Airlines

Airlines:
The Aspects to Improve Against Airplane Accidents and Bad Service

Diego Millard Fernández
11th Grade English
15 June 2012

Diego A. Millard
English 11° B
29 October 2012

Airlines: The Aspects to Improve Against Airplane Accidents and Bad Service
Do you know that airplane accidents are increasing every year? Yes, this might sound alarming, but it´s the truth. According tothe National Transportation Safety Board of the USA, during the 2010 there were 282 fatal airplane accidents, and incredibly enough, in 2011, there were 313. Airlines seem to be more concerned about how much they earn rather than the security service they offer, since they appear to be uninterested on doing any drastic change on their system. All these accidents have affected more than just thevictims of the accidents and their families; they are affecting the economy and our environment as well. This is really depressing since those accidents could have been prevented if pilots would have been more experienced, the maintenance programs and overhauls would had been completed up to date, the air traffic system had been working properly and more. This is why airline profits should be mostlyinvested in improving the aircraft industry, risk prevention and better service.

There are reasons why airlines earn less money than what they expect, and most airlines use those reasons to excuse themselves from not improving their service and saving the profits for themselves. They claim there is a shortage of experienced commercial pilots in the industry and high fuel costs. There is,actually, a lack of commercial pilots in the airline industry, since they are different from normal pilots; they are specialized ones that get paid really well (an average of about US$ 150000 annually, and there are cases were their salaries sum a total of US$ 350000 annually) because of the lack of their existence which makes difficult the possibility of growing as an airline, making less possibleflights at the same time; but nowadays, universities had started making programs and advertising Commercial Pilot carriers on their capacities as a high learning and teaching institution such as UTFSM (Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria) which will lower the problems on the airlines on having hard times on searching specialized commercial pilots (http://www.aca.cl). On the other hand, anotherreason why airlines express they are having “hard times” is because of the fuel costs which are rising each year; American Airlines reported that in 2007 the price of a gallon of jet fuel was of about $2.10 and in 2011 was about $3.05 per gallon (http://www.aa.com/i18n/amrcorp/newsroom/fuel-smart.jsp). But these problems are being relieved with new technologies and ideas such as Fuel Smart whichaccording to American Airlines is a “program that evaluate and implement ideas which safely reduce the company´s fuel consumption” to combat the rising of fuel prices and it works really efficiently saving in 2010 for American Airlines, 123 million jet fuel gallons or a total of US$285 million. (www.aa.com)

When it comes to a debate in a corporation or industry about where should the money beinvested in, there is always a question about wether it´s necessary to spend it or not, and if it´s really necessary to acquire more funds. On the other hand, in the aeronautic industry, it seems more like saving it all the time; some of the most important airlines in the world like Philippine Airlines, Delta Airlines, American Airlines and Lan are gaining huge amounts of profits every year. In2010 American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines reported an average of 9% profit margin which most of it is saved and the industries seem to be ignoring the possibility of making any mayor improvement on their system with it. Airlines are using excuses as the ones described before by constantly sharing the amount of money they had to spend on fuel to show they are actually using a lot...