飞机旅行.doc

After the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, flying changed considerably.Some of those changes have improved commercial flying, but others have made the skies much less friendly, says journalist and airline veteran William J. McGee.McGees new book, Attention All Passengers, details how airlines are cutting costs through regional carriers, outsourcing airline maintenance, mishandling baggage and overbooking airplanes.Its not your imagination that there are more people flying on each flight, he tells Fresh Airs Dave Davies. The average percentage of occupied seats on a plane these days is over 80 percent. That means a great number of flights are at 100 percent. That has led to all of the other problems related to service: delays, canceled flights, lost baggage, consumer complaints and passengers being involuntarily bumped off flights. . Flying is just not a pleasant experience.Complaints of damaged and mishandled bags spiked after the Transportation Security Administration took over bag screening, says McGee.There have been a lot of high-profile cases of TSA employees who take bags into the back room, and when they come back out, things are missing, he says. To some extent the TSA has managed to get a handle on that, but its really part of a much bigger, systemic problem within the industry . about how many functions revolving around commercial aviation that are outsourced.Among those functions: everything from maintenance to customer service to baggage handling, says McGee.I dont think many passengers realize that when theyre in an airport and theres some sort of a problem, and they walk up to a ticket counter and theyre talking to someone whos wearing the uniform of an airline employee, that in many cases theyre not talking to an airline employee, he says.Aircraft maintenance and repairs are also frequently outsourced in some cases to unlicensed mechanics in China, Singapore, Mexico and El Salvador.In my view, its a critical safety issue the FAAs lack of oversight of maintenance in these countries, he says. It used to be, if an airline had a major maintenance facility, the FAA had an office, and an inspector could pop by anytime. Now, with work being done overseas, Ive had dozens of inspectors express their frustration that they cant do their jobs. Theyre monitoring this work on an honor system.Mechanics have told McGee that planes come back from their maintenance trips and are not ready to fly.Among the problems theyve talked about are doors that were not sealed properly. . There are problems with engines that have had to be shut down, and there are serious problems that have led to smoke in the cabin, he says. And any time you have smoke in the cabin, that could lead to catastrophe. These airplanes are coming back in conditions where additional work needs to be done to get them back online, in many cases.The Federal Aviation Administration does not require airlines to list the subcontractors they work with. And finding out that information can be quite difficult, says McGee.Independent government organizations, including the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Transportations Inspector Generals Office, have gone to the airlines and said, Where is the work being done and whos doing it? says McGee.And the airlines, amazingly, have responded that theyre not clear, in some cases. To me, this is just mind-boggling. . Congressional testimony has shown that the FAA does not even have a full sense of where the work is being done. 自从1978年放松了对航空行业的管制之后，空运有了相当大的改变。 一些改进提高了空运的商业化，但是另外一些改变使得飞行变得不再那么友好，记者兼飞行老将William J.McGee说。 McGee的新书警告全体乘客，告诉了读者航空公司关于减少区域运营商费用，缩减飞机维修开支，丢失乘客行李和超售飞机的细节。 “你绝对想象不到每架飞机上的乘客数量，”他对新鲜飞节目的戴维.戴维斯说。“近段时间来每架飞机的平均上座率超过了百分之八十。那就意味着有相当一部分客机的上座率达到百分之百。这就导致了那些服务跟不上的问题：延迟起飞，取消航班，行李丢失，顾客抱怨以及乘客非自愿下飞机.飞行已经不再是一个愉快的经历。” 在运输安全管理局接手行李筛选后，顾客对行李损坏以及失踪的投诉飙升。McGee如是说。 “那些曾经是高收益的交通安全管理局工作人员，他们负责把托运行李运送到指定房间，当他们再次回去时，那些行里便失踪了，”他说。“更进一步说，TSA应该负起对这项事务的处理责任，但是这一项不足反映了很大的问题，那就是航空工业的体系问题，对少围绕着商业航空的产业都是外包职能。” 这些功能是：从维修到客服再到行李运递的一切事项。McGee说。 “我认为大多数乘客不会意识到他们坐在一个充满问题的飞机里，他们走向手售票窗口，对着一个穿着地勤人员制服的人说话，大多数情况下这个穿制服的人并不是机场勤务人员。”他说。 飞机也经常性的缺少维修与修理这些情况往往发生在雇佣无执照机械师的中国，新加坡，墨西哥和萨尔瓦多。 “在我看来，这是个具有批评性的安全事件联邦航空管理局看不到这些国家不合格的维修，”他说，“过去常如此，如果航空行业有专业的大型维修设备，FAA有专门对此管理的办公室和检查员，那空运将会备受欢迎。现在多数维修工作均在海外完成，有成打的检查员表示他们因不能做此工作的失望。他们在一个值得尊敬的系统上工作。 机械师告诉过McGee那些经他们手维修过的飞机还没有能力进行长途的飞行。 “他们讨论的问题还有就是舱门和座位的不合理.引擎处理器的问题也按下不表，最严肃的问题就是他们允许在机舱里抽烟，”他说：“不论什么时候