AirportBusiness Blogs

This week marked the 30^th anniversary of the disaster at Tenerife. For those too young to remember it, on March 27, 1977, two 747s collided on the runway at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Five hundred eighty-two people died, making this the worst aviation accident in history (unless you consider 9/11/2001 to be an accident).

It seems like just yesterday for us old-timers. This—two jumbo jets carrying passengers slamming into each other and burning—was everyone’s nightmare come true. The story dominated the media, and we gobbled up the details as fast as they came out. Those of you who don’t remember it should look it up on Google. It is a fascinating, albeit awful, story involving diverted flights, weather, and even a small terrorist bomb, though not on either airplane

Change of subject…

I visited one popular bookstore in the past week, and one good library. The bookstore had a coffee shop inside, the library did not. In fact, the library doesn’t allow coffee inside at all. It occurred to me that this was a microcosm of the difference between the free market and the guvmint.

Many, if not most, large bookstores now have a coffee shop on the premises. Most, if not all, libraries do not. The bookstores have them because years ago the industry found that coffee shops increase book sales. It is as simple as that. Customers want them. There are many reasons not to have a coffee shop, but customers want them so bookstores provide them.

Libraries, being supported by guvmints, think they don’t have to please customers, so they explain why coffee shops are a bad idea, and that’s that. Seems typical to me. Businesses listen to customers and adapt as needed; guvmints heed the reasons why not.

That’s exactly what the guvmint is doing in aviation. They can tell you a bunch of reasons why they need more money. Other aviation entities don’t have that option. They have to adapt and solve their own problems to the customers’ satisfaction or they go broke.

Does anybody remember Braniff, Eastern, Pan Am, and People Express? They didn’t adapt. Neither did the guvmint. They didn’t keep up the systems needed to get the job done, now they want a bailout.

I don’t agree.

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… and comes out on top in Orlando. Each year, the National Air Transportation Association teams up with the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association and the Aviation Industry Expo trade show, bringing together aviation services companies and suppliers. In recent years, the Expo has continued to grow while NATA’s convention numbers have been declining. 

The NATA board decided to change the format – turning its annual meeting into an FBO Leadership Conference and focusing more on business management issues while creating a new event, the Air Charter Summit, which will feature more discussion of regulatory matters. By all indications, the new format is a success – overall NATA numbers are up, and each session was noticeably more dynamic and better attended. 

Back in the 1970s, NATA had a hard time keeping the Part 135 air taxis in the association fold, due to the inherent differences in the business – most notably a heavier emphasis on FAA regulations. But back then, many fixed base operators were still being forced via their leases to be “full service,” and charter was one of those services. Airport sponsors over time have accepted that FBOs no longer need to be everything to everybody, and one successful formula has the FBO being the line service provider and leasehold manager while having as subtenants individual services such as charter, flight training, maintenance, avionics, etc. 

With the advent of fractionals came an associated growth in the demand for charter, and the business has become very dynamic. The change has been so significant that in recent years FAA has been taking a renewed review of all things Part 135. It’s a different business today, and that is certainly true of charter. Having an independent Air Charter Summit, to be held June 27-29 in Leesburg, VA, may just pan out to be a good idea.  Thanks for reading. jfi      

…in aviation. Perhaps the most astounding was the report that Boeing is building a 1,000-plus passenger airliner. The report (from a well-recognized online source that will remain nameless) included beautiful pictures of the proposed airplane with a blended wing and body. Very exciting news.

The next day I received a report that the massive Boeing was a hoax or a mistake. It ain’t gonna happen. Boeing is doing research for the guvmint on the blended wing and body concept, but not for a 1,000-seat airliner. In fact, Boeing is asking everyone to spread the word. I’m doing my share.

The biggest news remains the battle over user fees. Seems like every day I get a big pitch from one side or the other. Lord knows how it will turn out. I do have a dog in this fight, of course, and I have one question: If everybody in the airline business is doing more and more with less money while charging less and improving safety, how come the guvmint can’t do the same? Seems like a reasonable question to me.

Speaking of safety, another online news source, AIN, put out the word that every segment of civil aviation reduced accidents in 2006. GA had the lowest number of accidents in 40 years of record keeping. Airlines and Part 135 operators also had fewer accidents.

But there is a thorn on that rose bush…

AIN reports that “The decline in the number of GA accidents was due in part to a steady decrease in the amount of flight activity. Since 1990, GA hours flown have declined 20 percent…” We can be proud that the GA accident rate has stayed steady at roughly 7.5 accidents per 100,000 flight hours, but that’s about it.

So why have flight hours gone down so drastically? You could write a book on that subject, but it wouldn’t fit here.

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… the focus is on new opportunities for fixed base operators (FBOs) and the future of aviation system funding. Each year, the aviation services sector meets for a combined event – Aviation Industry Expo and the annual conventions of the National Air Transportation Association and the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association. The March 20-22 Expo, put on by Cygnus Expositions, a sister division of AIRPORT BUSINESS, is again projecting a record attendance, with more than 6,000 industry reps. 

For NATA, the big news coming into its annual meeting is a reformatting of the event. It is now the FBO Leadership Conference, with a focus on management issues and new business opportunities. While charter companies are still expected to be in attendance, they’ll now have their own Charter Summit, planned for June 27-29, which will feature more regulatory subject matter. 

The hot ‘D.C.’ topic, of course, is future funding of the system. NATA opposes much of FAA’s proposed revamp of the taxing system which seeks a host of new user fees and a dramatic jump in fuel taxes. The association has also expressed concern about future Airport Improvement Program funding, in particular potential cuts to the smallest general aviation airports. 

More to come from Orlando. Thanks for reading.  jfi  

…is often the most accurate. In July 2006, I reported that “the airlines are on the cusp of tremendous, long-term growth.” I first read of this in The Economist, a world class magazine of unbelievably good repute, several months before. Frankly, the article seemed so contrary to the “current wisdom” of the industry that it took me a few months to get up enough nerve to report the news. People actually laughed at me for being unwise enough to believe that stuff. In fact, I can’t remember a single person who believed it at the time.

Well, it is now a year later, and we know that some airlines made a profit last year for the first time in what seems like ages. Flights are full (so full that two different airlines recently paid me to get off of two different flights in one day).

So, The Economist got the growth part right, but what about the long-term part?

Well, another impeccable source, Forbes magazine, reported online late yesterday (March 13), that, “A UBS survey of 2007 airline schedules shows higher-than-expected growth of flights from the previous year.”

In other words, the good times are expected to roll on at least this year.

Interestingly, the subject of this Forbes article was really not about airline growth, but about how much such growth will help aerospace suppliers such as Goodrich and Precision Castparts. In fact, “shares of both companies rose on the news.”

Sounds good to me. I put a lot more faith in Forbes and stock purchasers than in any scuttlebutt gleaned from coffee-shop gossip within the industry.

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… a simple clock can make a difference. Or a flight information display system (FIDS). Attend any airport retail conference and listen to what they say about passenger concerns at an airport – it’s about stress; it’s about knowing the time of day. It’s why national restauranteurs offer abbreviated menu selections; Chili’s becomes Chili’s, Too. 

Consider some recent travel experiences … 

- At Chicago O’Hare, the United terminal has a mall-type food court that is offset from the main corridor that accesses the gates. In the food court there are no FIDS; not one clock on any wall or in any restaurant. 

- At Phoenix International, on a long layover, I questioned the waiter why the Mexican restaurant had no clocks anywhere, even though there was plenty of wall space available. His answer: “We took them down because passengers were blaming us for missing their flights because the clocks were wrong.” 

- At Reno-Tahoe International, the ‘sit down’ restaurant not only offers a nice view of the airfield activity, but has two FIDS that rotate departing and arriving flight information, and the time of day. The difference it makes on the dining experience is noteworthy. 

- And, at Tulsa International, the entire airport seems to be a way-finding challenge. The terminal’s unusual and dated design doesn’t help; but then it only demands more signage. 

Passengers who rarely travel need as much signage as possible to help them flow along on their journey. Frequent travelers come to expect it. And, of course, a relaxed traveler is probably one who is going to spend more money at the concessions in the terminal.  Thanks for reading. jfi        

On February 3, 1959, musicians Buddy Holly (”That’ll Be the Day”), Ritchie Valens (”La Bamba”), and The Big Bopper (”Chantilly Lace”), died in the crash of a Beech Bonanza on a charter trip from Clear Lake, IA, to Fargo, ND. The conspiracy theories started almost immediately and continue to this day. Evidently they have a half-life somewhere up there with theories about what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.

I was a high school senior at the time, and loved Holly’s music (still do). To me the crash really was, as Don McLean put it in his great and still popular song, “American Pie,” “the day the music died.”

In 1972 I first heard the “pistol” rumor from an aviation insurance man who stated it as absolute fact. The pilot, he said, had been shot through the back of his seat by a pistol. Some said that Holly was committing suicide by firing the shot. According to this insurance man, the insurance carrier’s settlement with the families included a hush-up of the gunfire and the fact that Holly owned a pistol.

As far as I know, there was no proof at all that the story was true, but it survives to this day. The theories all came to life again recently when the Big Bopper’s family decided to move his grave to another location. His son hired Dr. Bill Bass, a well-known forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, to take a new look at the remains.

Dr Bass took X-rays of the body and found nothing to support those theories. “There was no indication of foul play,” Bass said in a telephone interview from Beaumont. “There are fractures from head to toe. Massive fractures. … (He) died immediately.”

Well, now maybe we can forget the conspiracy theories. But probably not, I got e-mail this week “proving” a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.

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… in the current funding debate. That was one of the key messages during a funding reauthorization discussion featured at the Airport Planning, Design & Construction Symposium, co-sponsored by the Airport Consultants Council and the American Association of Airport Executives this past week in Reno.