AirportBusiness Blogs

Like many of you, I was interested with the few details available when the Ethiopian Airline aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean on January 25. Other than the fact that all 90 on board were presumed dead, very little information followed, so I didn’t think about it much more. The accident was, after all, thousands of miles away.

Then, on the following Saturday, we got a telephone call from son Brett, our youngest, and all of a sudden the accident became quite interesting. Brett is a side-scan sonar operator/technician on a recovery vessel and he calls from places like England, Gibraltar, and Nova Scotia. All of his calls are important to us, but this one was even more so.

“By the way,” he asked, “do you know about the Ethiopian aircraft that crashed into the Mediterranean? We’re looking for it.”

Well, I’ll be danged.

Brett was calling from Beirut, Lebanon. The airplane crashed just off the Lebanese coast, and it seems the Lebanese government contacted the company Brett works for soon after the crash. Their ship is now actively searching for the aircraft with the side-scan sonar that Brett (and others) operates. All of a sudden this accident from thousands of miles away became much closer to home—kind of in the family, so to speak.

Oh, I do hope they find it.

I would fill you in on all the details, but I don’t know the details and may never know them—but if I do, you can read about it in a later Blog.

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For once, however, the homeowners and the airport seem to agree.

The FAA proposes to lower the bottom altitude of Class B airspace in the area to straighten the approach and departure of aircraft operating in/out of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (ATL). That would lower the bottom of Class B to 5,000 feet over PDK, which is one of the busiest general aviation airports in the Southeast. Many aircraft operating at PDK are jets that operate efficiently only at high altitudes and need to get up there fast. True, they should be cleared quickly to a higher altitude, but the fear is that the clearance will come slower than currently. Departing aircraft could be held down longer and landing aircraft pushed down earlier. And, any way you look at it, the plan will compress more aircraft (many of them VFR) into less airspace and that does have a bearing on safety. Efficiency and safety concern Pat Epps, Epps Aviation, PDK, as does anything that makes life more difficult for his customers. Pat would like to see the proposed altitude changes stopped.

Those with homes in the area would like it stopped too, but for different reasons. They worry about increased pollution, noise, and, of course, safety.

The push for keeping the status quo is gaining, it seems. John Heneghan, a member of the Dunwoody, GA, City Council, publishes reports in his popular Blog. WSBTV has covered the issue in some detail. Perhaps most importantly, AOPA—the most active and effective defender of general aviation airports—is actively involved.

This should be interesting!

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I can put up with taking my shoes off and full body scans (although my scan would not be a thing of beauty). I will stick to the rules and not joke, will stand in the lines and try not to cause problems. I’ll keep my seat for the last hour of a flight, and will not put anything on top of my laptop or in my lap.

On the other hand…

Every time there is another scare, we demand more from passengers. It seems the customer—the passenger—catches the brunt of the problems. Still, I could willingly handle that if only the guvmint would…

Study the masters of security, the Israelis. Their record is near-perfect since the 1960s, they keep traffic moving and react quickly to a crisis without closing airports. Why would we not study their methods?

American passengers are put through many inconveniences and hassles, yet our guvmint seems more terrified that we might hurt someone’s feelings than that our system protects and works. I am personally not willing to continue down that road, but would like to know for sure that we are working like hell to study and adopt everything the Israelis do to make flight more secure AND to reduce the hassle factor for our passengers.

You can get online many of the steps the Israelis take, and I urge you to do so. For one small example, go to: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/index.html.

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The day before Christmas Eve, Hendersonville (NC) Tribune newspaper ran a story that will reach the heart of everyone who loves and values general aviation.

The story started when Tyler Kilpatrick, a University of North Carolina-Asheville student, went to Cuernavaca, Mexico, about 53 miles south of Mexico City on a student exchange program. Tyler loved Cuernavaca and her host family, but she was brutally stabbed by a taxi driver, suffering lung punctures and serious injuries to other major organs. Her father came down to help his daughter through several weeks of critical hospital care.

Now we switch to one Mike Summey of Asheville. Mike is a story in and of himself. I wrote part of his story myself and it was published earlier this year in AOPA Pilot magazine. Mike is a self-made multimillionaire who flies a recently rebuilt—new engines, avionics and more—King Air.

After Tyler’s plight became public, Mike’s 27 year old son—a pilot himself—said, “Dad, we could bring them home for Christmas.” Mike quickly agreed and damned if they didn’t do it!

The next few days involved whirlwind negotiations between Mike and two governments. Eventually, with the help of Mike’s senator, and with special cooperation from Mexico, and trip charts donated by Jeppesen, all the arrangements were made. Mike and Jason even took a North Carolina physician, Dr. Robert Wells, with them after Wells first discussed Tyler’s condition with the Mexican physicians.

Mike, Jason, and Dr. Wells flew some 1,100 miles the first day overnighting at Brownsville, TX. The next day they flew 500 miles to Cuernavaca, picked up Tyler and flew back to Asheville, stopping in Brownsboro again for paperwork. As Mike told me, “It made for a long day.”

Mike tells me this was one of the most rewarding experiences with which he has ever been involved, and I can tell you that he’s been involved in a lifetime of rewarding experiences.

What a story!

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Remember all of the advance public relations propaganda about how wonderful the Delta/NWA merger would be for the public and how smoothly the operations would be blended? (It’s still going on, of course. Call either airline today and listen to the recording that goes on and on while you wait interminably. First it relates how your call is “important to us.” Then it drones on about all the wonderful advantages of the merger and how much it will benefit you, the customer.)

Well, I just called and acquired a ticket from Delta. I will be riding on NWA with flights operated by two different smaller airlines. After all was said and done, Delta emailed me the schedule, but it had no seat assignments. That could have been my fault. This whole process took three days—Einstein and a dozen rocket scientists couldn’t have fully understood it, much less remembered it.

I called Delta back; they assigned seats and promised—remember that word, promised—to have NWA send me another email with the seat assignments. Don’t ask me why Delta, couldn’t email me. They had just assigned the seats to me, but the lady said they couldn’t email them. What kind of seamless is that?

NWA didn’t send them. I called Delta back and they made the same promise again. NWA didn’t send them again.

Finally, an airline pilot friend told me how to get them myself. I did and it worked fine.

Once more, the airlines failed to deliver the promise and the customer is expected to handle their merger problems. Remember that great song line from Peter, Paul and Mary—“When Will They Ever Learn?”

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My last Blog lamented the guvmint’s ethanol subsidy. Several of you—who did not want to post comments on the Blog—asked me how the subsidy held back free-market progress. The general comment was how can it hurt if it gives us cheaper fuel? I gotta admit that’s a great question that deserves more consideration.

Let’s say the ethanol subsidy amounts to a price drop of fifty cents per gallon at the gas pump. Good deal, huh? Everybody’s gonna save fifty cents a gallon, or about $6.00 per tank fill up. Let the good times roll. Of course the subsidy will be added to our taxes, so that’s not so great after all.

But it doesn’t stop there. All over the country and around the world free-market companies were trying hard to lower the price of gasoline. Some of them (one of them is a friend) thought they could reduce the pump price by say, twenty-five cents a gallon and they were excited about it. Then the guvmint, in its infinite and merciful wisdom, announced the ethanol subsidy. Now, what would you have done if you were trying to cut the pump price by twenty-five cents per gallon? Well, you’d probably stop your efforts totally. And why not? The guvmint subsidy had already dropped the price by more than you ever thought you could. You might fire people and/or shut down the factory (my friend did both), if you had one, or shut down plans to build a factory.

Just think of all the private effort/investment that came to a screeching halt around the world. Do you reckon some of those private ideas might have cut the price of fuel by more than fifty cents per gallon by now? We’ll never know.

This is somewhat like your car’s catalytic converter. Decades ago there was much private effort invested in cutting auto emissions. Then the guvmint mandated catalytic converters. And all that private effort ceased immediately and remained ceased in the decades since.

In short, every interference with the free market costs money. Somebody—maybe you and I—should push like hell to get the guvmint to consider the cost as well as the supposed benefit.

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As many of you know, I am a firm believer—a fanatic, perhaps—in the free market and am convinced that it solves most economic problems faster and more efficiently than the guvmint.

I love to watch the efforts of entrepreneurs as they make airplanes more fuel efficient. I also enjoy comparing the market’s efforts to those of the guvmint.

This blog has previously mentioned that Pratt & Whitney has developed and is now taking orders for a new geared turbine engine that will cut fuel use by 15 to 20%. Boeing has been testing an electric airplane. Today you can actually buy electric airplanes on the market. Small engines for small airplanes so far, but what will come in the future?

Now I find that Boeing is also flying a fuel-cell-powered airplane. Again, it is small, but so was the first Wright airplane.

Just today, I learned that John Leahy, COO of Airbus, has announced new wing devices—called Sharklets—for the Airbus A320. The Sharklets will reduce fuel burn by 3.5% on “longer” sectors.

Remember that reducing fuel burn means you don’t have to carry as much fuel for a trip, so the airplane will weigh less which will cut fuel further. Saving fuel also means cutting emissions. Leahy—who used to teach sales for Piper when I was selling Pipers—says the Sharklets will reduce CO2 emissions by 730 metric tons per airplane per year.

Some of the big news is outside of aviation. One of my friends is in negotiations to turn old tires into oil. He’s done it before, but oil prices then were not high enough to make a profit with the process. Oil prices are high enough now to make it work.

This type of progress is happening all over the world—paid for by entrepreneurs reacting to changes in the marketplace.

In the meantime, the guvmint has given us—at our expense—subsidies for ethanol which have caused zillions of acres to be converted from food production to ethanol production.

Let the good times roll.

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By golly, a strange thing happened to friend Peggy on the way to Savannah. First, let me assure you that Peggy is not a High Muckety-Muck Imperial Grand Poobah with any airline. She travels a coupla times a year, maybe three.

Peggy just flew from Huntsville (AL) to Savannah. Her ticket routed her from Huntsville to Memphis to Atlanta to Savannah, with a 2 ½ hour wait in Memphis. Not a good schedule, but one seldom gets a good schedule when buying the bottom-dollar online ticket. Seems like they punish you just to get even with you for buying their cheap ticket.

You ain’t gonna believe this. When Peggy checked in at Huntsville, Delta asked her if she would like to skip the Memphis stop and fly from Huntsville to Atlanta to Savannah, Would she ever! Peggy is a (lovely) senior citizen and that change saved her a long wait in Memphis, an aircraft change and got her to Savannah more than an hour early. She loved it.

CNN, Fox and USA Today should have done big stories on that rare event, but I reckon they missed it.

Folks, I haven’t seen that kind of service and logic from an airline in so long I can’t remember when it was, and that tells you how far down the airline industry has slipped. Is it possible that this is an indication of a change in attitude? Lord, I hope so.

What’s amazing is that I have heard more than one such story of the airlines being nice, fair and reasonable in the last few months. Even my brother, who has sworn off airline travel more than once, gave a good report on his last long trip.

For once, I am not thinking cynically about good news. I sincerely hope that the airlines have seen the error of their ways and have also seen the light. Please, please let this be the beginning of a trend.

C’mon now—everybody shout hallelujah!

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Would that someone could convince the guvmint—“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to interfere.”

We know times are tough, but do we fully realize the guvmint’s role? Consider that they first attacked corporate use of business aircraft, and bang, there went a blue gazillion jobs in aviation. Then they attacked corporate sales meetings. Bang, down went the meetings industry—already hard hit by the economy.

The cover story of the current issue of Convention South magazine, now in its 26^th year of reporting on the meetings industry, is “Washington’s hold on the meetings industry—Has Uncle Same Gone Too Far?”

Convention South reports that Roger Dow, president/CEO of the U.S. Travel Association points out that the Obama still holds gatherings of cabinet members “because of the importance of face-to- face meetings.” Yet, Dow goes on, “Over the past several months similar corporate and government meetings have come under attack…” According to Dow, the net effect has been the cancellation of “thousands of meetings, the termination of tens of thousands of jobs, and the loss of billions of dollars of spending for the American economy.” 

Now hear this—the NBAA annual meeting, one of the hardest-working conventions in the country, will be held in Orlando later this month. Aircraft will be sold, business will be done and progress will result. I’m going to be there—no matter what the guvmint thinks—and I hope you will be, too.

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John and Martha King have picked up the prototype Skycatcher. They will operate the airplane at their school and prepare ground school courses for both Sport Pilot and Private Pilot training in the Skycatcher.

I like the idea of Cessna getting into LSA. They are, after all, the aviation version of the 600 pound gorilla. When they do something they do it right, so LSA will get a fighting chance. Cessna is known for spotting trends in the marketplace, and I hope they are right again.

I am delighted to know that there will be ground school courses for both sport and private pilots. From all I can gather, Cessna sees the Skycatcher—and LSA in general—as the trainer of the future, rather than a new class of aircraft that can be flown without a medical. I think they’re right, but I have reservations.

I am convinced there is a growing market for purely recreational flight, rather than transitional flight in preparation for a “real” airplane that goes faster, higher and farther.

One group—it seems to me—to which aviation has not marketed is seniors. Yet I know seniors who fly often just for the simple pleasure of it. Some of them are high time pilots who don’t want to quit flying. Other seniors are low time pilots or pilots who never got their certificate. They would kinda, sorta, maybe scratch that itch again without the pressure of higher, faster, bigger and more expensive.

Yes, let’s use LSA for training pilots who will move up. But let’s also use it to train those citizens who just want to fly for the sheer joy of it.

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