Four of the top five performing airlines are discount carriers, according to the fifteenth annual Airline Quality Rating survey compiled by Witchita State University and the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Criteria used for the survey include on-time arrivals and lost baggage. For the second year in a row, Jet Blue topped the list. The low-fare airline was followed by AirTran, Southwest, United, and Alaska Airlines.

Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn't mean that they are not safe.
Raymond: QANTAS. QANTAS never crashed.
Charlie: QANTAS?
Raymond: Never crashed.
Charlie: Oh that's gonna do me a lot of good because QANTAS doesn't fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles!

I have only one word for you discount airline lovers: ValueJet.

Homer: One crash by a discount company justifies your snide remarks? The big carriers have crashes on their records, too. No?

The ValueJet crash is used as propoganda by the big carriers to try to justify their desire for more of an oligopoly.

Actually, do a search on the web. Pilots and pilot unions point to the valuejet crash as a perfect example of how cutting corners gets people killed.

I don't know if I except the pilot unions as an disinterested authority here. Is there direct evidence that cutting costs caused the VJ crash?

I don't see why I should cite a disinterested authority, here. I think the guys that fly the planes are in the best position to know how to carry hazardous cargo safely, including the correct procedure for stowing items on and off their craft, and that is something ValueJet had no idea about.

The ValueJet policy was to never carry anything hazardous, because the cost of compliance with FAA rules was too high (good cost cutting measure, right?). So why were the oxygen cansiters on the plane to begin with? Because the airline had no idea they were hazardous. No one at ValueJet knew what was or was not hazardous, so they let 'em on the plane with no oversight.

Save money on training, lose lives.

I'm not trying to defend "Big Air", but I just won't ever get on one of these discount flights (I actually flew ValueJet once, God help me). I may die in a crash anyway, but the day I start trusting the ability of Corporate Cost Cutting (especially when it's done by upstarts aspiring to greatness) to maintain quality and safety, is the day I've totally lost my mind.

I have to take Short's side on this one, sorry Homer.

I worked in shipping for ten years for an international overnight and ground courier (one of the big ones). And I was working in Atlanta, the home of ValuJet/Airtran at the time of the crash. Anyway, afterwards, when the FAA really got serious about cracking down on violations of hazardous shipment regulations we were all trained in those procedures. Part of that was basically learning all about how a shipping company was at fault for improperly labeling and shipping those O2 canisters that under pressure exploded and caused the ValuJet crash. The point of origin for that crash was with the courier service/shipper who bought the cargo space on ValuJet and misrepresented to them what the canisters were. I don't recall any proof that this mistake was a result of human error resulting from cutting costs on the part of the airline; if anything the courier/shipper was at fault for having improperly trained its employees in handling hazmat.

This is what I remember from way back when so possibly investigations had turned up more direct culpability on the part of ValuJet. We in the shipping world shortly after were told that the canisters and their paperwork were completely wrong as a result of the shipper's error.

El-Al, the Israeli airline will not allow any cargo to be shipped on their planes w/o going through a complete simulation of the conditions of the flight. So that they recreate the complete conditions (atmospheric pressure, take-off, landing, temperature, and time) of a flight from Paris to Tel Aviv and see how the cargo reacts before they allow the cargo to actually fly. Shippers always have to factor that in to shipping time to Israel. But, El-Al (which by the way is the only airline allowed to carry cargo into the country on passenger flights) has thus never had an incident like ValuJet's.

One way that airlines try to cut costs is by leasing cargo space to shippers as was the case in the ValuJet incident. But, in fact, the major airlines take on FAR more cargo than do the smaller airlines and so there would statistically be a much greater risk of some stupid shipper misrepresenting the contents of some package to a major airline than to a small one. Delta for example is a huge seller of cargo space on passenger planes and was the main airline used by my old company which at the time was the largest international (as opposed to domestic) shipper of cargo.

Either every airline should follow El-Al's procedures or stop accepting cargo on passenger flights or we will just have to run this risk.

Isn't all their Maintenance done in Mexico for more than a 3rd what it costs in the U.S??

CORRECTION: More than a 3rd LESS what it costs in the U.S?

Brian, you can't lay all of the blame at the feet of Sabretech. ValueJet should have had a procedure in place for indentifying hazmats, which it didn't (see my earlier post), before anything ever GOT to the shippers. They didn't know what to look for because they were to cheap to maintain a compliance program.

I have no doubt that this problem has been addressed and corrected, it's the NEXT cost cutting measure that frightens me. Oops. We lost another plane. Guess we really should have checked (insert next stupid bluder).

Of course, I hear Delta is cutting 900 mechanics, so it looks like it WILL take another disaster before the cost cutting (at the possible expense of safety) ends.

Brian, you can't lay all of the blame at the feet of Sabretech. ValueJet should have had a procedure in place for indentifying hazmats, which it didn't (see my earlier post), before anything ever GOT to the shippers. They didn't know what to look for because they were to cheap to maintain a compliance program.

I have no doubt that this problem has been addressed and corrected, it's the NEXT cost cutting measure that frightens me. Oops. We lost another plane. Guess we really should have checked (insert next stupid blunder).

Of course, I hear Delta is cutting 900 mechanics, so it looks like it WILL take another disaster before the cost cutting (at the possible expense of safety) ends.