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From today's The Wall Street Journal. Online:

Does It Come With Cup Holders?
More Travelers Buy Their Own Jets

by Scott McCartney, Travel Editor for The Wall Street Journal.


I'm so fed up with airlines that I'm buying my own plane!

Of course, that's a huge exaggeration -- the "fed up with airlines" part, anyway. I am buying a plane, though, and I mention this not solely out of my Christmas-morning state of excitement, but because the plane that I'm buying with several other weekend fliers is one that poses a problem to airlines.

The Cirrus SR20 is the first of a new generation of small planes equipped with advanced avionics to make them easier and safer to fly, and with aerodynamic features developed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The idea is that flying will some day become as easy as driving, and multitudes of people will fly themselves point-to-point, avoiding airline travel.

Author James Fallows, a fellow Cirrus SR20 owner, chronicled this in his recent book, "Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel." Mr. Fallows believes we are on the verge of a revolution in travel in which speedy, safer, affordable private planes, flown by travelers themselves or by hired "air-taxi" drivers, will get people about quicker than airlines for not much more than today's coach fares. Travelers can take advantage of some of the 18,000 small airports around the country, flying directly to a small town without going through a connecting hub airport, or landing at a downtown or suburban airport close to their destination. They don't have to wait in line at security. They can pour their own Diet Cokes.

If there is a revolution, and that's a big "if" given the cost and the training required, it will be a long time in coming. What's significant here isn't the number of private pilots avoiding airlines, but the number of ways that travelers are practicing "Airline Avoidance."

Our one-year-old SR20 comes from a car dealer in Scottsbluff, Neb., who was fed up with poor airline service. His town, like many small towns, had only commuter air service to hub airports. After all, Scottsbluff doesn't have the population to support a lot of direct flights. But to go from Nebraska to North Dakota, for example, you first have to fly in the opposite direction to Denver. "Airlines just weren't worth the trouble, that's why I decided to get my own plane," the car dealer told me. Now he's trading up to a bigger, faster model.

That's one fewer customer for UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, at least on short trips around the Midwest.

At the same time, the growth in fractional jet ownership has soared. Wealthy individuals and corporations have been buying a partial share of a corporate jet through one of several companies, the largest of which, NetJets (www.netjets.com), is a unit of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The companies promise a certain number of flight hours, anywhere, anytime, with only a few hours notice.

According to the National Business Aviation Association, nearly 3,700 companies or individuals had a share in a business aircraft in 2000, compared with 110 in 1993. Even with a one-sixteenth sliver, flying in those planes costs thousands of dollars an hour -- more expensive than commercial airlines unless you have six or 10 people paying first-class fares. But it sure can be a lot faster and more convenient.

Here again, the numbers of customers lost by airlines may not be all that startling, but it's the kind of customer lost that really hurts. These are folks who pay for first-class seats -- high-dollar, unrestricted, full-fare passengers. The folks turning to fractional jets are the best customers of the airlines. Losing even a few of them, here and there, hurts the economics of the airlines deeply. That's why United recently tried to launch its own fractional jet division, though it has shelved the project because of massive start-up costs at a time of huge losses.

For those of us more grounded, the "Airline Avoidance" happens on the highways. Why fly from Dallas to Houston if you can drive in four hours? That's about the time it takes to fly, by the time you get to the airport, check luggage, get through security, reclaim bags and get a rental car after a one-hour flight. Where's the value for your $200 plane ticket?

So many travelers are driving that Delta Air Lines last week launched a fare sale specifically intended to get some of those people back. Delta put short trips out of its hubs on sale, as it said in its press release, "to provide additional customer incentive to fly rather than drive."

For airlines, the short-haul market is crucial to profitability. In general, travelers pay a lot more per mile to fly short trips. Airlines need the short flights to feed the long-haul and international stuff, too. But if the short trips don't have as many local passengers, then airlines can't offer as much schedule convenience.

What can airlines do? They have to find a way to speed up the airport experience, or the car will continue to seem like a good alternative. That won't be easy. Airlines are asking the government to speed up the security process -- something they couldn't do alone. But it's crucial to their financial future in order to win back the short-haul travelers and stem the losses of high-dollar jet-setters.

In the short run, they could take some steps to try to win back travelers, particularly business travelers. One source of airline frustration -- and avoidance -- is the infuriating litany of rules and regulations. A business buys a discounted ticket for an employee and then decides another employee will make that trip instead. Just transfer the ticket? Nope. It's "non-transferable."

Or how about this: A salesman buys a discounted ticket to visit a client, and the client changes the date. At best, the business traveler is going to get hit with a $100 change fee. Does anyone believe it costs $100 to change a reservation? At worst, the salesman has to eat the discounted fare and buy an unrestricted fare.

Better yet, a traveler -- and this happened to a reader recently -- changes to an earlier return flight on the same day he was scheduled to travel. By waiting on the stand-by list, he shouldn't have a change fee. But this airline charges $150 for a same-day change in Europe, though it doesn't charge at all in the U.S. Explain the logic in that.

Pretty soon, "Airline Avoidance" starts to look more attractive. Private planes and cars don't have nearly as many nonsensical complications. If airlines worry about losing business travelers, they ought to consider how to make it easier for people to use their service.

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- Tom