On the Road: Fast Wi-Fi on Flights May Serve the Airlines, Too

You remember Steven Slater, the fed-up JetBlue Airways flight attendant who got on the cabin speaker after his flight landed at Kennedy Airport and declared, “That’s it. I’m done”? He then grabbed two Blue Moon beers from the galley, deployed the emergency chute and slid away into infamy. Ever since, many an unhappy flight attendant has told me she’s sometimes quietly considered pulling a Slater.

Recently, on a crowded plane approaching Dallas, I watched a flight attendant collect trash in a bag with one hand while using her fingertips to hold five empty soda cans for recycling, while simultaneously checking that seat backs were in the forward position for landing. I wondered, could the airlines possibly manage to give more chores to crew members?

Why certainly! You may have read recent news reports about proposals by regulators to devote more airwave capacity to providing faster Wi-Fi connections on commercial airplanes. You may have assumed that those initiatives, in the United States and abroad, are intended mainly to allow passengers to use the Web and e-mail more efficiently.

But the fact is, despite the rapid expansion of Wi-Fi on airplanes, no one has found a profitable way to cover installation costs with the scant revenue generated by the limited number of passengers who have been willing to pay for Internet service at 35,000 feet.

The great advances in airplane Internet connections are being driven far more by the opportunities that high-speed broadband service presents for airlines themselves to essentially sell more things to the customers, whether the product is in-flight entertainment, food and drink, customized services to elite-status passengers or products at the destination, including hotel packages, sports and concert tickets, restaurant and theater reservations. On an airplane, you have a captive market, and with sophisticated technology, you can sell to passengers in very personal ways.

And, of course, flight attendants will be expected to become even more adept at using in-flight technology. The question is whether they will embrace the moment.

“We found consistently in our research, whether the markets were the U.S., Europe or Asia, that flight attendants are typically the least automated group within the airline work force,” said Andrew Kemmetmueller, the chief executive of Allegiant Systems, a technology development company that focuses on airline operations.

Allegiant Systems, based in Las Vegas, recently announced FlyDesk, a product that has an iPad-based application for processing food and beverage sales on flights. The company expects that FlyDesk’s iPad technology will evolve into many other uses in the hands of flight attendants, Mr. Kemmetmueller said.

Besides direct product sales, opportunities for customer service expand when flight attendants have in their hands not just recycled soda cans, but tablets linked by high-speed Wi-Fi to real-time flight and customer data.

“Buy on board is only one aspect. I live in Toulouse,” he said, referring to the city in France, “but have a base of operations in Las Vegas, which puts me on planes a lot.” As airlines market more flights in partnership with other airlines belonging to the same global alliance, a single long-haul flight to Las Vegas could entail a domestic European flight from Toulouse to Frankfurt, a trans-Atlantic flight on a Lufthansa A380 to San Francisco and then a domestic connection on United Airlines to Las Vegas.

Mr. Kemmetmueller echoes a familiar complaint among international passengers that partner airlines in a global alliance like Star Alliance aren’t especially adept at sharing detailed information about individual passengers and their status. United Airlines, for example, might have detailed information about the status and service requirements of a given elite passenger, but tablet-enabled technology in the hands of flight crews would make that data available for each leg of an alliance trip.

With major improvements in Wi-Fi, we’re only starting to see some of the ramifications for passengers and airlines, which depend mightily on the revenue raised by selling and marketing things other than the basic fare.

But what about that overburdened flight attendant trudging down the aisle with a stuffed trash bag?

In my experience, flight attendants complain about everything, even more so than those world-famous complainers, pilots. But Mr. Kemmetmueller insisted that putting sophisticated technology into the hands of the flight crew, and encouraging crew members to adapt it as they saw fit, overcame even dug-in resistance to performing more chores because the chores became easier. “I think an iPad trumps all,” he said.

Next we need an app to address those empty soda cans.

Alaska Airlines, Flying Above an Industry’s Troubles

Damon Winter/The New York TimesFor decades, flights over spectacular Alaskan landscapes could end with devilishly difficult landings. More Photos »

FLYING over Alaska in the wintertime is a spectacular experience. At 35,000 feet, the state’s rugged beauty unfolds, a succession of white mountain peaks against steel-blue skies, icy lakes and frozen rivers that snake as far as the eye can see. It’s an awesome sight, wild and pristine, that glows in a thousand hues of red, orange and pink when the sun sets against the horizon.

The pilots Dan Kaplin and Tom Peebles complete a safety check before a short flight from Wrangell, about 200 miles southeast of Juneau, to Petersburg. More Photos »

But then, you have to land.

Juneau’s airport is surrounded by mountains, the approach often buffeted by treacherous wind shear. Sitka’s one small runway is on a narrow strip of land surrounded by water. And in Kodiak, the landing strip ends abruptly at a mountainside. The airport approach is so tricky that first officers are not allowed to land there; only captains are trusted to do so.

Doug Wahto knows these airports well. He grew up in Juneau, worked as a commercial fisherman and builder and started flying with Alaska Airlines in 1970. As a pilot, he honed the art of reading wind conditions by looking at how snow blew over mountain ridges.

Mr. Wahto retired six years ago, but not before seeing the transformation of flying in Alaska and of the airline where he spent his career. Alaska Airlines is puny compared to the major carriers: it has 124 planes, while United Airlines has more than 700 and four times as many passengers. But because of the state’s topography and extreme weather, it was the first to develop satellite guidance, a navigation technique that has transformed landing at Alaska’s tricky airports. The technique is now at the heart of the Federal Aviation Administration’s plan to modernize the nation’s air traffic system, a project that is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars over the coming decades.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” Mr. Wahto says, “or a crusty old dog like me to fly these approaches anymore.”

Largely because of that technology, flying in Alaska is now remarkably reliable — even in the dead of winter, when it is snowing, when there are just two hours of daylight, when runways are made slippery by ice or sleet, when winds blow at more than 50 miles an hour and pilots can barely see out the windshield. When, in other words, no one in his right mind would want to land a Boeing 737 with 140 passengers on a 6,000-foot runway.

Alaska Airlines, in fact, had the industry’s best on-time performance for the third consecutive year in 2012, with 87 percent of flights landing on time, according to FlightStats, a data provider.

That reliability means a lot in a state where air travel is often the only option, and where Alaska is the only commercial jet carrier with in-state routes. The airline flies to 16 towns accessible only by plane or boat, and, in doing so, ferries food and medical supplies, takes thousands of oil workers above the Arctic Circle and operates as the biggest air shipper for the state’s fisheries.

This role as primary transport for in the state is still a healthy business, but Alaska Airlines has prospered by expanding its services. From its Seattle base, it now has a bigger presence than other airlines along much of the West Coast. In 2007, it moved into Hawaii; its flights to the state now account for 20 percent of its available seat miles, an industry standard for measuring capacity. That is more than the 17 percent in Alaska itself.

Megamergers, most recently of US Airways and American Airlines, have redrawn the boundaries of domestic carriers, concentrating the business as never before. Alaska Airlines, for its part, has cultivated staunch independence. Unlike carriers that have faced bankruptcy or acquisition, Alaska has turned a profit for 33 of the last 39 years. In 2012, it had a record $316 million in net income, up 29 percent from 2011.

Although it started in a sparsely populated, meteorologically unwelcoming, financially challenging corner of the country, Alaska has built a successful franchise that is the envy of many rivals.

Supermodel Maggie Rizer — United Airlines Killed My Dog

Supermodel Maggie Rizer says United Airlines killed her dog -- and then lied about it. Maggie says she was flying from NYC to San Fran two weeks ago and brought her 2-year-old Golden Retriever along. Maggie says Bea and her other dog were crated...