Blog Archives
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NBAA Convention: Wings of Hope for Business Aviation
- Thursday November 5, 2009While attendance was somewhat down from prior years, the mood at this year’s NBAA Convention in Orlando was decidedly upbeat. Despite the beating corporate aircraft took earlier in the year in the media, and in the mouths of politicians looking to get their faces and names in the media, most people I spoke with were optimistic that the economic tide was turning for business aircraft. A number of companies announced an expansion of their air charter operations, which is, of course, good news for FBOs and ultimately ground equipment suppliers. I spoke with equipment manufacturers and suppliers exhibiting at the convention who uniformly reported increased interest in their products. While that interest may not all translate into... -
Emergency Fuel Shut-off for Dummies
- Tuesday October 13, 2009It seems obvious that people working with equipment anywhere on or near the ramp should know emergency shut-off procedures for all the equipment on the ramp, including, of course, how to shut off the fuel either from the ground or the truck. My experiences working on the ramp and as an NTSB Member investigating ramp accidents have convinced me that while this may seem obvious, it bears regular repetition and training. As a Board member, I investigated a fuel truck fire at a major airport where a leak in the fueling nozzle ignited under the fueling platform. Disaster was narrowly averted only by the quick response of the airport’s crash, fire and rescue crew. The deadman’s switch had been jammed by the fueler to avoid having to... -
Airports are No Place for Demolition Derbies
- Monday September 21, 2009When I was growing up in Boston, there were a number of small racetracks where every weekend there would be demolition derbies. Owners would take their clunkers for one last fling before the junk heap. There they would race around the track trying to hit as many cars as possible to immobilize them. Big crowds would gather and cheer each crash; the harder the bang, the louder the applause. The last car running was the winner. It was great sport. Sometimes looking at equipment around the ramp, I’m reminded of those demolition derbies. Some of the baggage and service carts seem to have engaged in a pretty brutal game with those armor-plated tugs. Curbstones and even buildings are scarred and marred from violent encounters with those tugs... -
Who Gets the Credit?
- Tuesday September 8, 2009Environmental regulations are coming, sooner probably than later. This Administration is committed to it, and ground support equipment providers need to stay on top of what’s proposed and who gets the credit for what. If the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme goes into effect, as scheduled, in 2012, the U.S. aviation sector will be the first U.S. sector to feel the effects of emissions regulations. As it now stands, the EU is not going to give U.S. airlines any exemption to its regulations which would apply to flights in and out of its 27 member countries. This means that U.S. airlines will have to reduce carbon emissions by 3 percent in 2012 and 5 percent a year thereafter. With pressure on the airlines to reduce carbon... -
Tagged, You're Out of Service!
- Friday August 28, 2009How many times does it happen that someone tags equipment out-of-service and before it’s repaired, it’s back on the job? Sometimes with unpleasant consequences. Just recently I overheard a heated exchange between an airline supervisor responsible for aircraft loading and a ground equipment maintenance supervisor under contract to repair the airline’s equipment. It seems that a belt loader had been tagged with bad brakes but the airline, being short on equipment, pressed it back into service. While maneuvering the belt loader into position, the bad brakes did what bad brakes sometimes do — i.e. failed — and the loader hit a baggage cart, damaging it. Fortunately, no one was injured. But now the two supervisors were... -
Things that Go Bump in the Night
- Monday August 10, 2009Mix low visibility, light rain and the dark of an early November morning with an aircraft coming from an unexpected direction and a tug driver rushing to get some late bags to Delta, and what do you get? The perfect combination for the accident that in fact happened to a Pinnacle Aircraft and a Delta tug driver at Detroit Metro Wayne Airport this past November. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries, although the aircraft sustained substantial damage. While the tug driver was thrown from the aircraft, he was very lucky to suffer only minor issues. The NTSB recently released its Preliminary Report which contains a synopsis of factual information regarding the flight. Interestingly, while the pilot reported his taxi lights on, the... -
Summer in the Northeast, Thoughts Turn to Deicing
- Monday July 27, 2009Flying out of Boston Logan this morning, I saw a line up of about 20 deicing trucks. It was obvious the equipment hadn’t been moved for quite some time — under-inflated tires, windows caked with soot, the usual signs that equipment left outdoors has not been used. It got me thinking of the days when I was running my FBO and had to worry about things like deicing trucks and deicing fluid. When everyone else was talking about summer vacation plans, I was busy making plans for winter. And winter in Boston can be brutal. Even though the equipment had sat unused for months, we all know that lack of use can sometimes be harder on equipment than daily use. Hard as it was to work on winter issues in the middle of the summer rush (and we... -
What's Health Care Got to Do with It?
- Tuesday July 14, 2009I can’t seem to talk to anyone in aviation these days — on the ramp or in the air — without health care coming up. It’s killing small businesses, big businesses and everyone in between. And the stress on individuals is palpable. It’s telling that most people I speak to are more worried about losing their health insurance than their jobs. (I guess jobs in aviation have always been a little shaky.) The health care legislation on the horizon is part of the reason for the anxiety. Change is always hard to accept. But can we afford not to change? I don’t know much about the pros and cons of the much-debated government option. I do know that what we have doesn’t work and has made health care unaffordable to too many of us and... -
How Many Deaf Men (and Women) Will it Take?
- Thursday June 25, 2009It amazes me as I travel the country and the world to see how many ramp workers ignore basic safety protections. Take ear protection as an example. I don’t know any airport workers over 50 who don’t have some hearing loss. Many have significant hearing loss in one or both ears — me included. All those years of engines and APUs running within feet of your head take a toll on your hearing if you don’t wear ear protection religiously. And I didn’t get religion until the damage was already done. Then I started carrying the ear protectors with me everywhere I went when I was on the job. Because I found that if I didn’t have them on me, the ramp could go from quiet to noisy all of a sudden and I was left with unprotected ears. In... -
Going Electric - Who's Going to Pay?
- Monday June 15, 2009The jury's no longer out on whether GSE needs to go electric. Studies done by a wide-range of groups — from the Department of Energy to private companies — all show that electric is cheaper in the long-run, especially when the cost of fuel goes up, and electric vehicles are cheaper to maintain. (And for cold weather operations, electric has a clear advantage.) The environmental benefits are also beyond dispute at this point — the carbon footprint of electric GSE is significantly smaller than for gas- or diesel-powered vehicles. The big issues are infrastructure and paying for new equipment or converting old equipment. So two things need to happen — the airports need to update their infrastructure to support electric GSE and...
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