How to Survive the Summer Airline Stampede

June 21, 2006 — -- There is still a diehard school of thought among U.S. airline executives past and present that any rise in the price of tickets will chase off a huge number of passengers, thus leaving too many seats empty and producing no revenue.

Well, that might have been the case in years past, but you certainly couldn't prove it now by the way the reservations are stacking up for air travel this summer. So far, even with fares up some 11 percent per seat mile and the number of available airline seats going down, more of us than ever are booking trips all over the map with the same type of blind customer demand that keeps Starbuck's expanding. (Must have latte, must have latte...)

That means two things: First, in the long term, normally timid airline execs will now be emboldened to keep raising fares that have been artificially low; and second, given the demand for seats and the number of travelers, getting through any major U.S. airport this summer without planning carefully for the experience, may be hellish -- sort of like running against a stampede.

I know that's the very type of cowboy-and-cattle analogy industry experts beg me to avoid. Airplanes, they say, are not cattle cars, and airline executives do not think of airline passengers as cattle.

Cash cows, perhaps, but not cattle.

Of course, far too many Southwest Airline employees in great humor have rolled their eyes when passengers line up at the three chutes provided for their no-seat-assignment flights and start mooing. Some even bring those little novelty boxes that make cow sounds when you turn them over.

Note to Southwest passengers: the joke is aging, and they've herd it before, pun intended.

But whether you're flying Southwest or catching Elbonia Air out of Kennedy in New York this summer, the challenges of getting through the average big American airport keep changing and need advance planning to save your sanity -- and temper.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: Overcrowding. There are too many of us wanting to move through airport security lines without delay and onto airplanes already averaging better than 85 percent full. The Transportation Safety Administration is struggling mightily to keep up, but whether they eventually succeed in their stated intention to have no passenger wait more than 10 minutes for screening, remains to be seen.