成人头条

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You鈥檙e listening to the podcast edition of the 成人头条 audio newsline. Learn more about WSU 鈥� the home of Thinkers, Doers, Movers and Shockers 鈥� on the Web at .

Flying can be difficult enough under the best of circumstances, but flying during the holidays can create a whole new level of stress for travelers. Dean Headley, co-author of the national Airline Quality Rating at 成人头条, explains some of the challenges in flying during the holidays.

Headley: "Well, fliers are just going to find fewer airplanes to be in, fewer seats available to buy. The system is constricted considerably over the last couple of years, and we just don't have that many seats for people to buy anymore."

Headley says holiday travel by air can especially be challenging when flights are delayed and canceled.

Headley: "Even though you may be able to find a seat and get an airline ticket, you're going to have problems with the weather 鈥� December's classically bad weather in most of the hub airports. And if you do get a flight, and everything goes reasonably close to plan, and you get that one weather glitch, you won't be able to find a plane seat to get you out of that delayed or canceled flight. There just isn't any slack in the system."

According to Headley, the on-time performance of airlines in 2008 was considerably worse in December than from September through November.

Headley: "When you look at on-time performance in the fall months 鈥� September, October, November in 2008, that was all around 80-85 percent for an industry. In December, that dropped to 65 percent. And we've looked at September and October so far for this year, and it's in the mid-80s as well or higher, so I'm expecting that the pattern will hold true and that percentage on time will drop off dramatically in December."

The Air Transport Association has predicted that 4 percent fewer people will fly over the Thanksgiving holiday than in 2008. But with the capacity cutbacks, that still means the average flight should have fewer empty seats.

Headley: "The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays 鈥� everybody has to be there on a certain day, a certain time. There's not a lot of flexibility as to when. So if you get a ticket, you have fewer seats. They're all full. Things go wrong. There's no seats to take up the slack. You get bad weather that's going to make things go wrong. You just kind of have the deck stacked against you for your outcome to be as you would like on a reliable basis during those heavy months of travel."

And Headley says there's another potential issue that passengers have to deal with 鈥� sitting by passengers who are flying with a cold or the flu.

Headley: "The airplane will probably have some people that are in various stages of health problems. The one you really have to worry about is in your seat next to you or in your row. Airplane air is fine, it's filtered and it does just fine, but taking precautions for yourself and hoping that other people take precautions is about the best thing you can do."

Headley says the fact of the matter is that not everyone traveling during the holidays will be in good health.

Headley: "Folks will probably travel sick. There's no way around that. It's the winter season and people will have various colds and maybe even the flu. Airlines don't really care. They want to sell a seat. They're not a public health department, so they'll want to sell the seat. They're not looking out for the general public health of the traveler."

Industry experts say that even though fares on average are lower than last year, the cost of flying could go up. Unless you're an elite-status flier who gets the fees for checked bags waived, you'll be paying the airlines more this year to carry your luggage. "The reality is that for a family of four traveling cross country, each checking a bag, you could spend $360 on a family of four just to carry the luggage," said Bryan Saltzburg, general manager of new initiatives at TripAdvisor. "That's a surprise for travelers that happened over the last year."

Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Joe Kleinsasser for 成人头条.