As you may or may not know, Joe Brancatelli is a travel columnist for USA Today. He recently had a column published that expressed his views on government regulation of the airline industry (he's against it, BTW)...
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/b...on_N.htm?csp=34
Included in his comments about the DOT, Joe had this to say about NWA...
As everyone on the business-travel planet knows, Northwest Airlines cancelled more than 1,200 flights toward the end of June when management incompetence left it with too few pilots to staff its scheduled flights. Desperate to avoid the harsh media scrutiny that a wave of late July cancellations would inevitably bring, Northwest is exploiting a loophole in DOT rules.
For reasons known only to bureaucrats, any flight cancelled more than seven days before departure is not counted against an airline's cancellation rate in the DOT's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. So Northwest is pre-canceling hundreds (perhaps thousands) of flights in July, making sure to do it eight days or more before departure. That will assumedly allow Northwest to avoid a noticeable late-July meltdown and duck the attendant negative media coverage. And it is all legal, up to DOT snuff.
Anyone care to comment on this issue? Do you think it's a shrewd business move on the part of NW, or is it another way that NW has found to exploit the system to their advantage?
Since we're getting to the end of another month, we'll soon see if the "reported" cancellations come close to their record total for June...
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/b...on_N.htm?csp=34
Included in his comments about the DOT, Joe had this to say about NWA...
As everyone on the business-travel planet knows, Northwest Airlines cancelled more than 1,200 flights toward the end of June when management incompetence left it with too few pilots to staff its scheduled flights. Desperate to avoid the harsh media scrutiny that a wave of late July cancellations would inevitably bring, Northwest is exploiting a loophole in DOT rules.
For reasons known only to bureaucrats, any flight cancelled more than seven days before departure is not counted against an airline's cancellation rate in the DOT's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. So Northwest is pre-canceling hundreds (perhaps thousands) of flights in July, making sure to do it eight days or more before departure. That will assumedly allow Northwest to avoid a noticeable late-July meltdown and duck the attendant negative media coverage. And it is all legal, up to DOT snuff.
Anyone care to comment on this issue? Do you think it's a shrewd business move on the part of NW, or is it another way that NW has found to exploit the system to their advantage?
Since we're getting to the end of another month, we'll soon see if the "reported" cancellations come close to their record total for June...
