出差人

Is this the case on American carriers? Hardly.

And why not? Here are several possible reasons.

Hiring constraints. Thanks to federal regulations, U.S. carriers have some strict hiring and firing criteria. For example, they are not allowed to discriminate by age, sex, marital status or ethnicity. Many foreign carriers hire for all of the these points plus appearance.

Salary costs. Foreign airlines can pay their employees local wages, which many times is but a fraction of the U.S. salary standard. Lower salary costs mean more staff and ultimately better service.

Age issues. Many foreign carriers hire flight attendants as temporary contract workers. At the end of their contract, they are either signed up for another contract or they are released. Airline service is considered a temporary job, not a long-term career. In the United States, on the other hand, the Fly Me Girl of yesterday is generally still flying today. Moreover, because of seniority rules, the oldest flight attendants tend to fly the most exotic routes. I have flown with many senior crew members, and I have generally found them to be very efficient and kind to their customers, but many passengers are fixated on appearance and pine for the knockout stewardesses of the old days. This creates some disgruntlement in the cabin, among passengers and flight attendants alike.

Unions. Being a member of a union myself, I can say that my work rules are the better for it. But better work rules can mean less efficiency and more expense for the airline. And how many times has your flight been canceled because your crew's contractual obligations expired or because their worker protections kicked in? The gate agent may not tell you every time, but it happens a lot more than you think. To say nothing of how hard it is to fire a union member. The bad apple can keep his job quite a long time — and he knows it.

Respect. In the United States, airline pilots, flight attendants and ground agents used to get a lot of respect. Years of turmoil in the U.S. airline industry have eroded that respect. In fact, most U.S. airlines have lost their self-respect, and it's hard to respect a company that doesn't respect itself. The situation is entirely different abroad, where airline jobs are highly sought after and employees as a whole are proud of their position and their airline.

Morale. It is going to take a while for morale to improve in the U.S. airline industry. Pensions and staffing have been cut, work rules have changed, and management seems to have all the money. The only way the current negativity will dissipate is through attrition. But with the recent pension cuts, the employees who should leave can't afford to, so I guess morale won't be improving anytime soon.

So, given all these factors, how can the U.S. airlines compete?

Price. Airfares from Chicago to Asia may be comparable on foreign and U.S. carriers, but most people need to fly in to O'Hare to connect to the overseas flight. The price for the foreign ticket gets substantially higher if they have to depend on a U.S. carrier to provide a leg of the journey.

Frequent-flier programs. To fly anywhere in the United States, you have to fly on a U.S. airline. Most frequent travelers join a domestic airline's mileage program to get such perks as free flights and upgrades. When those passengers have the choice of flying a foreign carrier or stocking up more points in their frequent-flier account, they usually choose their partner airline.

Loyalty. Believe it or not, there are still quite a few people in America who remain loyal to any U.S. brand and always choose domestic without hesitation.

It will be very interesting in the days to come to see what happens to the U.S. airline industry in terms of deregulation, foreign ownership, alliances, and mergers and acquisitions. Will it get better, stay the same or get even worse?

Yes, believe it or not, it can easily get worse.

Business class flights get cheaper, more comfortable
摘自LA Times

By James Gilden

The lights dimmed and the audience grew quiet. With great fanfare, the curtains inched up as applause from the invitation-only guests began to swell.

This was a high-powered premiere, but not of the cinematic variety. The folks gathered at an American Airlines hangar at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this summer were regular fliers and corporate customers of Singapore Airlines. The event was the unveiling of Singapore's new business- and first-class seats.

"Sweet," said Mark Wille of Hermosa Beach, while his friend Christopher Ludwig of Laguna Niguel sat in one of the new seats, which can fold flat. Ludwig tried out the seat-as-bed and the entertainment system with a hand-held control that provides hundreds of on-demand amusement options as well as a full set of office applications that can be operated using a qwerty keypad. Ludwig, a regular business-class flier on Singapore Airlines, pronounced it "a big improvement on the existing seat."

Airlines such as Singapore, United, American, British Airways and others are pouring millions into their international first- and business-class seat offerings, making them ever more luxurious. So naturally the cost of those seats is going up, right? Not necessarily.

Though it is little publicized, leisure and business travelers who purchase a ticket at least 60 days in advance can buy business-class seats on many airlines at a substantial discount.

Using Orbitz, I sampled business-class fares (for comparison only; they may no longer be available) from LAX to London for a trip in September. The lowest fare I found was a one-stop by way of Dublin on Aer Lingus for $4,715. Air New Zealand had the lowest nonstop at $4,896. Fares on most of the other airlines were a bit more than $5,000.

But by choosing a flight more than 60 days in advance, I found reduced-price restricted fares. Again using Orbitz, I found that Air France, United, Delta, Swiss and Lufthansa had one-stop or nonstop flights to London for as little as $3,308, about 30% off the lowest fare I found when I looked at flights leaving in fewer than 60 days.

These restricted fares are still more than three or four times the cost of an average economy-class ticket, but travelers who can afford to splurge can enjoy the comforts once reserved for the well-to-do and frequent-flier elite.

Even greater bargains can be had on the growing number of low-fare all-business-class carriers such as Eos and MAXjet, each flying for about two years. Their planes are exclusively business class. Until recently they flew only from the East Coast, but MAXjet last year launched service from Las Vegas, and starting Thursday, will fly between LAX and the London area's Stansted Airport. "We think L.A. is a great opportunity," said Joshua Marks, senior vice president of planning and development for MAXjet.

Many passengers flying through Las Vegas on MAXjet have been from Southern California, he said. Denise Fourie of San Luis Obispo is one of them. The Cuesta College librarian and her husband, Mike Multari, and another couple flew from San Luis Obispo to Las Vegas on US Airways and then to London on MAXjet for a two-week vacation to London and Paris in April.

"When we started planning this trip I said, 'I don't want to go if we [can't] fly in business,' " she said. "We did not want to be a sardine in a can.

"The price was just about the same as a typical economy flight . . . but you got so much more."

The cost? About $1,100 per ticket from Las Vegas, she said.

Flights from LAX will be as much as half off the lowest business-class fares I found. I found a flight on MAXjet in September for $1,500, including taxes -- or 55% off the lowest fare I found with advance purchase and less than a third of the cost of anything I found that month.

There are caveats when flying on MAXjet. It doesn't fly every day from every U.S. gateway. It flies into Stansted, home to many of Europe's low-cost carriers, making connections to other places in Europe easy. But if you have a connecting flight out of one of the larger airports -- Heathrow or Gatwick -- allow plenty of time to get from one airport to the other. (Regular bus service operates between the airports; information is at www.stanstedairport.com.)

Caveats aside, Fourie, the college librarian, said the experience was worth repeating.

"I would definitely fly them again if heading to U.K. or Europe," Fourie said. "And now they are at LAX -- even better for me."