Blog Archives
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The Need For ...
By Steve Smith - Tuesday August 7, 2012The Need For Green GSE The percentage of green GSE in any one handler’s fleet remains low if only for the simple reason that new equipment – green or not – comes with a big price tag. The industry’s default has always been to maintain existing GSE even if that equipment is decades old. And let’s face it: the stuff is built to last a long time. However, rising fuel prices may make new electric models more attractive. Plus, changes in FAA VALE funding may provide an added boost. There is new language in the legislation that reauthorized the administration last year that may offer more dollars. Like all thousand-page laws, however, until rules are promulgated no one knows exactly what it will all mean, but the potential for... -
The Right Equipment
By Steve Smith - Tuesday July 31, 2012
We’re wrapping up our 2012-2013 Worldwide Directory issue this week. This year’s edition includes 26 pages of GSE manufacturers and service providers, plus a handy cross index that runs the alphabet from “Air Starts” to “Vehicle Lifts.” While there’s more than 300 listings included in the issue, one of the best pieces of GSE is the magazine itself. We recently polled a sample of our Ground Support Worldwide readers for their thoughts on the magazine. In the answer to the question, “Which of the following publications do you feel helps you most in your ground support responsibilities,” Ground Support Worldwide beat out the next nearest magazine by almost a 3-1 margin. Ground Support Worldwide also won an even... -
A Billion Here … A Billion There …
By Steve Smith - Tuesday July 24, 2012Airlines “earned” $22.6 billion last year charging for what used to be free, according to the latest research by IdeaWorksCompany and Amadeus. “Ancillary” typically means “in addition to,” but Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks – no, that’s not a typo; it’s all one word - says in a blog post that more and more airlines consider these fees to be a regular source of revenue to count on. Extra fees for Spirit Airlines, the King Of Ala Carte Airlines, for example, accounted for a third of its total revenue. Several airlines earned more than 20 percent of total revenue on add-ons. Although these extra fees are usually associated with low-cost carriers, traditional airlines take up all but three of the Top Ten. For... -
What Are You Doing To Pay It Forward?
By Steve Smith - Tuesday July 17, 2012
An AP story last week raised safety concerns over the forecasted shortage of qualified pilots to take the controls of expanding fleets around the world. Boeing expects commercial airlines will need about 460,000 new pilots between now and 2031. In the United States, that number is expected to be 69,000 pilots. Some airlines are already struggling. The story reported that airlines based in Asia and the Middle East have been holding pilot job fairs in the United States, and thousands of pilots laid off due to U.S. airlines bankruptcies and mergers are now flying for foreign carriers. With the pilot market stretched thin, we’ve also heard the same problems from our sister publication, AMT, over finding the next generation of techs to... -
Innovations On The Ground
By Steve Smith - Tuesday July 10, 2012
As luck would have it, three stories came our way more or less at the same time touting alternative ways to move planes from gate to runway and other points between. All are different, in particular the TaxiBot system that we got a first-hand look at last year at inter airport. But in one fashion or another, the systems from TaxiBot, WheelTug and the GreenTaxi system co-developed by Crane Co. and L-3 all look to save money and the environment by reducing fuel consumption, lowering ground operation costs and decreasing emissions. Remarks from a WheelTug exec also promises his company’s system will “increase safety and flexibility of airport operations; provide airlines faster turnaround times, reduce engine wear and... -
‘Ice-Phobic’ Coating
By Steve Smith - Tuesday July 3, 2012
Considering most of us are cooking in temperatures reaching into the 100s, de-icing might not be on many of our minds. But we picked up some interesting posts from the Aircraft De-icing/Anti-icing LinkedIn Group after posting the news last week about Harvard researchers touting the possibilities of an ‘ice-phobic’ coating. The coating works particularly well on aluminum surfaces so aircraft deicing applications are a natural. Here are the basics of the research: A nano-structured surface is applied to aircraft wings. This surface has what the researchers call “SLIPS” – slippery, liquid-infused porous surfaces. Think tiny, tiny holes. Next, oil or any other liquid that does not mix with water sinks into these... -
Get A Load Of This Picture
By Steve Smith - Tuesday June 26, 2012
Southwest Airlines has always prided itself on its upbeat, go-the-extra-mile workforce. For us, look no further than the precise turns its ground support staff have done since the first day the airline flew its intrastate routes in Texas more than 40 years. That punctuality is exactly what helped the airline make its mark. In turn, the airline has supported its workers with increasing wages and no layoffs even as other airlines were eliminating 160,000 jobs last decade. A strong relationship with 37,000 employees is certainly a tremendous accomplishment for a heavily unionized, publicly traded, $15 billion corporation in, as one publication recently put it , a “profit-obsessed, viciously Darwinian industry.” Charles, however... -
When Even Good News Is Bad
By Steve Smith - Tuesday June 19, 2012If every cloud has a silver lining, please blow some our way. Even good news seems to bring more bad for the airline industry. First, the good news: Fuel prices are down some 8 percent to date this year. Now, the bad news: Prices are down as a result of a worldwide slump in economic activity. “The reduction in fuel prices is a great thing for the airline industry, but they are coming down because of concerns over world economic activity,” IATA chief Tony Tyler told Reuters at the group’s recent annual summit in China. “If the world enters an economic slump, that will be even worse for the industry than the higher fuel price on its own.” The United States is just hanging on. High-flying China is experiencing its first... -
Another Book Report On China
By Steve Smith - Tuesday June 12, 2012
I didn’t expect to write back-to-back blogs on the same subject, but more news keeps trumpeting China’s aviation ambitions that it’s hard to set it aside even for a week. This week, Li Jiaxiang, chief of the Civil Aviation Administration of China told delegates attending an IATA meeting in Beijing the country plans to build 70 airports in three years as well as expand 100 existing airports. Chinese carriers would operate around 4,700 planes by 2015 – this on the heels of IATA figures that announced wafer-thin profit margins for airlines this year. China brings two advantages to its rather late-start to build an industry that took much of the rest the world the past century to develop. One, its commercial airline fleet consists... -
China’s Sky High Ambitions
By Steve Smith - Tuesday June 5, 2012
Americans have good reason to scoff at attempts to “plan” a nation’s economy. In the late 1950s, for example, China started “A Great Leap Forward,” a five-year plan to industrialize a largely agricultural economy. But the plan included making steel in backyard furnaces, forcing farmers off their fields at bayonet point and creating a famine that starved 30 million people. The country never gave up on its five-year plans though. But the China of the last 30 years or so is a far cry from the Chairman Mao days. The country’s currently on its 12th five-year plan. And part of this plan centers on turning the country into an aviation powerhouse. Right now more than two-thirds of the world’s airport construction is happening in...
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