The economy on Travel

As most of you know the current situation with the U.S. economy is not in a good position. It has greatly effected the aviation industry. About five airlines have officially filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The oil prices have not even gone any lower, and travelers are feeling the strains from lost flights. At least Frontier airlines has chose to continue its flying operations and continued to pay its employees. As for the discount start ups like Skybus they have definitely felt the pressures from the economy, and have unfortunately left travelers stranded.

Now in my opinion I feel that even if you have to file bankruptcy you should still find a way to get your customers back to their original destination. I believe though that in the aviation industry as a whole they claim to be for the customer, but if they were then possibly these companies would not have had to file a chapter 11. Also along those lines of taking care of the customer should be the safety of the customer. Though American Airlines had forgotten about that and now they too are beginning to suffer by grounding some of the fleet just to repair the planes. It seems as though the airlines have forgotten that the money they get for flying comes from the consumer. If your airline is not safe and it does not get people to their destination on time then they won't fly your airline.

I know what it means to be a maintainer and have to work on an aging fleet, but I also know that safety of myself, my crew and those that fly is my number one priority. The commercial arena seems to have forgotten. Yes it is nice to have comfortable space in the cabin and be served a nice meal, but if my plane is going to have malfunctions in flight I won't fly that airline again if I don't have to. That is why it is always good as a traveler to keep up on the airlines and see how there record is and to find out if there has been any issues with the aircraft. To do so you just look onto the FAA website and you can usually find the information if you look under Advisory Circulars. Those are things that are published by the FAA when they find something that needs to be inspected on a certain type of airplane. If your not sure what type of airplanes an airline has you can usually find that directly on the airlines website. So remember that knowledge is power and you should be somewhat informed about the airline before you decide to purchase that ticket. Especially now while our economy is the way it is.