AirportBusiness Blogs

I have just read in Airport Business News Update (online) that the DOT is now looking at the problem of pax stranding by airlines. Is that on top of Congressional investigation, or instead of it? Hopefully, the latter. One guvmint investigation at a time is more than ample.

Many want a guvmint-mandated and guvmint-regulated Passenger Bill of Rights. Lord forgive them, they know not what they do. Doesn’t anyone realize that the airlines are running scared now and working like hell to solve this problem on their own? The market has raised its massive head and roared with a power that outranks anything the guvmint can do.

Being now over 65 and thus dealing with the Social Security Administration, I am more opposed than ever to turning any more of our lives over to the guvmint. Ringo Starr had it right—”Everything the government touches turns to ____.”

Why do people who deal with the guvmint every day want to give them even more authority? I don’t understand it.

This reminds me of those who want to pass more and more laws against cigarette smoking. Don’t they realize that we have smoking whipped? Public stigma killed it. What can the guvmint do, wipe out smoking the way they’ve wiped out drugs?

Okay, I’ll shut up before (hopefully) getting myself in trouble. But those who want more guvmint control should be forced to spend one week trying to get a live person on the phone at the Social Security Administration, that’s all I’ve got to say.

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… but at least a passengers’ bill of rights is a start. That’s JetBlue Airways’ answer to disrupting the lives of hundreds of customers because of a nasty winter storm. CEO David Neeleman, a master of PR, has been telling anyone who would listen, “I’m sorry.” Now he’s backing it with a customer bill of rights, which for the most part offers money or free travel for inconvenience, depending on how many hours you’re stuck in a JetBlue airplane. 

Give him credit; United and American didn’t respond quite as graciously, or humbly, when they suffered similar snafus in their systems due to weather. But then, Mr. Neeleman’s folksy approach serves his small airline well in the public’s mind, while United and American tend to personify ‘corporate.’ Let us not forget, however, that both of the larger carriers have the mass to withstand such storms, and to recover much more rapidly. 

American Airlines now says it won’t allow passengers to sit imprisoned in their aircraft for more than four hours – guaranteed. James May, president of ATA, in a USA Today editorial tells America that it’s just not that simple, this fight against mother nature. And he offers the very valid justifications, most notably safety, as to why the public should be sympathetic to the airlines’ plight. 

Personally, four hours is a lousy benchmark. The airlines’ response is technical, operational. It needs to be about setting a new customer service standard. Some say, there oughta be a law. Airlines, it seems, should be able to figure this out for themselves. And they need to set a standard. 

Two hours sounds about right. Thanks for reading.   jfi

Somebody asked an interesting question recently. “Ralph, is there anything you like about airline travel.”

Hmmm…

I guess I have been overly critical of the airlines, but I do keep riding them. Here are a few reasons why…

One, they are dirt cheap. My speaking customers pay my travel expenses, and I have to compete with other speakers. Therefore I work hard to keep the price down. When the airlines aren’t cheap, I often drive all or part of the trip. (I leave tomorrow to drive 610 miles round trip just because the airfare would cost my customer twice as much as driving, and there are no good airline schedules.)

Airlines are by far the safest way to travel. The driving trips really do worry me a bit, and more so as I age.

Sometimes I can drive in less time than it takes to fly, but I fly anyway. Six hours on the airlines is not the same as six hours by car. You can work, read, or eat at airports and on airlines, so the time is not all wasted as it is when driving. I have read some wonderful books on airlines, and the laptop has made it easier to work remotely than ever before.

Most of the time, the airlines are dependable. When they aren’t though, there’s hell to pay. I don’t trust the schedule or baggage handling as much as I used to, so I have adjusted. The older I get, the earlier I go. I have also taken to wearing a suit on the trip, so I can wear it for the speech if the airline loses my bags. During the winter I go even earlier than usual, and avoid some airports. O’Hare and Atlanta are high on that list just because they get so balled up when the weather is less than perfect.

During the 1980s I would fly in on the morning of a luncheon speech. I don’t do that anymore. I have adjusted (besides, I don’t have the stamina that I had in the 1980s).

Ticket buying is much more hassle than in the 1960s, but it is easier to comparison shop, thanks to the Internet. Still, doing business with the airlines is just downright miserable.

That about says it. Oh, one more thing—when you travel the airlines regularly, it does become less difficult than it is for non-frequent flyers.

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(I stole that title from Yogi Berra, who originated it, and from Ralph Jones, who, on AVSIG, so aptly used it to describe the JFK/JetBlue mess this week.)

After the nine-hour mess in Austin last year, I kinda thought that wouldn’t happen again, but it has and maybe worse.

You know the story, on February 14, pax on ten JetBlue flights were stranded on airplanes on the ground for up to more than nine hours (or more than 11 hours, depending on which story you believe).

A blue jillion news items have beat this story with enough theories and arguments to keep everyone guessing for the foreseeable future. I don’t have a theory about who was at fault or what should be done. I do have a statement—this has got to stop.

I totally agree with the JetBlue spokesperson that said, “This is unacceptable.”

Unacceptable, folks, means that we can’t do this to people.

Much more important than fixing blame is fixing the problem. Not generally mentioned in the news is that this is not just an airline problem, it is also an airport problem. Airlines and airports need to come up with a solution.

Seems to me that the real problem is not the delays, but the fact that we can’t get people off of the airplanes, and it just ain’t right to hold people against their will.

People tell me, “Ralph, you just don’t understand.” They’re right—I don’t understand. I do understand that it is unacceptable. That means somebody has to figure out a way to stop it, even if it is necessary to change the system. I don’t know if we need special buses to get people off, or a different way of operating the airport and/or airplanes. But, in the words of the old song, “Something’s Gotta Give.”

I fear that those who say we can’t solve this problem simply mean that it would cost money. Well, duh.

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… was NATA chair William Koch, president of Seven Bar Enterprises. His office is just a few miles from the Omni Dallas Park West hotel, at which the association’s committee meetings were held this week. A bit tall, a bit lanky, Koch leisurely walked from car to lobby for a day of NATA business. 

Rewind to last October and that leisurely walk seems miraculous. On October 9, Bill and four kids – three of his own and a friend – were driven off a divided highway in Dallas in their SUV. Bill remembers swerving to avoid the careening offender; then the lights went out. The result was four kids physically uninjured but emotionally traumatized; Bill was unconscious and left with severely damaged upper vertebrae. “Oh, and a big ol’ hole in my head,” he says. 

He spent the next five weeks locked in place by an upper body bracket, with a “halo” over his head to keep everything in alignment. By Thanksgiving, he was back at the office at Seven Bar, which operates three FBOs and fixed wing air medical services under contract. And by this week, he was back in action for the trade association as it takes on the battle on how the aviation system is funded, among other issues. 

I first met Bill back when we were aviation kids; he was doing FBO marketing then. Bill would move up to become president of the AMR Combs chain of fixed base operations when they were owned by AMR Corporation. He was hired in 2003 to head up Seven Bar by the Black family, ranchers who’ve been in business for three generations. They liked Bill’s experience and his history – father Don was a well known long-timer at AVIALL and other aviation companies. Both have a reputation for being gentlemen who understand the business of aviation. 

For an idea of how he’d like the association to respond to new funding proposals from the feds, consider what he told AIRPORT BUSINESS in our March 2006 issue: “For FAA to continue to ask industry for more funding, when it appears that FAA is absolutely incapable of controlling costs, is an unacceptable position.” 

We wish him good health. Thanks for reading.  jfi    

It seems to be official. Bush’s budget proposal includes user fees for general aviation. Ed Bolen, president and CEO of NBAA, is up in arms and making no bones about it. He reported today that “after more than a year of intense lobbying by the nation’s big airlines, the White House has decided to introduce a budget that shifts airline costs to other segments of the industry and gives airlines more control over the air traffic system. NBAA and the rest of the general aviation community will oppose this toxic mix of higher taxes, new fees, and airline control.”

“Toxic mix.” That’s pretty strong, and he is absolutely right about the other GenAv acronym groups. They will fight this tooth and nail.

Back in the early 1970s, Ted Kennedy literally tried to ground GenAv during our first oil crisis. For once, all of GenAv fought as one and Washington found out that GenAv wasn’t just a few rich folks flying personal airplanes. GenAv included some of our largest and most respected corporations and they rose up in arms right along with Cub owners and rich doctors. The entire idea was dropped post haste. (You’d have thought that Ted would have known better, since his family used a transport airplane—they called it the Caroline, if I remember right—to get around the country.)

User fees? We’ve already got them in the form of avfuel taxes. If you must have a tax, the fuel tax works fairly well. The more you use, the more you pay. Fly a guzzler—the aviation version of a big SUV—and you pay more. Fly a really fuel-efficient aircraft and you pay less. That’s mighty simple, isn’t it?

And—let me say it one more time—most of us fear that any user fee is like the camel with his nose under the tent. That’s just the beginning. Plus, we just flat don’t trust the guvmint. I, for one, remember when they misused our trust fund.

Aviators of the world, rise up!

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… when it comes to funding and security. During the past week, the head of the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association fired the first salvo at the Administration’s soon-to-be-released aviation funding proposal, while here in Austin a city council member took on TSA in an effort to get easier access at Austin-Bergstrom International.
 

On funding, AOPA president Phil Boyer says that the Administration “is manufacturing an FAA ‘funding crisis’ in a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to divert attention away from the real issue – the need to address the problems that constrain capacity, efficiency, and new technology adoption.” The White House is expected to unveil its FY2008 budget next week, at which time the FAA’s long-awaited proposal for funding the aviation system – and ATC modernization – will be detailed. For the past year, the agency has sounded much like officials from the Air Transport Association, which came out with its proposal for funding the system a year ago. It’s gotten to the point that industry expects FAA’s proposal to mirror ATA’s.  Central to the debate on all sides: the health of the Aviation Trust Fund; ATC modernization; and, a continued general fund contribution. Much more on this to come in the weeks ahead.
 

In Austin, council member Jennifer Kim has been doing damage control after questioning why she and other top city officials could not get access to the gates when not an airline passenger. It was reported that Kim’s overriding goal was to be able to meet with visiting officials as a representative of the city government. It seems to be a reasonable request, and one that TSA should give serious consideration to, if it hasn’t already. (A search of TSA’s website reveals nothing about the Kim/Austin issue.) If we can have special privileges for ‘trusted travelers’ it seems we can come up with a system whereby local officials can have access past screening when performing official duties.
 

Thanks for reading.
jfi