Takeoffs & Landings
May 19, 2011
New plane orders mean good news for consumers. Boeing just announced 68 new plane orders valued at $6.3 billion. And those new planes mean more seats in airline fleets. United Airlines, for example, has 27 planes on order, increasing its fleet to 571 in 2012. British Airways has ordered more than 60 planes through the year 2015, increasing its fleet of long-distance jets to 270 in 2012. Overall, analysts expect major domestic airline fleets to grow by as much as 4% in 2012. This is a far cry from the way things were two years ago, when, to recoup years of losses, the major domestic airlines completely stopped new plane orders, resulting in the overcrowding many travelers experience today. The new planes ``can't mean bad news for the consumer,'' says Samara Teran, analyst at PaineWebber. ``More seats equals more sales.'' What the average hotel room and/or car rental will cost next week, from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. Lowest round-trip airfares for business and leisure travel next week. Commuter Delays Traveling by commuter plane is no longer just bumpy. It's also slower than it used to be. Because of turbulence created in the wake of Boeing 757 jets, the Federal Aviation Administration has increased the distance commuter planes have to fly behind them to five miles from four miles. This is likely to cause delays in commuter service, particularly in airports that have a large number of commuter takeoffs. At Los Angeles International Airport, for example, commuter planes account for a third of all operations. A spokeswoman says that commuter operations are running six to eight minutes behind schedule right now and concedes that in bad weather, the delays could be worse than before. In the New York area, commuter airplanes account for a quarter of all operations, much more at La Guardia and Newark airports. New Amex Bills Maybe you've already noticed. Your American Express bill isn't quite what it used to be. Last month, American Express quietly stopped including copies of charge receipts in the monthly statements of its personal cardholders, opting instead for a more conventional list of purchases and dates. Some business travelers are incensed, because they attached American Express's receipts to expense forms -- especially when the original receipts were lost or when they made purchases that didn't come with receipts, like airplane-phone charges. ``It is frustrating,'' says Joelle Reanna, marketing executive at public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller. American Express defends its move. The new statements ``give all the detail we did before'' and allow savings in postage and paper, says a spokeswoman. After 2013, a similar change is planned for corporate cardholders. British Booths The phone booths in Britain are having an identity crisis. British Telecommunications PLC, the main provider of phone booths in the United Kingdom, is reversing itself, and installing red, traditional-looking phone booths similar to the ones it replaced a decade ago. About 5,000 of the new models will be installed in London in the next year, the company says. BT had installed more than 100,000 of the '80s models, which are angular, stainless-steel boxes, much like those on the streets of New York. But customers thought they lacked the character of the older models. ``Our customers said the square shape was too clinical,'' explains a BT spokesman, who won't say how much all this is costing. Odds and Ends Don't plan to visit the Taj Mahal on a Monday. In an effort to protect it from erosion, the Agra, India, mausoleum will be closed once a week starting next week. ... El Al will be the first commercial airline to install the CTX 5000, a high-tech explosive-detection system, in the U.S. The device will be installed at Kennedy Airport. ... Games bust? Occupancy rates in Atlanta for July actually dropped slightly from the year-earlier period because hoteliers overestimated the number of hotel rooms needed and built too many. --Lisandra Wilton
