A special investigation into the bizarre tactics airlines use to mislead their customers.

TIMING, AS they say, is relative. And nowhere is that more true than the airline business. Not your timing, mind you, but the way the airlines choose to interpret their timing.        Before anyone gets confused, let’s look at three particular flights to illustrate what I mean.        Example No. 1. For as many years as anyone can remember, American Airlines has operated a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York. It leaves at 10 p.m. each night, and coincidentally, it’s American’s Flight 10.        Twenty-five years ago, before deregulation, the aircraft for that flight was a 747. It left L.A. each night at 10 and was scheduled to land at New York’s JFK airport at 5:47 a.m. the next morning.        Twenty years ago, at the beginning of deregulation, the aircraft for that flight was a DC-10. Same departure time, same scheduled arrival time.        Now let’s look at a recent schedule for Flight 10. Same departure time, 10 p.m. A smaller, more efficient airplane, a newer 767. But what about scheduled arrival time? It’s 6:20 a.m. Twenty-three minutes later than 25 years ago.        No one can explain this.         WHAT GIVES?        Has there been an explosion in nighttime traffic between Los Angeles and New York? No. Has El Niño decided to wreak havoc at 33,000 feet? Hardly.        It’s just that someone is playing with the schedule. I’ve taken this flight countless times in the past few years, and I have never been late. In fact, as we taxi up to the gate at Kennedy, pilots often instruct the cabin crew to “prepare for an early arrival.”        This begs an obvious question: early compared to what?

Example No. 2. Continental flight 134 is scheduled to depart Los Angeles at 9 a.m. and arrive at Newark at 5:14 p.m. The equipment is a 757.        This begs for a definition of terms. Does arriving at Newark mean physically landing at Newark, or does it mean arriving at the gate at Newark? Answer: none of the above.        On a recent flight to Newark, we actually landed early. There are more than 60 gates at Newark, and many of them were open. But ground schedulers decided to penalize the flight and made it wait for its assigned gate, which, of course was occupied by a plane that soon proved to be late. So, we landed at 4:50 p.m. and actually got to the gate at 5:35 p.m. when there were plenty of open gates. Officially, according to the way the U.S. Department of Transportation tallies an airline’s performance, we were on time.        Hardly.         UNREALISTIC SCHEDULES        Finally, example No. 3. The United Airlines Shuttle is a textbook case of how marketing often rolls over common sense. As Herb Kelleher, the feisty chairman of Southwest Airlines is only too happy to tell you, you cannot maintain an on-time schedule by flying into slot-controlled airports. (A slot-controlled airport is one that is so congested that the volume of traffic limits take-off and landing times. Examples include LAX, JFK and La Guardia.)        Let’s use Los Angeles International as an example. At any given time, the most number of runways dedicated to take-offs is two. But if you look at airline schedules, there are currently more than 35 take-offs scheduled for 8 a.m. each morning. Assuming at least a two- to three-minute minimum time separation between each take-off, you don’t have to be a member of Mensa to figure out that a lot of folks will not be taking off at 8 a.m.        But that doesn’t stop certain airlines, like United, from publishing a totally unrealistic flight schedule, especially for its shuttle operations.        United operates a “scheduled” 3 p.m. shuttle flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles International. This flight corridor is the busiest one in the United States, and it is seriously congested. Veteran California commuters will testify that whether they fly northbound or southbound, few, if any of them have ever been on time in at least one direction. In some cases, they’ve been hopelessly delayed in both directions.        Consider these statistics. Currently, Shuttle by United currently operates 466 daily departures in 20 cities in the Western United States. Beginning Sept. 9, it will schedule eight daily roundtrips between Los Angeles and San Jose, Calif., bringing the number of flights to more than 470 in 21 cities.

Here was my recent experience on Flight 1005.         ON TIME? YOU BET!        Before leaving for the airport in San Francisco, I actually called the airline and asked if the flight was on time. “Yes,” the agent lied.        I arrived at the airport at 1:30 p.m., earlier than I usually arrive, only to discover that Flight 1005 wasn’t leaving at 3 p.m. but at 5 p.m.        I did some quick thinking and checked the departures board for some guidance. And there it was. The “noon” United Shuttle was actually scheduled to depart at 3:04!        I got on the phone, and, although it was nearly 2 p.m. (and trying to restrain my laughter) asked to be put on the noon flight.        United accommodated me.        And off I went to the gate. Since I was still quite early for the noon flight (after all, it was only a little after, uh, two!) I stopped at the bookstore and a news kiosk. Finally, about 2:35, I strolled over to the gate. There, I was confronted with visions of Saigon from April 1975. There was a line of very angry passengers that seemed to stretch into a different time zone, and the line wasn’t moving. The departure sign at the gate said the plane was leaving at 3:04. Fair enough.        But I didn’t see a plane.        So I walked to the head of the line and got the attention of a United gate agent.        “Could you tell me, is the plane even on the ground?”        “I’m not answering that,” she said.        “What?” I thought. I tried to humor her. “Of course you can answer that.”        She was having none of it. “I’m not answering that,” she repeated.        “Well,” I countered, “I failed math in high school, but I can do basic addition and subtraction, and if the plane isn’t here at 2:40, we’re not leaving at 3:04, are we?”        “Sir,” she shot back, “if you ask that question again I am calling security.”        Security?        “OK,” I called her bluff. “I insist that you call security. I can’t wait to be arrested for simply asking if the plane is on the ground.”        At that moment, another gate agent approached me. “Sir, you have to stop asking that question, because it will rile up the passengers ...”        “Rile them up?” I repeated. “Why, because they might learn the ... truth?”        Without hesitating, he retreated behind the counter and grabbed his microphone. “For those waiting for United’s Flight 1005, please be advised that we here at the gate have nothing to do with the departure time posted on the screens. That time is determined by the powers that be at this airline in the bowels of this terminal.”        I couldn’t resist. “That’s the first accurate statement you folks have made all day! If they’re going to lie to us, then the powers that be at this airline belong in the bowels of the airport.”        For that response, I did not get arrested. Instead, my pre-booked aisle seat suddenly evaporated, and I enjoyed my very late shuttle flight to Los Angeles in the comfort of a center seat.         KNOW THE RIGHT QUESTIONS        U.S. federal regulatory agencies have allowed the airlines to fudge schedules, to cancel undersold flights for “mechanical” reasons no one bothers to verify, and to outright lie about the status of flights they know in advance to be grossly delayed.        So what can you do to fight back? For starters, know the right questions to ask.        It’s not a bad idea to call the airline to ask if your flight is on time, but you need to get very specific with the agent on the phone. Ask them to punch up another screen on their computer (and yes, they have that other screen) that displays not the published flight schedule, but the current flight status. At United, it’s something called “Flight Flow,” and it allows the airline agent to punch up that aircraft number and know exactly where that flight is at that very moment. So, you simply ask the airline for the aircraft number that is operating as your flight that day. Then ask for the exact location of that flight number.        For example, let’s say you are scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Boston at 10 a.m. You call the airline at 8 a.m. to double check if the flight is on time. But if the aircraft designated for that flight is still in Honolulu, you’re simply not on time, no matter what the schedule says.        If you’re at a major airline’s headquarters or fortress hub airport, the airline could possibly substitute another aircraft, but that often depends more on how badly they need to get a particular plane to a destination for an onward flight. But if you’re not at one of those hubs, your predicament is locked. You’re late, if not very late.        The airlines are good at keeping their options open — and the result is you’re trapped.        It’s time, unless and until the government ever starts effectively enforcing the on-time promises the airlines hardly keep, that we all learned to keep our options open.