‘Nasty, crowded’ travel season off to a halting start

A computer glitch grounded United Airlines planes for two hours Wednesday and delayed flights nationwide in another blow to travelers facing what could be the most unpleasant summer ever for air travel.

Severe storms, more planes in the air and intermittent computer outages are causing record numbers of delays and mishandled baggage, often turning a vacation into a bruising endurance test at the airport.

Passport renewal delays are also adding to frustration for international travelers. And the worst is yet to come as the summer travel season reaches its peak in the next few weeks.

“It’s going to be nasty, crowded, frustrating and expensive this summer,” said Joe Brancatelli, operator of the Joe Sent Me website for business travelers. “It’s the worst I’ve seen in years.”

So what is a traveler to do? Expect the worst and prepare for it, travel experts say.

Pick nonstop flights if possible. If you have to make connections, avoid checking baggage. Delays and mishandled baggage are expected to be more common at hub airports such as Chicago and Dallas, where connecting flights could easily be disrupted by weather, computer glitches or mechanical problems.

Brancatelli also recommends spending a minute or two before you leave for the airport to devise a backup plan in case your flight is canceled at the last minute. Make sure you know which other carriers fly your route. Airlines have to honor other carriers’ tickets if seats are available.

“Life on the road doesn’t have to be totally hopeless,” he said.

But for many travelers, flying this year has already been a major challenge, particularly within the U.S., government and industry data show.

Slammed by bad weather and an overloaded air-traffic-control system, only 72.5% of domestic flights were on time this year through April, the worst performance since the government began compiling such figures more than a decade ago.

So it wasn’t surprising when surveys by J.D. Power & Associates found that airline customer satisfaction declined.

The average satisfaction score for the big traditional carriers fell to 667 this year from 675 in 2006, with 1,000 being the highest possible score.

But not many travelers have complained, said Diane Embree, a consultant for Michael’s Travel Centre in Westlake Village.

“It’s kind of sad to say, but I think people are resigned to it,” Embree said, adding, however, that more travelers are saying they don’t want to fly coach anymore — until they realize how much more it costs to move up to business or first class. (By contrast, the average rating for low-cost carriers was 748, up from 739 a year earlier.)

Several factors are contributing to a summer of travel discontent. Forecasters are predicting more hurricanes and severe thunderstorms that could wreak havoc with airport operations.

At the same time, a record number of passengers are expected to fly on planes that have never been as full. Airlines have swapped large airplanes for smaller regional jets. Therefore, the industry expects the average load factor — the percentage of available seats filled per flight — to be about 85%, which means many flights will be overbooked.

Adding to the potential mess is an overloaded traffic-control system that this month was at the center of a slowdown at 11 major airports around the country. A computer malfunction, worsened by thunderstorms, delayed flights for up to four hours on many Northeast routes.

“If the system is stretched tight when the weather’s good, we don’t have a prayer when the storms roll in,” Marion Blakey, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, warned in April.

There is one consolation for Southern California travelers. On-time departures improved at Los Angeles International Airport, mainly because it handles more nonstop flights than other airports and it wasn’t affected by severe weather. Its on-time rank among 32 major airports improved to seventh for the first four months of 2007 from 17th in the same period a year earlier.

United’s computer glitch caused minimal problems at LAX, for instance, because the outage occurred in the early morning. A glitch had shut down the airline’s centralized dispatch system that tells pilots when to push back from the gate. United is the largest carrier at LAX.

In all, 268 domestic and international flights were delayed by an average of about an hour and a half, United said. In addition, 24 domestic flights were canceled, the airline said.

“We are working hard to resume operations,” Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman, said late Wednesday. “We are very sorry for the inconvenience today’s computer outage caused our customers.”

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