ON THE MOVE / JOE BRANCATELLI : The Long Travails of a Short-Haul Traveler

How much are business travelers willing to pay to fly 407 miles? And what should business travelers expect in the way of service on a flight for which they’ve just paid 68 cents a mile?

Obscure as these questions may seem, they go to the heart of the uneasy relationship between America’s unhappy army of business travelers and the nation’s battered airline industry.

No matter what the public perception may be, business travel is rarely glamorous. It isn’t about flying down to Rio or jetting off to Paris. Business travelers spend most of their lives in the air on short-haul flights between prosaic domestic destinations.

Short-hop flying is where business travelers need comfort, convenience and, most of all, value.

Short hauls are also where the airlines are supposed to make their profit. That’s because business travelers willingly pay a premium to hop on a plane on short notice and get from Cleveland to places like Minneapolis or Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, the short-haul system isn’t working well for business travelers or the airlines. Business travelers complain they pay too much and get too little for their short-hop dollar. And the airlines aren’t making any money.

One example of the business traveler’s short-haul plight: the 407-mile route between Cleveland and Newburgh, N.Y. The one-way, unrestricted fare for this route--the equivalent of a flight between LAX and Reno--is $278.

What do business travelers get for their 68 cents per mile? For one thing, they get to change planes in Pittsburgh because there are no nonstop flights. So the trip requires more than three hours of elapsed travel time.

On one recent 7:30 a.m. departure from Newburgh, business travelers received only coffee and a small container of juice. Not even the proverbial roll was offered, even though many of the travelers on this flight probably had little other opportunity to eat breakfast.

Working during the flight was next to impossible. The seats were so small and the rows placed so close together that there wasn’t even room to open a newspaper or a briefcase.

You can imagine the annoyance of the business travelers who made this trip. For their $278 fare, they couldn’t work, weren’t fed, stopped in Pittsburgh and lost three hours of their business day.

On the flip side of the equation is the parlous state of the airline industry. Providing even minimal service has been prohibitively expensive.

Airlines collectively lost about $8 billion in the last three fiscal years. During the same time, six of the nation’s 13 major carriers landed in Bankruptcy Court. Three eventually stopped flying.

Change, however, is coming to the short-haul market.

Some of it has not helped the business travelers. Most major carriers, for example, have closed at least some of their unprofitable airport hub operations, thus reducing the number of short-haul flights available.

But some of the change has been good. TWA, for example, has essentially eliminated its traditional coach-class cabin. In its place is Comfort Class, which features seats with increased leg room and footrests. Seats in Comfort Class on TWA cost no more that standard coach on other airlines.

In some cases, airlines have mimicked each other. Continental Airlines, for example, has introduced Continental Lite in many markets in the South and East. Continental Lite resembles Southwest Airlines: fares are low and carry minimal restrictions, flights are frequent and avoid crowded hubs, and amenities are scarce.

And some of the change in short-haul markets is positively original. New carriers such as Reno Air in the West and Kiwi International in the East have been launched to provide short-haul service at reasonable prices.

Both upstarts offer good, simple amenities like roomy seats and fresh snacks. And they do so at fares that are far below what the entrenched major carriers charge.

Not surprisingly, both have turned a profit in at least some months during their first year of operation. “We think we give business travelers a better deal” on short-haul flights, says Beth Mack, Kiwi’s vice president of sales and marketing. “And because we’re smaller, we can charge less and still make money.”