Last month, my wife and I flew from New York to Milan, Italy, on Emirates.
We
booked our shoulder-season tickets back in April, paying less than
$1,400 combined for our economy-class tickets. Emirates allowed each of
us two free checked bags of up to 50 pounds apiece. We checked a total
of three suitcases between us, though we only needed two of them to
carry our belongings for an 11-day trip. (Even then, we always
overpack.)
On the outbound leg, we each tossed a couple of days'
worth of necessities into the third suitcase, just in case one of the
primary bags happened to go astray. It's a lesson I learned years ago
while sitting in a Barcelona hotel, waiting for Delta to deliver an
overdue suitcase. On the way home, the third suitcase was instead
stuffed with souvenirs, primarily tins of French cookies that you can't
find here in the States. We have our priorities.
Overall, Emirates
deserved high marks - though not straight As - for service, as well as
for value. Even though our fare was hundreds of dollars less than those
offered on that route by Emirates' U.S. rivals, we flew in a spotless
Boeing 777 with average-sized coach seats and a good entertainment
system. The latter did my wife more good than it did me on our overnight
outbound flight; I sleep well on planes. My wife, however, does not,
and she appreciated the wide range of films available in a variety of
languages. The food was pretty good for coach, and the flight crew was
amply staffed to serve the 260-odd passengers a Triple Seven can carry.
We
arrived at JFK, per our custom, a good four hours ahead of our
international flight's departure, but there was nobody at Emirates
available to check in coach passengers until three hours prior. The one
clerk available when we arrived handled only first and business class.
Still, even with the wait we had enough time to clear security and enjoy
a decent dinner at a restaurant in the terminal before we made our way
to the gate. Overall, our experience was not only relatively economical,
but pleasant too.
Big U.S. airlines have recently begun to
complain about Emirates, along with its fellow Gulf-based carriers Qatar
Airways and Etihad Airways. As recently reported in The Wall Street
Journal (1), executives at legacy carriers like Delta and United have
argued that government support for Gulf airlines means an unequal
playing field, and that the foreign carriers benefit from subsidies and
cheap fuel, claims which Gulf-based carriers have denied.
The big
U.S. airlines don't appreciate the competition from Emirates and other
Gulf-based carriers because they never appreciate any competition at
all.
United and American are at the bottom of my preference list
when I fly anywhere. Their approach to their business is to charge the
most they can collect while delivering the least their customers will
accept. That is their prerogative, but I go out of my way to avoid
flying them, either domestically or overseas. Delta is a similar legacy
carrier and it has a broadly similar business model, but it manages to
annoy me significantly less often, while flying more routes that I
really want to fly. I therefore use Delta more than United, which I fly
rarely, or American, which I scarcely use at all.
On trips abroad,
I try to fly foreign-flag carriers when I can. This includes TAM on
flights to Brazil, where I travel fairly regularly, and Lufthansa, Air
France, KLM and especially Virgin Atlantic on flights to Europe.
Emirates has now earned a place on that preferred international roster.
Here in the states, my carriers of choice are JetBlue and Southwest.
Fees
for checked baggage particularly annoy me because they encourage
travelers to drag anything smaller than a steamer trunk into the cabin,
where I often end up helping an undersized woman hoist her oversized bag
into the overhead compartment. This is partly because I am a gentleman
and partly because I am afraid someone will be maimed by a falling
anvil, thus delaying everyone's travel. JetBlue gives me a free checked
bag on every flight. It gives my wife two free checked bags, because
somehow she qualifies for their Mosaic preferred customer program and I
don't. (I don't mind, however, because I have been married long enough
to know that if only one of us is going to get preferred treatment, it
is better for all concerned that it is her.) Southwest offers two free
checked bags to everyone.
Besides charging more on the New York to
Milan route, the domestic carriers offer only one free checked bag on
an international route and charge $100 for a second. This would have
meant taking only two bags to Europe - and, crucially, fewer French
cookies to give away when we got home.
Legacy U.S. carriers want
Washington to do their dirty work by negotiating limits on the routes
the Gulf carriers fly. This is based on their questionable claim that
these government-owned carriers are unfairly competing, but mostly on
their belief that our Open Skies treaty policy should benefit U.S.
airlines but not U.S. travelers.
American legacy carriers are like
crabs in a bucket, trying to pull down anyone that tries to climb out
of their wet, dank, crowded hole, by which I do not specifically refer
to United and American's economy cabins, though I won't argue if someone
else does. Passengers are just parcels to them, to be delivered intact
and on time but with as little additional fuss as possible. It's a fair
business strategy and they can pursue it if they want to. But they ought
to do it without the help of our government, which should act in the
interest of the public that flies, rather than the crabs and other
airlines that fly it.