From Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio

Naomi Campbell … off she goes! She pled guilty for another incident of “air rage,” this time at Heathrow Airport.

She avoided jail time, again, but was ordered to pay a $4,600 fine, plus $400 to each of the police officers she attacked and $300 to the captain of the British Airways plane.

But here’s the fun part: She gets 200 hours of community service … again!

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So the question of course remains what stylish outfit will she be wearing to mop floors at the airport? At least she didn’t throw a cell phone at somebody this time.

But Naomi Campbell at least got a chance to leave England if she agrees to do the community service, which I’m sure she will.

Here’s somebody who couldn’t get into England—Martha Stewart, denied entry into the U.K. Why? British officials cited the fact that she’s a convicted felon. So she can crochet a sweater, but not in England. So much for baked goods and designer potpourri at the airport.

That’s Heathrow: Either you get thrown out for fighting or you don’t get let in for being convicted. What a surprise.

THE GREAT AIRLINE ALLIANCE SHUFFLE

Now this is the wild one. According to the Wall Street Journal from April 28, Continental rejected a merger overture by United. United has been trying to go to the dance with everybody including U.S. Air. Well, guess what just got announced? Not a merger, but an alliance with Continental joining the Star Alliance with United, Lufthansa, and everybody else.

This is going to be interesting to see, I don’t think anybody wants to have a merger with United because they took one look at that balance sheet and ran for the hills.

But what does an alliance mean? Officially it means that you can earn miles in each others’ frequent-flier program, which of course you can never redeem anyway, so what an exercise that is.

And then there will be a lot of co-shared flights. What that really means is fewer flights. So, say you’re flying from Houston to Frankfurt and there used to be a Continental flight and a Lufthansa flight—now there will more than likely be a Lufthansa flight which is also listed as a Continental flight … but only one plane.

So the bottom line is we’re seeing more and more capacity shrinkage. It’s not going to be good.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

The airlines have already announced how bad things are: Continental Airlines is already selling round-trip business class tickets between New York and London for under $2,000, but they’re advertising them now. Usually these fare sales don’t go into effect until late August or early September. A lot of these fares are good until the end of the year, but you have to buy them quickly.

Bottom line is, all these airlines are looking at their seat projections starting around September 15 and realizing … ain’t nobody flying.

That’s going to be the threshold moment in dealing with an airline crisis is actually a U.S. economic crisis and that’s this: It’s one thing to say that you’re going to park planes; it’s one thing to say that you’re going to reduce capacity (Northwest Airlines has said they’re going to reduce capacity starting September 15 by between 10 and 12 percent. That huge!); it’s entirely another thing if nobody’s flying anyway, which means that we are about to see a really bad fall starting September 15.

It’s one thing to say that you are going to park planes; it’s another thing to say you’re not going to fly, but it’s another thing to say when people say they’re not going to fly. What are you going to do? I don’t think Congress can wait until the next administration to address this. We’ve got a serious crisis on our hands and nobody wants to deal with it.

RISING RATES AND RESTRICTIONS

United Airlines, yes they’re having this alliance with Continental, but that hasn’t stopped from raising fares again. We’ve had about 16 different fare increases in the last three months, but here’s the wildest part … they are now going to do deals which require a one- to three-night stay on economy fares. That means you can’t turn around the same day so business travelers are hosed. And, of course, everything else is going to require the Saturday-night stay or something similar.

It’s only applying right now in economy class, but I don’t care because if you look at economy class fares they are outrageous to begin with. A friend of mine wanted to go to Aspen, Colorado in August, so he asked me to go online and see what kind of fares I could find for him. So I went on the United Airlines Web site to find fares from LaGuardia to Aspen, obviously going through Denver, and in the 15 minutes I was online comparing prices, it changed seven times. And, it didn’t go down, it went up.

People need to realize that it’s not going to get better until somebody steps in with some financial help. We’re not talking about deregulation—who would ever want that? You’re never going to see me supporting the idea of flying an airline run by the government. However, somebody has to realize that this is not an airline economic problem but an American economic problem that requires government support in terms of some kind of subsidy to cover these outrageous fuel prices.

It’s not a matter now about making money. Forget that. Profit, are you kidding? No.

It’s a matter of staying in the air. It’s pure and simple survival. And if people don’t realize that, we’re going to be in trouble.

By Peter Greenberg from Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio.

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