Media Re Airlines: A Little Perspective, Please

[Right -- Louis C.K.: "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy"]

Whenever I write anything remotely positive about the major airlines, or even not overtly condemnatory (per today), I'm always amazed at what strikes me as knee-jerk adverse reaction, even to the most simple little Labor Day column. Not from the public, mind you, but from some within the media -- and especially the contingent from the Southwest Airlines Media Marching Band and Glee Chorus.

[I specifically exclude my friend Joe Brancatelli at Joesentme.com from this gripe, as Joe knows more about airlines than I ever will.]

Among the media reaction I'm getting to this morning's low-hanging-fruit assertion from me, comes from some people who think it's absurd to say, as I did, that fares remain near historically low levels.

But it's true. My bet is that those people travel infrequently, and have seen fare increases on specific routes. One I can think of is Newark-Los Angeles, a trip I took regularly when I used to live in New Jersey. Four years ago, I could usually book that roundtrip on Continental for about $425, and today I had reaction from people saying that trip is now around $600. That may be true here and there -- but I just checked, and a roundtrip coach flight on Continental, Newark-Los Angeles, comes up as $378 to $437 for departure next week.

The fact is, across the board, average fares are near historical lows. Statistics from the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, for example, show that the cost of the average airfare, adjusted for inflation, actually fell 21 percent in 2010, compared with 2001. (Fares have been rising in the last six months, no doubt, but not yet enough to refute the assertion that they remain near historical lows. Not yet, anyway.)

Meanwhile, regarding Southwest. Southwest may not charge for bags, but it's also becoming known for relatively high fares compared with its competitors. I like Southwest for its convenience (and especially the easy and penalty-free procedures for changing an itinerary), but on my last three business trips, competing airlines had lower fares.

And God forbid I should board Southwest with baggy pants and upset the preternaturally vigilant Southwest fashion police, they of that splendid Dallas-Fort Worth school of social propriety and travel couture.

Overall, a little perspective is needed in the media vis a vis the airlines, for all of their manifest faults. As Louis C.K. points out in this popular Youtube clip, "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy," via the Conan O'Brien show:

"It's an amazing world wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots," Louis says. "Maybe we need to spend some time riding on a donkey with pots and pans banging on the side." As to air travel, he points out that going from New York to California takes five hours on an airplane. "It used to take like 30 years, and a lot of you would die along the way!" On a plane, "You're flying! You're sitting in a chair in the sky!"

O.K., that said, we now return to my regular programming of complaining about air service and hotels. Don't get me started on hotels, by the way.

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Air Travel: No Delays. No Hurricane. The Only Heavy Wind Came From the Media Weather-Blowhards

[Web cam image this morning of beach at Eastham on Cape Cod, via Cape Cod Times]

Air travel throughout the country was operating without significant delays this morning, as it did yesterday. The hurricane that had the media hysterics at battle stations all week did not manifest itself. That it would not was obvious all day yesterday, though the hysterics remained at full cry with their disaster narratives despite evidence that this was a fizzled storm.

From this morning's toned-down Boston Globe, via the Cape Cod Times: "`That was just normal 'winter' weather,'" said Norm Frazee, as he patrolled the properties of a resort company for downed limbs and other storm-related debris. 'We get winds like that almost every day in the winter.' Once a mighty hurricane, Earl weakened into a tropical storm and merely grazed the Cape and islands overnight, causing no major damage or power outages ..."

Except for that "once a mighty hurricane" blather, that report has it about right. Yes, it was a real big hurricane ... in the Atlantic Ocean. But this was a tree that fell in the forest.

The trouble as I see it: the media, desperate for ever-new sensations by the hour, latched onto the hurricane-cataclysm narrative early in the week and wouldn't give it up once they hung out their logos and piled up their alarming feature stories and photos. The dereliction was not just confined to the usual television nitwits desperately drawing attention to themselves when the weather changes, as it is in the habit of doing.

The problem was the slavish adherence to a canned disaster narrative. The problem was media overreaction that was partly juiced, sad to say, by authorities with a lot of F.E.M.A. money burning holes in their pockets. The problem was the incessant violent weather language, especially when applied to an event that had not yet occurred: Slam, bearing down, slash, lash, barrel, flee, ferocity, monster. It was the media's stone determination to flog that narrative, even when it was obvious by yesterday that the storm was fizzling -- a fact that the airlines, to their credit, obviously appreciated. Did the airlines cancel hundreds or even thousands of flights preemptively, as would have been standard operating procedure on Thursday and yesterday if a large storm were about to hit their operations on the East Coast? No, they did not.

How many end-of-summer holiday plans got ruined because of the weather hype the media promulgated? How many picnics and gatherings and small-town parades, from the Carolinas to Nantucket, will not occur, as it's too late to re-schedule now that the world did not end? How many people, alarmed by the hysteria, canceled holiday trips? That's a story worth reporting.

Obviously, the coastal population needs to be prepared when a hurricane is on the way. Just as obvious to me, the authorities and the media need to exercise a lot more caution, especially when knowable facts assert themselves, as they had by Thursday morning, to argue for toning it way down and modifying that blasted (oops, the violent language again) narrative.

Oh, incidentally: Some streets in East Coast seashore towns, especially those on narrow barrier islands, routinely flood when it rains. It's mostly a matter of infrastructure -- inadequate storm-drains and the like. The media hate infrastructure reporting -- boooooring and time-consuming! But please, let's not make too much of those photos showing routine seashore-town flooding that's depicted as proof that this was the dramatic, direct impact of a ferocious (oops) hurricane.

By the way, I no longer live on the East Coast. I live in the Southwestern desert in Arizona. Last night, the waning monsoon season here brought a major thunderstorm that crashed down suddenly and dropped an inch of rain in an hour -- in a place that gets nine inches in an entire year. The lights flickered. The lightening slashed (an accurate use of the word here) at the darkening skies over the mountains. Our African gray parrot hollered in sheer delight: "It's raining! See!" Desert washes flooded and the usual handful of idiots got stuck in their cars and had to be rescued because they ventured into a wash despite the signs saying not to enter in a flood.

It was typical end-of-summer desert monsoon weather, and the usual precautions applied. And we didn't need a hysterical weatherman to tell us which way the wind blowed.

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Hurricane Hysterics, Deflated, Steam Northward; Air Travel Remains Normal

[Map showing air-travel delays, indicating only minor routine delays in Philadelphia (it's at the start of a holiday travel weekend), as of 9.10 a.m. this morning. Via FlightView.com]

[UPDATED, 6:45 p.m. EDT]

I suppose Drudge, who nobody pays much attention to these days, made the worst job of it, as usual. The poor boy had this hurricane headline on his Web site for a pretty long time this week: MONSTER! And he wasn't even talking about Bill Clinton. He was just hyping another hurricane.

Other media tumbled over themselves with the usual turbocharged cliches. This was a major storm churning and blasting, bearing down on, steaming toward, pounding and slashing and ready to unleash its fury ... and so on. I was especially impressed by the NPR man in Nags Head yesterday afternoon, who dramatically reported that the ocean was white with foam and did not appear "welcoming."

Storm arrived last night. Um, headline in this morning's Greensboro (NC) News-Record, far from the epicenter of this purported cataclysm: "Some Flooding on Outer Banks As Earl Passes." Here's the story of the great disaster.

The hype brigades have now decamped for points farther north. I knew camp had been broken last night when Rachel Maddow was reverently interviewing some guy on a Coast Guard cutter near Virginia, to where the vessel had steamed to avoid unsettled waters. "Thank you for your service, sir," she told the Coast Guardsman, who was doing his best to suggest how the "calm" waters lay "before the storm." [Hey, Rache: He's in the freaking Coast Guard, not the Marines, for crying out loud.] Meanwhile, is the intrepid Coast Guard cutter even now steaming farther away, perhaps to a point off Sandy Hook, lest a rainstorm splash its gunwhales?

[Early this evening, the Boston papers were still dutifully pumping out words like "lash" and "churn" and "fury" as the poor, hobbled ex-hurricane headed far out to sea like a confused whale, with just a brush past Cape Cod. And the Weather Channel, evidently determined to wring every last ounce of hype out of this busted valise of a hurricane, was valiantly still speculating early tonight that "New England and Cape Cod could see the brunt of Earl's fury."

Thankfully, the Cape Cod Times, at least, has got ahold of itself. Its Web site currently reports that "officials in Chatham say they are relieved that Earl has weakened but are still warning residents and tourists not to `tempt fate' by venturing too close to the water at the height of the storm Friday night."] [And finally, at 8 p.m. tonight, the Weather Channel runs down the hurricane flag and surrenders to the facts with a new, altered report: "Tonight, Earl will make its last brush with the U.S. as it passes by southeastern New England."

OK, then. Avoid plunging into the surf tonight off Old Cape Cod, and remember that it might get a little rainy in New England. Some East Coast flights could be delayed -- but it's also the start of a holiday travel period, so that alone could cause delays. And oh, must we brace ourselves (to borrow from hurricane-hysteria patois) to have to watch the usual suspects who choose to live in flood zones wailing, per usual, when their rugs get wet?

If there are any significant disruptions in air travel, I will let you know. Meanwhile, keep your gunwhales dry.

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