Shanghai Scrap

Last night I returned to Shanghai after my longest sojourn away from China in six years (for reasons professional and personal). I haven’t had a look around town yet, but if fresh eyes see anything worthwhile, I’ll post the news. In the meantime, a couple of random observations gleaned during my extended visit to the US.

• Outside of major international tourist attractions (say, LA’s Getty Museum), the most ethnically diverse places (that I visited) in America are discount volume retailers like Cosco and Sam’s Club – particularly on weekend afternoons. Over the course of my stay, I had reason to be in a number of suburban Sam’s Club and Cosco locations, and I was floored by the range of languages that I heard while I roamed the aisles. Over-represented, by leaps and bounds, were young Indian and Chinese couples, many wearing university sweatshirts. What to make of the fact that educated immigrants shop for volume discounts way out of proportion to their percentage in the US population? See: Financial Crisis – US edition, Low Savings Rate.
• Related: by leaps and bounds, Whole Foods may very well attract the least diverse, ie, whitest, clientele in American retail. Indeed, despite selling a wide range of over-priced “ethnic” foods, Whole Foods has no ethnic customers (trust me: they’re all shopping at Sam’s Club). For another time: organic food as the distinctive ethnic cuisine of an over-educated American bourgeoisie.

• Based upon several long drives in cars without CD players, it is clear that Peter Frampton, Eddie Money, and Heart are the most popular recording artists in America today. For another time: are these legacy artists generating more airplay royalties today, rather than during their respective artistic heydays? I’d like to know. (more…)

After this post, I’m going to try and swear off any further blogging about Northwest Airlines. But for those of you who’ve had enough already, I suggest waiting until later in the day for a different post to read  … (more…)

Compared to the last bird flu scare, China seems to be taking the current, unsettling spate of bird flu fatalities with unlikely aplomb. Consider: in January, there were five Chinese deaths from the feared pathogen; for the whole of 2008, there were only three. Perhaps the relative ambivalence is related to the fact that the pathogen is emerging during Spring Festival, when attentions are elsewhere.

But if China is taking the emergence in stride, others may not be. On Wednesday I spent two hours at Tokyo Narita Airport, a major air hub and transfer point for flights throughout Asia. And, while there, I saw something that I hadn’t seen since the 2003 SARS outbreak: passengers, and air industry employees, wearing surgical masks in hope of warding off airborne pathogens. A couple of notable cases: a Northwest Airlines boarding agent was wearing a mask while scanning the tickets of boarding passengers (what a way to greet them); on my flights in and out of Narita, a handful of passengers were wearing masks.

To be fair, I have absolutely no idea if the masks were related to bird flu, specifically, or were just a protective measure (and not a particularly effective one) to protect against winter colds. Also, the number of people wearing masks on Wednesday – maybe one in fifty – doesn’t come close to the numbers in 2003, when half had them. But I’ve been flying in and out of Narita a few times per year, for years, and I can’t recall another instance of mask wearing since SARS.

[Professional Note: In November 2002, two months before the international media found the SARS story, I visited Guangzhou for the first time, and was struck by the large number of people walking around the city in surgical masks. When I asked the person I was visiting, a source, for the reason, he told me that "Guangzhou has a particularly bad flu this year." I had no reason to think otherwise, and let it go. But ever since, I've been sensitive to mass mask wearing.]

[UPDATE: A friend writes to point out that "[S]urgical masks are just as effective as magic amulaets at stopping viral particles. That’s why Northwest should prohibit its employees from wearing both and scaring the passengers.” An excellent point. And since we’re on the topic of Northwest Airlines, I should probably mention that Wednesday’s edition of Flight 1451 was delayed for just over two hours because the airline couldn’t find a flight crew to pilot it. That, according to the flight attendants who kept the stranded passengers informed during the delay.]

As long-time readers know, Shanghai Scrap has been, a) offline for almost a month, and b) a rant-free zone for most of its life (ie, a reported blog). But once in a while, really, I can’t help myself. Especially when the topic is Northwest Airlines.

So let’s get right to it.

On December 29, the AP reported the following:

The subsidiary of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. said in a filing earlier this month with the Department of Transportation that it was seeking to delay proposed daily Seattle-Beijing service by a year from March 2009 to March 2010 and delay startup of Detroit-Shanghai nonstop service by more than two months from March 25, 2009, to June 3, 2009.

Now, this might sound eminently reasonable in light of the current economic crisis. After all, the US airlines – including Northwest – have been cutting back on domestic US routes for months. Why wouldn’t they cut back on Asia routes, too?

But sharp observers might notice something wrong with this picture. As it happens, US airlines don’t need DOT permission to cut back on domestic US routes. So why on Earth should they have to ask for permission to cut back on US-China routes? (more…)

Northwest Airlines operates one flight, daily, from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport: Flight 26, to Tokyo Narita.

On Tuesday morning I arrived at the airport two hours before flight 26’s scheduled departure and took my place in the very long check-in cue that snakes in front of the Northwest counters. Ahead of me, I could see that all passenger luggage was being hand-searched by airport staff before passengers were allowed to check it. This is nothing new: it’s been going on – off and on – for several years now, and likely has to do with the fact that NW 26 continues to Detroit after a Tokyo layover.

On Tuesday I stood in the coach check-in lane until recalling that I have Northwest “elite” status, which – among its handful of benefits – allows me to check-in via the shorter line designated for first class passengers. So, I slipped beneath the stanchions and took my place behind a mere two passengers (rather than the dozens lined up in coach).

And, from there, I noticed another, very important reason why the first class line was moving more quickly than the coach line: Passengers in the coach line were required to subject their checked-luggage to a hand-search; passengers in the first class line were NOT. Below, a photo of the first class line on Tuesday. Note the screened area to the immediate left of the first class passengers: it’s one of several bag hand-check areas stationed to the right of each coach line, and to which coach passengers were subjected before checking their bags. The first class passengers were able to proceed directly to the counter.

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but this struck me – and strikes me – as a giant security hole. Put it this way: if you’re flying Northwest from Shanghai to Tokyo, and you don’t want to subject your bags to a hand-check (for whatever reason), simply buy or upgrade to a First Class ticket. You’ll be hand-check free (at least, you would have been last Tuesday). (more…)

I was out of China when, two weeks ago, the Shanghai Airport Authority announced that it was immediately implementing new, Olympics-related security procedures at the city’s two airports. Nothing in the reported accounts of these procedures indicated that they were directed at incoming passengers. But, keeping in mind that these regulations come in the wake of recent bombings in Kunming and Shanghai, the reported arrest of a Shanghai terror cell, and having experienced, first-hand, airport security in the aftermath of actual and (reportedly) imminent terror strikes in India (2006 train bombings) and the United States (9/11), I fully expected to witness/experience some kind of immigration hassle or customs kerfuffle last night.

So. Arrived at Shanghai Pudong (PVG) on Northwest #25 from Tokyo at 9:30 PM (30 minutes late). On our way to the gate, a flight attendant reminded us that China was following tightened security restrictions during the Olympic games. Per that, passengers were to keep in mind that their luggage was subject to search upon arrival. Passengers were also reminded that they should arrive extra early for their return flights out of China due to new, extra layers of security implemented at the entrances of China’s airports. Finally, and most notably (in my mind), the Northwest attendant reminded all incoming passengers to carry travel documents at all times in China, and be mindful of the fact that the Chinese authorities will be carrying out random passport checks. The last point was a new one. (more…)

Northwest Flight 1652, scheduled to depart Washington National for Minneapolis at 6:36 AM this morning, left the gate on-time. But just as it turned toward the runway, a loud, hacking sound – kind of like a handsaw cutting through sheet metal – began vibrating through the cabin. From my seat – 14D -it felt like it was emanating from the right wing, and it continued for a solid five minutes before the captain announced that we would be returning to the gate so that a maintenance crew could cool off an overheating hydraulic pump.

Which we did, resulting in a roughly twenty minute delay.

Problem (presumably) fixed, the plane once again departed for the runway. And, once again, that loud, hacking sound coursed through the plane, lasting for roughly five minutes until the captain announced that the hydraulics were overheating again – possibly because they had been overfilled – and we were once again returning to the gate. (more…)

[Note to readers of this blog: I've been traveling for the last several days, and I haven't had much chance to update content. However, I'll be adding a post or two over the weekend, and by Monday I'll be at full strength with a lengthy post on the ongoing reaction to the Pope's China letter and recent events in Beijing.]

July 20, 2007

Dear Northwest Airlines:

You know that ‘Refresh and Re-energize’ video that you show at the beginning of international flights? The one with the four attractive flight attendants sitting next to each other in first-class seats, demonstrating exercises designed to improve comfort and health during long flights? Well, I was wondering: do you think that you could film a version that shows the four flight attendants in cramped coach seats? Because the version that you currently show doesn’t translate to coach at all. Case in point: on my recent Shanghai to Tokyo flight, the woman next to me decided to mimic the Refresh and Re-energize exercises and succeeded in smacking me in the head with her elbow – twice.

Thanks for considering-

Adam

A plug for Pico Iyer’s wonderful essay on airfare class divisions:

How much would you pay to enjoy six hours away from your fellow humans, in a chair that reclines? $1,500 an hour – or even more? And if someone invited you to spend $9,000 to pass a long afternoon in a fairly cramped lounge, munching peanuts and reading airline magazines, would you accept? How desperate are you to have access to 15 movies you never would pay to see in a theater, instead of 11?

These are such obvious and wise questions that I wonder why I’ve never seen them posed before.

The rest of Iyer’s essay is equally insightful, including an apt observation that the coach seats on many Asian airlines often have more amenities than the business class seats on US airlines (are you listening, Northwest Airlines?). But, in the end, his basic point is a simple and economic one:

The individual details are less important, though, than the economic assumptions behind the scam. Better seats should cost maybe 20 percent more, or (for movie stars) 50 percent more. But 1,900 percent?

You don’t have to be a philanthropist to realize that by enduring slightly more human company for six hours, you could build nine homes in Burundi, each big enough to house 10 people with the money left over. And if you want to keep the savings, with $9,000 you could take five weeklong, all-inclusive tours to Southeast Asia, for the price of just an afternoon’s greater comfort en route to London.

From a purely selfish point of view, I think the best news to come out of Wu Yi’s visit to Washington was a deal to add 13 more daily flights to China by US carriers by 2012. Currently, there are only 10 routes per day, and so the competition for new ones is always ferocious. For example, last year, the FAA awarded a Beijing-Washington, D.C. route to United Airlines after a bitter contest between carriers that included online petitions with thousands of signatories.

It’s not entirely clear to me how the FAA chooses carriers and routes, but my impression is that the agency evaluates the proposals on the basis of whether they fulfill an actual market or political need. Thus, during the last round, a proposed China route originating from Dallas/Forth Worth didn’t make the cut, but one connecting the two national capitols did.

That’s all fine and good. Markets and politics should play a role in the choice of new routes. But I think that there’s a role for other criteria, as well: namely, past performance and customer service by the bidding airlines.

So I sincerely hope that the FAA does not award Northwest Airlines any of the new China routes until it makes a concerted effort to improve its services on its current China routes (recent reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune suggest that Northwest would like the new routes very much, indeed). Two areas of needed improvement:

1. Northwest currently operates a Detroit-Shanghai round-trip, and though it has the right to operate it non-stop, the flight stops in Tokyo, where passengers must disembark the plane, go through airport security, and then find the gate for the new plane. This is not a non-stop, and in my opinion, if Northwest wants receive the right to new routes, it should have to operate this one as non-stop.

2. Northwest’s daily flights in and out of Shanghai’s Pudong Airport are flown on aging 747s that look like they could have been used as the set for Airplane (1980). The upholstery is often worn and ragged, headphone jacks barely work, and the flight attendants … well, I’ll leave that for another post. These same planes are used for – in my experience – the Tokyo routes to Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Detroit (the aforementioned “direct” flight between Shanghai and Detroit). Unlike most other international carriers and routes- including those run by Northwest’s competitors – the 747s do not have seat-back in-flight entertainment for coach passengers. In fact, I’ve found that Chinese airlines operate newer aircraft on their China-US than the ones that Northwest operates!

In other words, Northwest is shamelessly milking these routes for every last penny of trans-Pacific revenue, customer comfort be damned. Profiteering is the right of all American airlines, and lord knows they do it with impunity.

So, just this once, couldn’t the FAA exercise its right to take into consideration ever aspect of an airline’s service record when awarding new business? Theoretically, at least, the agency should be choosing the routes on the basis of what passengers need – comfort, quality, safety, and convenience – and not on the basis of what the airlines need. Naive, I know, but as a Northwest frequent flier, I can hope.