Austerity in the Air

This week begins what may be the 1970s' last extravaganza of American air travel: a record 8,000,000 vacationers taking off on 12,800 flights a day to spend the holidays with family and friends or at sun-warmed resorts. By Jan. 7, the splurge will end, and so will a 28-year era of soaring expansion for U.S. airlines. That day, new federal fuel allocations will start forcing flight cancellations and crew layoffs on a vastly greater scale than anything the industry has ever before experienced. Airline stockholders, oddly, could benefit by the profits of forced efficiency, but almost everyone else will be hurt.

U.S. domestic and overseas lines plan to cancel 950,000 of the 5,000,000 takeoffs originally scheduled for 1974 and reduce flights by 285 million miles. About 275 planes, more than 10% of the airlines' fleets, will be grounded; Continental Air Lines figures to save 19 million gal. of jet fuel a year just by replacing 747s with DC-10s on its Honolulu runs. Many of the cabin luxuries and ticketing options that passengers have taken for granted will disappear. First class may give way to all-economy seating, and tourist accommodations may become more crowded as cabins are fit ted with extra seats. Last-minute reservations and changes of flight plans will become far more difficult to arrange as more flights depart with every seat filled. Nonstop service may turn to one-stop and two-stop, even on long flights between major cities. Youth fares, family fares and other bargain rates could go.

The cutbacks vary widely from route to route, but all major cities will lose at least some flights (see chart). Several smaller cities are about to lose their scheduled service altogether, if the Civil Aeronautics Board, as expected, approves the lines' plans. Pan American has petitioned to drop from its schedule all flights out of Washington/Baltimore Friendship Airport, Philadelphia, New Orleans and nine foreign cities, including Stockholm and Oslo.

Airline employees will bear the greatest burden in the retrenchment. More than 25,000 of the lines' 300,000 pilots, cabin attendants, mechanics, ticket clerks, baggage handlers, plane cleaners and others will be laid off beginning in January. Among the cockpit casualties: ten former Viet Nam P.O.W.s at Eastern and the first women pilots at American and Eastern, all victims of low seniority.

Airline executives claim that they will suffer financial damage too. They fear a radical drop in revenue and heavy expenses in maintaining grounded planes. A 747, they note, costs $25 million, and payments must be kept up whether it flies or not. Some lines have asked for delays in accepting new equipment. These delays have contributed to a renewed cash crisis at Lockheed, which last week announced that it might have to seek new short-term loans. Many Wall Street analysts, however, think that the airlines' costs will be outweighed by the efficiencies of dropping unprofitable runs, flying planes more fully loaded and cutting employee staffs. Several expect airline profits to rise 5% to 10% next year and are thinking of recommending the stocks as a buy. One worry gives them pause: maybe the Arab embargo will soon be lifted, the fuel shortage will ease, and the airlines will not make all those economies.

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