Philly Road Warrior | Aviation forecast: Fewer daily flights

We spent a valuable couple of days last week at the annual Aviation Forecast Conference in Sarasota, Fla., sponsored by the Boyd Group, a consulting firm that's been educating us for years about airlines and airports. Airlines including AirTran, Delta, Northwest, Southwest and Spirit were represented. Others there were directors or marketing managers for small airports nationwide who want to know how to get more airline service in places such as Atlantic City, Chattanooga, Tenn., and Fort Wayne, Ind.

Here are a few of the developments and issues we heard that could affect Philadelphia travelers and those whose livelihood depends on the airport. Some of this is opinion based on analysis by Michael Boyd, the blunt, incisive, quotable president of the consulting firm.

The older hub-and-spoke airlines - American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways - have been trimming their domestic capacity this year - meaning, the number of seats they put in the air each day - and they're likely to keep doing that for the next year or two. Besides saving money, the airlines are cutting back to try to reduce flight delays. The trend may mean less service to some of the smallest cities. But in general, the large carriers believe in their hub-and-spoke systems because they're great generators of revenue. The larger low-cost carriers - AirTran, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and a few others - and the network carriers will go head-to-head in more places than they do now, helping keep fares down on some routes.

The opposite is happening with international service, with the majors adding routes and flights as quickly as they can because of good demand and the high fares they can charge for first- and business-class seats. One factor is the coming of open skies, or more deregulation, of service between the United States and the European Union next year. Also expect air travel to boom to China and India.

The Federal Aviation Administration has not been a good manager of the air traffic system, forcing airlines to find their own ways to reduce delays. Don't look for any meaningful progress for years in the FAA's ability to efficiently handle more traffic. That means air-travel demand will be "artificially constrained," causing service disruptions in some places, Boyd says.

The 50-seat regional jet will become rarer, replaced by the 70- to 125-seat RJ. This will be one of the more significant shifts passengers will notice, with more regional jets flying routes now served by larger jets such as 737s and A320s.

Look for airline labor unions, which a few years ago made concessions that helped save US Airways and other bankrupt carriers, to demand higher wages and benefits. "They are not going to be docile about it," Boyd predicts.

Speaking of airlines cutting capacity, or at least limiting how many new flights they offer, that was one factor in the healthy third-quarter profits reported last week by American, Delta, Continental and Southwest. With demand strong, the airlines have not had to resort to a lot of fare sales recently to fill their planes. In case you hadn't noticed, flights averaged more than 80 percent full this summer.

The demand for air travel apparently has continued into the fall. On Friday, American and US Airways joined other major carriers in raising coach fares on many routes by $20 round trip, citing rising fuel costs.

We received some excellent e-mails this week in response to last week's column about what travelers like - and dislike - about hotels. The need to report on airline happenings this week means we will have to highlight some of your thoughts in more detail in a later column. But here's one idea we want to share from reader Burke Stinson, whose full comment can be found on the Road Warrior blog (http://blogs.phillynews. com/inquirer/roadwarrior/):

When you check out of a hotel, leave behind something you don't care about losing, like a cheap watch or old shirt and tie. See if the hotel will call you or mail it back. Stinson says his "return rate" has fallen from at least 80 percent to less than 2 percent over the last 10 to 15 years.