Ted Reed
During most of 2007, US Airways suffered from a botched effort to move to a single reservations system following the 2005 merger with America West, and from performance deficits in Philadelphia, where it had rapidly ramped up international flying. But late in the year, it began to improve.
In a sense, US Airways was lucky, because its operational problems were of its own making, and it could fix them. Most of the problems that plague airline operations involve weather combined with an antiquated air traffic control system. These factors caused delays that lead to late arrivals, missed connections and lost baggage. So far, Congress has been unwilling to allocate the money needed to upgrade to satellite-based technology that would manage the system and guide airplanes, cutting both delays and fuel burn. "Your cars use GPS; Our airplanes do not," writes Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta(DAL Quote - Cramer on DAL - Stock Picks), in the current issue of the carrier's inflight magazine. "In my office at Delta, I inherited the desk of C.E. Woolman, Delta's founding president," Anderson says. "The desk contains an employee handbook, dated 1946, that includes a description of the basic air traffic control system in place at that time. Incredibly, it's the same system we still use in the United States for navigating airspace today, more than 60 years later." Delta ranked first among the network carriers in 2007 with a 76.9% ontime performance. Its ACSI rating improved by 1.7 points to 60.
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