only so much airlines can do to keep fliers feeling festive.

“They’re all trying to be more reliable,” said travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group. “While it helps manage congestion that they haven’t added too many flights, there’s no question the system is still overburdened at peak times. And there’s nothing you can do about the weather.”