The 2002 airline scorecard posts lots of losses, lots of wins

This has been a miserable year for flying on U.S. airlines -- or a pretty good year, depending on your point of view. Certainly it has been a year of extremes.

The negatives, of course, have grabbed headlines. Battered by Americans’ fear of flying after Sept. 11, defections of business fliers and the troubled economy, US Airways and United -- two of the 10 majors -- filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Smaller carriers Midway, National and Vanguard stopped flying, stranding thousands.

Tightened security made travel an ordeal, especially early in the year. We learned to arrive at the airport hours earlier, whip off our shoes and belts while enduring embarrassing searches, and excise scissors, knives and a laundry list of other banned items from our carry-ons.

The second half of the year brought a blizzard of restrictions on low-fare tickets, higher excess-baggage fees, stingier compensation for being bumped or delayed and higher prices for paper tickets.

But there were plenty of pluses. Leisure travelers enjoyed low air fares. Discounters JetBlue and Southwest added routes and flights. More planes took off on time. Airlines lost less luggage. Self-service check-in stations mushroomed.

We are arguably safer in the air than we were before Sept. 11, 2001, thanks to more than 44,000 federal security screeners deployed to all 429 of the nation’s commercial airports -- beating a Nov. 19 deadline that critics said they couldn’t make.

“For passengers, this was a good year,” says Jamie Baker, a J.P. Morgan airline analyst. “For [airline] shareholders, it was anything but.”

Peter C. Yesawich, president of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a marketing firm based in Orlando, Fla., refines it a bit more. “If it’s convenience you’re looking for, it was a challenging year,” he says. “If it was a great fare you were looking for, you should have found it.”

Here’s a look at how leisure air travelers fared in key areas:

Fares: “We got ourselves one heck of a deal in 2002,” says Tom Parsons, chief executive of Bestfares.com, a travel Web site. “We’re seeing fares that go back to the 1980s.”

A few months ago, Parsons says, $198 round trips were available between San Diego and London. I recently booked round trips from LAX to Las Vegas for $38 and to Oakland for $54, about half the lowest fares during much of 2001.

Overall, domestic coach passengers were paying about 20% less for tickets last month than in November 2000 and 5% less than a year ago, when prices were depressed by post-Sept. 11 trauma, according to the Air Transport Assn.

The uncertain economy and pressure from discounters are driving fares lower, experts say. This year’s news includes JetBlue’s dramatic growth from its West Coast hub in Long Beach and Southwest’s new nonstops between LAX and the Baltimore-Washington airport.

Not all fares have fallen. Round trips from the West Coast to Australia, for example, continue to run $1,000 or more, largely because there’s not much competition there, Parsons says. The average international fare was up slightly in November from 2001 and about 10% less than in 2000, the ATA reports.

Performance: Although airport security hassles bedeviled us for much of the year, we had some pleasant surprises once we got on the planes.

In September, flights run by the 10 largest U.S. airlines took off on schedule 88% of the time. It was the best score since the U.S. Department of Transportation began collecting comparable data in 1995. (The average slipped to 84.2% in the most recent DOT report, for October.)

Also in September, the airlines’ rate of mishandled baggage, which includes lost, damaged and pilfered bags, dropped to 3.04 reports per 1,000 passengers, another low. (The rate was slightly higher, 3.09, in October.)

Some experts say the airlines performed better only because traffic fell. The ATA, which represents U.S. carriers, credits industry-wide customer satisfaction initiatives, begun three years ago, that promised to improve on-time flights and baggage delivery.

Restrictions and fees: In their hunt for revenue, strapped airlines transferred a host of costs to customers. Many changes went unannounced, and travelers got some nasty surprises at the ticket counter.

Is your bag overweight or too big? That may cost you $25 or $50 or $80 because the airline either set a new policy or began enforcing an old one. Got a third bag to check? Hand over $40 to $80, depending on the carrier.

Airlines added or increased fees up to $25 to issue paper tickets on routes on which e-tickets were available. They also ended commissions to travel agents, some of whom responded by charging customers $50 or more to process tickets.

Several airlines began declaring nonrefundable tickets to be -- well, nonrefundable. To reuse such low-fare tickets, you had to call the airline in advance or on the same day as your scheduled flight and rebook. Some have rescinded plans to charge such ticketholders $100 to fly standby the same day. “We have been listening to our customers, and we agree with them that their travel experience should be simpler and easier,” says United Senior Vice President Chris Bowers.

Amen

A look ahead: American recently cut walk-up fares by about 40% in 400 markets and offered just four categories of coach fares: walk-up, two levels of 14-day advance purchase and a new 30-day advance purchase. The 30-day is lower than the 14-day fare but 10% to 15% higher than promotional sale fares, analyst Baker says. The result: somewhat higher leisure fares and a big break for business travelers.

Expect more such experiments in 2003 as airlines try to find the elusive formula that extracts more money without alienating cost-conscious consumers.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.