Blog Archives
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Road Rage Explained
- Tuesday July 11, 2006Not all days were like yesterday, but yesterday was not atypical. I spoke at lunch in Reno—great group of people. Afterwards, I dashed to the airport with just enough time to check in and make the flight to Vegas where I grabbed a fast-food sandwich and milk to go. That was the modern-day version of inflight dining. The flight to Chicago was pleasant enough, even if I did sit next to an otherwise pleasant high school teacher who explained to me that my idol, economist Adam Smith, had just tried to apply Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to the world of economics. That was rather startling to me since Darwin was born more than a quarter century after Adam Smith wrote his great book, The Wealth of Nations. I managed to... -
I Deducted Breakfast This Morning
- Monday July 3, 2006I am a charter and founding member (whatever that means) of the Greater Northern Alabama Lying Pilots Coffee Drinking and Hangar Talking Society. Members who are in town meet weekday mornings at Mullins Restaurant in Huntsville, AL, where the special each morning is two sausage biscuits for one dollar! That’s all we do, by the way. We eat breakfast and talk. We get a small but interesting crowd. At one time or another we get a FedEx pilot, a USAirways pilot, two retired rocket engineers, one surgeon pilot, and a high-tech aerial photographer (he has taken pictures from the Panama Canal to Minnesota). And this morning Matt Rainey showed up. We hadn’t seen much of Matt lately. He has been busy. Matt, an engineer, has been the... -
Outsourcing Pilots
- Tuesday June 27, 2006I have on my computer a blistering e-mail attacking ALPA, the union of many airline pilots. This diatribe cometh not from hardhearted management or flaming free-market entrepreneurial types, but from airline pilots. You may well know that the International Civil Aeronautics Association (ICAO) is reported to be in the final stages of changing the so called Age 60 Rule so that airline pilots elsewhere can fly to age 65 rather than age 60. The ruling has no legal force in the U.S., however. At least not for U.S. pilots employed by U.S. companies. It’s not quite that simple, of course, but basically, foreign airlines flying to, from, and over the U.S. will be able to use pilots over age 60. U.S. airlines will not. The U.S. guvmint has... -
DayJet Starts Flying This Year
- Monday June 19, 2006DayJet plans to revolutionize charter with 239 Eclipse jets that it already has on order. Somebody has been revolutionizing charter since the Wright Brothers first charged for a sightseeing ride, but I’m still a sucker for a new idea. DayJet is another of those aviation companies formed by smart business people with past successes in other industries. I'd laugh, but I remember laughing at FedEx, so I restrain myself. DayJet has several new—or almost new—ideas. First, the company spent much time and money on a unique computer program that will supposedly work miracles. I don’t understand that program, so will not discuss it.  Second, DayJet has those 239 Eclipse VLJs on order, and VLJs have been... -
To Land or Not To Land
- Monday June 12, 2006I am a devotee—some say fanatically so—of the free market. Lately, however, I have been a bit worried about the marketplace when it comes to the airline industry. I worry about airline use of marginal airports like Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (the name of the place is longer’n the runway) and Midway. You can argue all day about my use of that word "marginal", but I have heard so many heavy-iron pilots complain about those airports (strictly off the record, of course) that I have become a believer. Use of these and other marginal airports seem to serve the free market, at least in the short run. They are cheaper and/or more convenient for airline and/or passengers. In the long run? I worry. One... -
Does The Sun Shine More Brightly?
- Monday June 5, 2006Are things finally looking up for the airline industry? Delta—though operating in bankruptcy—actually made a profit in a recent month, airplanes are flying with more seats full at higher fares, capacity is down, and even the legacy airlines are looking better for the future. Dare we hope? Interestingly, The Economist, one of the world's most respected magazines, predicted several months ago that this would happen. In fact, it predicted that the airline industry was on the edge of a long and prosperous period. I was floored, but have learned to pay attention to that magazine, so did not snort derisively. Glad I didn't. Basically, The Economist then, and others now, seem convinced that the industry has, finally, made... -
Obligation to Repay
- Monday May 29, 2006Open any newspaper and you will learn—up front with big headlines—that the guvmint needs more money for the FAA and a jillion other things. That’s why a small Wall Street Journal story on page seven last Friday surprised me so much. The guvmint, it seems, is hard at work on a new bill to "bolster" the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Owners of property in flood plains depend on the guvmint for flood insurance—water damage as opposed to wind and other damage—since commercial carriers don’t want that market. The NFIP, according to the web site of Senator Trent Lott, Mississippi, "is administered by the insurance industry, but it is backed by the federal government in much the same way the... -
Markets At Work
- Monday May 22, 2006The jury is still out on trickle-down economics, but trickle-down cost cutting is a reality. On May 17 The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran a front-page story on how airline cost cutting is putting pressure on airports. This story is sorta the reverse of the song about the green grass growing all around, all around. This is more about penny pinching growing all around, all around. The airlines are hurting so they cut costs where possible. As Wal-Mart proved years ago, one way to do that is to put pressure on suppliers, and airports are definitely suppliers to airlines. Airports, says WSJ, have had a tendency to build "palatial terminals to showcase their cities and passed on the costs to airlines and passengers." Airlines, "which have... -
TSA Could Learn From Pete Correll
- Monday May 15, 2006Businesses are told in a blue zillion ways that they should—must—protect workers from injury on the job. (When I worked in the FBO side of the industry, they gave us an OSHA manual that was thicker than a teenaged boy’s collection of Playboy magazines. Nowhere in that book could we find the word airplane or aircraft!)One of the problems in occupational safety is the learning curve for a new operation. It turns out the guvmint is no better at that than business, and TSA has proved it. The following quote is taken from FederalTimes.com: "In its first two years of existence, TSA was deluged with workers’ comp claims, mostly from airport baggage screeners who hurt themselves lifting heavy bags onto X-ray machines... -
The Times They Are A-Changin
- Monday May 8, 2006As Bob Dylan wrote in 1964, the times they are a-changin', especially in aviation. I can't remember when there has been a more exciting time to be alive and watching our industry. True, the future is a great unknown, and some of the possibilities are, as my mother might have said, plumb scary. But you gotta admit it is nothing if not exciting.  Some of the big-money folks are determined to build and sell a corporate SST. The amount of the investment is downright frightening. It will be years before such a machine actually flies, assuming they get the sonic boom thing solved, but by golly three different groups are working on it, last I heard, and I, for one, can't wait to see the end result. The Very Light Jet (VLJ) thing is fast...
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