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‘Never Say Never’
By Steve Smith - Tuesday January 29, 2013
Our headline is the answer Gary Kelly, Southwest Airlines CEO gave to a question on whether his company would ever change its famous “Bags Fly Free” promise and start charging for baggage much like every other airline. The airline is a long holdout to such a common practice these days. It also doesn’t charge change fees, although last week the airline announced that for 40 bucks you could get to the front of the line to board. Of course, that leaves me wondering whether they make passengers who pay the fee line up in alpha order to determine who really gets to the front of the line. So will the airline start charging for baggage? In the same interview on CNBC, Kelly added that they didn’t have any plans to charge for baggage... -
Battery Myth No. 1
By Todd Allen - Monday January 28, 2013
(EDITOR's NOTE: Ground Support Worldwide welcomes back Todd Allen, Allen Energy, who returns to write a monthly blog on electric ground support equipment.) TRUE OR FALSE: You must fully discharge a battery or it will develop a “memory.” FALSE : Industrial lead-acid batteries found in electric ground support equipment do not develop a memory. Many people believe that if you only partially discharge a battery, it will “remember” a typical discharge level. And then it will not go past that level when you need more power. I believe this myth originated during a period of time when Nickel-Cadmium and Nickel Metal Hydride batteries were popular in consumer electronics. People would charge their devices after a short period of... -
Service Commitment
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday January 23, 2013People who are committed to service excellence know why their jobs are important. They know their work has meaning. They know that they are providing something to the customer, something that is important and meaningful. If people feel like they are giving something of value, then they will also find value in how they provide it. In a recent workshop on motivation and teamwork held at a Las Vegas hotel, there was a wide variety of hotel employees: chefs, cocktail waitresses, poker dealers, human resources and other professional staff. It was quite a mixture of folks. Prior to the start of the workshops, when asked why he liked his job, one of the chefs replied that he like his job because he “made creations” that satisfy people... -
Airport Fitness Resolutions
By Agnes Huff - Wednesday January 23, 2013It’s the beginning of a brand new year and the pressure is mounting to successfully keep our resolutions. According to USA.gov , the most widely reported resolutions for 2013 include: Drink Less Alcohol Eat Healthy Food Get a Better Education Get a Better Job Get Fit Lose Weight Manage Debt Manage Stress Quit Smoking Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Save Money Take a Trip Volunteer to Help Others It’s pretty clear that the most popular New Year resolutions revolve around self-help, self-improvement and health and fitness. So why should travelling by air interfere with our ability to stay the course with our health and fitness goals? We should be able to travel and stay fit. This means that airports... -
Injustice For Swissport, Part II
By Steve Smith - Tuesday January 22, 2013
Several weeks ago, we wrote about how the legal deck surely seemed stacked against Swissport as it fought a corporate raid on its operations in the Ukraine. A recap: The owner of Ukraine International Airlines, which operates a joint ground handling operation with Swissport Ukraine, says Swissport violated his company’s minority rights in the deal. As a result, UIA, which holds a 30 percent stake, could buy out Swissport for a pittance. A final ruling by the courts was expected on Dec. 12, but that decision was postponed until Jan. 16 and, then, until Jan. 30. At stake is not only a business, but some $8 million in assets at three airports that UIA could effectively buy for $400,000. Swissport claims the allegations are... -
What To Do When The Only Deicing Truck Breaks Down
By John Goglia - Tuesday January 22, 2013
So much attention is paid to large commercial service airports that we sometimes forget what it’s like at the hundreds of smaller airports that don’t have access to the same resources. When expensive equipment breaks down, it may not be possible to immediately get a backup, either your own or a borrowed one from someone else on the airport. This point was brought home to me when I was visiting a medium-sized airport in New England last week – one with commercial service, but no scheduled airlines – and the airport’s one-and-only deicing truck broke down. Fortunately, the truck deiced three aircraft before it broke down. But there was still one left to go. There was no question of skipping the deicing process – the weather... -
Complexity Has Growing Pains
By Ronald Donner - Thursday January 17, 2013On my desk in front of me sits a model of the Dreamliner in Boeing signature colors. I smile when I gaze at it; although I can’t imagine there are smiles in the Boeing offices right now. Plagued by multiple production delays the Dreamliner final made its entry into revenue service in late 2011 with the industry closely watching. The unfortunate events of the past week pointing toward the lithium-ion batteries are the most concerning yet. Consequently aviation industry news today is a buzz with official statements, industry commentary, and of course opinions. On January 16th the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency airworthiness directive that requires 787 operators in this country to temporarily halt operations... -
Why I Love Aviation
By Brad McAllister - Wednesday January 16, 2013
I have comprehensively experienced nearly all segments of the aviation industry in my four and a half years at Airport Business magazine. Before my time here, I had very limited exposure to the industry, apart from a stint my brother made in pursuing a professional piloting career years ago. Despite that, I have always been interested in powered flight — from the first time as a young boy seeing airliners approaching O'Hare when my father would take us kids to an occasional Twins/Sox game in Chicago. I am not a pilot, although I did participate in an introductory flight lesson as part of my initial foray as assistant editor for this publication (my trainer was Wisconsin Aviation's Jim Quinn) — yet, the aviation 'bug' has me firmly... -
Profiling the External Customer
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday January 16, 2013All organizations have one thing in common: they depend on customers to stay in business. There are many ways to make customers want, need, and even depend on particular products and services, but in order to create this relationship it is important to understand the customer. Customers are multidimensional, which means they do not come in standard packages and act the same way. They have different backgrounds, expectations and experiences. Further complicating the issue, a customer may be buying the same service at two different times for two totally different reasons. Consider a restaurant patron who arrives one day with a group of business associates, but visits on another day with a group of friends for a special occasion. The two... -
The Principle of Parsimony
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday January 16, 2013
I admit up front that we are often unjustifiably defined by a single questionable deed rather than our hundreds of intervening positive good deeds. Such is often the case with some TSA endeavors in the past, perhaps more so by those odd deeds encountered at the relatively uncontrolled outer edges of the system than in the belly of the beast at HQ. However, [you knew there’d be a “however”, didn’t you...] sometimes something strange originates at the core that just gives the folks in the field a head-scratching moment that’s hard to describe, much less make sense of. By now, we are all reasonably well-versed on the pleasures of TSA Pre-check, which allows pre-vetted persons the joy of a less stressful and more clothed trip...