WHICH AIRLINE SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
The latest headlines are often what many travelers use as
benchmarks to help decide which airline to choose. Recent
accidents, crashes, mechanical problems, labor disputes, delays,
financial difficulties and so on, are hot fodder for the media.
No one planning a trip wants to go anywhere near an airline that
is having even a hint of these kinds of troubles. Any odds maker
will tell you that a recent accident makes the chance of that
same airline having another accident anytime in the near future
a remote possibility at best. An odds maker will also tell you
that a labor dispute among baggage handlers might make the
probability of your bags being lost greater than it would
normally be. But we don't want to play the odds; we want to work
with facts.
There are four main things that we passengers are concerned
about when flying: Our safety, our comfort, our possessions
(baggage), and our time. That gives us four questions to answer
before booking a flight on a particular airline. (The web link
after each of the questions is a site you can check for info.)
1) What is the airline's safety record?
http://www.1800airsafe.com 2) Do they have many consumer
complaints? http://www.nasdac.faa.gov/internet 3) Are they known
for baggage irregularities? http://www.dot.gov 4) What is their
on time record? http://www.bts.gov
Let's face it. no matter how we crunch the numbers, there are
simply no guarantees that the flight you take won't be late,
that your baggage won't be lost or mashed like a leather potato.
The facts and figures you turn up on the web can serve as a
general guide, but they can't provide you with a hard and fast
answer. You can easily go a little nuts trying to juggle all
those statistics. After all, perfection is hard to come by -
especially in the airline business! The information you turn up
on the web can improve your chances of having an easier and more
comfortable flight, but there are absolutely no guarantees. So
no matter what the numbers may show, the real choice of which
airline you pick probably comes down to just one question: how
much is that ticket going to cost me?