Back to the future with Wilbur and Orville

Next year we will commemorate 100 years of a revolution brought about by two independent-minded individuals who accomplished what they did without any assistance from the government, giant corporations or financial institutions.

On Dec. 17, 1903, a powered airplane flew for the first time in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Two self-taught engineers, brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, built the plane from wood and canvas — and financed their vision from their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.

Planes had been imagined as far back as Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, but it took the meticulous and sustained work of these two American geniuses to create a machine that actually flew 120 feet. Now, a century later, thousands of these machines transport millions of people every day across oceans and around the world. Airlines have become a major global industry, and airplanes are vital to every nation's security and defense plans as well as being crucial to trade and leisure industries.

GOVERNMENT OVERKILL

The use of airplanes by the al-Qaida network in last year's attacks on New York City and Washington showed the world the vulnerability of America's airline companies. To shore up the industry, the government took the worst possible action and granted aid in the form of massive subsidies to some U.S.-based carriers. These subsidies had an unintended effect: Instead of providing support in a time of need, they concealed the disorganized state of this vital industry.

One of the problems with the airline industry is its pay scale — one of the primary in the world. Wages are any airline's highest expense — nearly 37 percent of every budget. And what wages! Pilots earn an average of $169,000 a year, with some senior pilots earning as much as $250,000. Others on the payroll — from navigators and engineers through the flight crew and ground staff to gate agents and cleaners — make on average $67,000 —more than $1,112 per week.

The reason is simple — the union. The airline industry has a union or "association" membership of some 72 percent of its work force. Compare this with other unions in the United States that count on about 8 percent of the people in a given industry belonging.

But the airline unions do their members proud. Just read their newsletters. They tell you how to travel for free, how to upgrade yourself from economy to first class, the best ways to improve medical and dental care and never, ever to be late paying your union dues.

Now we know why the Airline Pilot's Association is known as the Airline Pirate's Association.

All this helps explain our exorbitant air ticket. And what do we get in return?

HUB-AND-SPOKE HORRORS

First, we get the Hub-and-Spoke system. In the 1980s, one particular airline, long since out of business, invented the concept of collecting passengers from inconvenient locations, taking them to distant cities where they didn't want to go and then sending them off to a final destination. To the airline it meant more profits; to us it meant more delays and longer travel.

It also meant expensive gate space for the aircraft and strange schedules for the crews. In addition, the schedules (designed for long spells with airline staff doing nothing interspersed with short bursts of intense activity) are calculated to increase tension and stress for the paying customer. Additional miles earned per segment are poor solace for the truly frequent traveler.

What else do we get• Overcrowded airports, long lines for security checks, seat assignments that sometimes take longer than the flight and fewer flights with cramped seating. We also get delays and cancellations, work slowdowns or sick-outs by one union or another and disruptions not only to our plans but to those who rely on the airlines for cargo deliveries. It's the antithesis of customer service.

We also have to endure a lot of whining from the airlines about fewer customers due to the see-saw economy and the fear of flying generated by 9/11. We are subject to being screened and profiled by $7-an-hour "security staff" who feel us, pat us and take our shoes off. (The San Francisco feelers and patters get $11.25 an hour.) It's all done in the name of security. Their performances, while doing nothing to help make us feel more secure, are something to see. Watch them in action and you would think the profile of potential hijackers includes a mother traveling with three children under the age of 10 and a grandfather with hearing problems, arthritis and a walker.

WORST TO COME?

The chaos promises to get worse. There's talk that United Airlines may file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because its appeal to pilots for wage concessions was met with agreement to cut salaries by 10 percent, but only upon the condition that other unions do the same. So far the silence has been deafening. The refusal of suppliers to give the airline better deals than they give their other customers has poured salt into United's wounds.

And there is US Airways. Despite its bankruptcy protection filing last August, its hundreds of layoffs and scores of flights being canceled, the company estimates it will have to cut an additional $300 million in operations costs, and many fear that their days are numbered. This is,

however, a Chapter 11 filing, and so we wait patiently for the organization to begin. Putting a member of the International Association of Machinists on the board of directors hardly counts.

How might the industry be reorganized• We have a few suggestions: Fight the unions and staff associations. Offer a fair wage and benefits comparable to other industries. Restore a sensible pricing structure to make flying a feasible alternative for middle class travelers. Rework the advertising campaign and create a market that makes us want to be there.

If all else fails, consider what the Wright brothers would do to reorganize the industry. They avoided both the government and the corporate mind-set and simply made a successful take-off and landing with a short trip to their destination.

That's all we want, really.

Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist and political observer.