Joy of Flying: Economics

Now it is clear that flying and things of the wing are passionate pursuits of mine. Indeed they fill much of my day in the form of thoughts and aspirations; already today in the office I have considered my new electric attitude indicator, wondered about the sale of MPP and read almost all of the latest FLYING magazine and I am still interested in what the evening will hold. Aviation is just as much a part of me as my liver is and so it is something that I take for granted. My wife doesn’t even bat an eye when I suggest that my shop needs a windsock above it or that I “need” NEXRAD weather capability in my airplane. Indeed if she were to walk in one day and see the hundreds of models and prints and other airplane associated things boxed up she would likely call the ambulance for something would most certainly be wrong with me.

But flying is not all about the wing. It has been said that the wing is what keeps an airplane flying but what gets it off the ground in the first place is money. More than anything aviation is about money. You can have the nicest Lancair IVP in the world but lacking money (and in its case, a lot of it) it will sit right where it stands gathering dust and refuse from things that do not require money to fly, merely the seed to keep their wings flapping.

You blow a radial engine up, you will write a very large check. You waste the turbocharger in your T210, you will need the equivalent of the downpayment on a very nice home to fix it. You decide that flying localizer approaches is passe’ and you would prefer the RNAV world with lots of color and moving maps, consider your Honda Civic and you will have equivalent value to what that pretty color TV in your panel will cost you. Fly to Hilton Head from PKB in a 172 for lunch, you will spend every bit of $200.00 on those burgers.

Money and economics determine everything. You can buy a nice Aztec for a relatively small amount of dough but if you want to fly it and insure that if you barf an engine and end up in a residential neighborhood on top of someone’s new Ford Excursion that someone will cover the cost of that misadventure, you are going to shell out a LOT of money for fuel and insurance. It is incredible how much stuff costs.

Now consider the 5000 NM trip that my wife and I just took to Hawaii; specifically Oahu. James Michener wrote an epic by the name of “Hawaii” and in it he described the perilous journey of some 6 months that it took to sail a brig from Boston to the same islands. My wife and I got there in a total of 12 hours, 2 of which were part of the layovers.

In 10 hours we covered 5000 NM and then just a week later we did it again in reverse. We did it for about $1000.00 or roughly $0.10/NM which is actually better than what I get in terms of mileage in my Honda. I just downloaded information from expedia.com about a fictional trip from Columbus, OH to Guam. For $1254.00 you can do a round trip. That is amazing considering that some 10 years ago the same trip cost $3000.00. So in real terms, the trip has not just gotten better by 1/3rd, adjusted for inflation the trip has dropped to about ¼ of its cost in just 10 years. If you don’t think that is remarkable, especially when gasoline prices have risen by well over 50% in one year, then I doubt that there is anything that would impress you.

But…

There is a downside to all of this. One of the reasons for the dramatic drop in costs in travel stems from reduction in overhead and increases in efficiency. My wife and I watched the events unfold around a JetBlue A320 which was suffering from a certain malady of its nosewheel, one that has been experienced by other A320s we were to find out, and we were doing so in front of the TV outside the Baskin and Robbins on Hickam Air Force Base. My wife seemed very concerned about this whole deal until I got a good look at the airplane circling. Mains down, nosewheel down, I suspected that the problem was a gear locking problem or a failure of the gear to retract. I looked at my wife and said, “This will be a non-event.”

She looked at me as if I was intoxicated. “How can this be a “non-event”?

“Gear problems are well understood and expected failure modes, I am certain that there is a checklist for whatevcr it is and nobody is foaming the runway so I am pretty certain that the gear is locked. This will be just fine.”

Her concern was understandable from the fact that she was about to board a 757 for a 5 hour flight across the Pacific to Los Angeles. When I remarked that the 757 was perhaps the safest airliner we could be on for the trip, she sort of rolled her eyes and we continued on to the store to finish shopping for…

…food…

You see the airlines no longer serve you food.

Where do you go to learn how to fly?

The reason why a JetBlue A320 landing and in the process machining away half of its nosegear rim on a runway at LAX is a non-event is because insurance companies have demanded that air travel become the safest means of transportation on the planet. They do this by expecting their pilots to maintain a skill level that is impeccable. There are modeled and anticipated failure modes for everything. They certified the GE-90 engine for the 777, an engine that allows for several hours of single engine ETOPS in the event of failure, by shooting frozen birds through the thing while it was running. They don’t break and if by shear odds, the kind that Las Vegas casino owners would kill for, one does fail the odds of the second one dying before landfall is made makes the entire process of calculating odds a waste of time.

There was considerable hand wringing last year when a 747 Captain elected to continue flying to his destination after he lost power in one of his four engines. An understanding of the nature of certification would have settled all of that and assured people that proceeding on was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There was no danger to anyone on board and the Captain probably saved the company many tens of thousands of dollars in fuel costs and the passengers hours or days of inconvenience by getting them to their destination on the first try.

Such events are an example of two things becoming very prominent in commercial air travel; extreme reliability of machinery and pilots who are cut out of a very rigid and well defined mold. People got upset because an experienced Captain made a calculated and reasonable decision based upon experience and probability. People were upset because he actually used some judgment. There is no room for any deviation of skills or actions in aviation. One of the results of this is that airline travel has become another form of public transportation. It is just a bus by any other name.

This is exemplified by the growing number of portly airline pilots that I see in airports. When I was a kid, the only airline pilots were the ones who looked like they had just traded their F101 Voodoo for a 727. They all looked like military pilots. Their eyes were steely and their physiques and demeanors bespoke of men ready to do “battle” with the air. Today I find myself glancing back as I see some guy who reminds me of Ralph Cunningham towing his roll-aboard and map case down the jetway; four stripes on his cuffs. The image is even better when I see the same fellow munching on a Big Mac as he walks. Happens all the time today.

Part of me rejoices in all this change because I will think nothing of buying two roundtrip tickets to Sacramento next January for my son and I to visit my sister and her family. I will spend less on those tickets than I will make in a week of work. Fly across the United States and back for less than a week’s wages. There is nothing short of amazing about that notion. But part of me is saddened because as airliners become buses that anyone and everyone can, and does, afford and use, the age of elegance that marked the flying boats and the Super Constellations is all but dead. There is nothing elegant about airline travel today. There is nothing sacred about being a passenger as we rudely found out when we deplaned in Chicago to stretch our legs between LA and Columbus and came back to find that the American Flight Attendants had felt so pressured to do a 45 minute turn that they ‘tossed’ all of our food without considering their manifest and who was continuing on. The fact is that they just don’t care.

My wife and I are not rude people or demanding. We left a Burberry Shopping bag in our seats, obviously filled with recently purchased food and without a pause the FA’s tossed it out with the trash.

I responded to this by telling the senior FA that 1. They have a manifest and they should have checked it for passengers continuing on since it is a security issue and 2. 45 minutes is a lifetime at Southwest. They would be well advised to pick up something from them because if they couldn’t turn a Super 80 in 45 minutes, Chapter 11 was soon too follow. Our $20.00 reimbursement was tossed unceremoniously into my wife’s lap. For my part I resisted the temptation to tell the Captain to submit his resume to Southwest because of the Chapter 11 thing. I now wish I had because I doubt that he has any idea what is happening in the rear. He’ll join the ranks of unemployed pilots stuttering through their Air Inc Job search trying to figure out where all the good times have gone.

Arrival at my home was met with a phone call on my wife’s part to AA’s customer service rep, not because of the food, that was long forgotten, but because all of our luggage arrived with slices in it. It looked just as if someone had taken a box knife to the luggage and sliced 1-2 inch slices into it. The disembodied voice at AA asked why we had not presented that to the people in Columbus. We just traveled 12 hours and I had to work the next day and adjust to 6 time zones, we thought customer service was there so we could go home and call and make our claim. Nope. Sorry. No help to be found.

I have stated before that under 1000 NM I will always drive if I have any choice in the matter. The simple math in all of that is that I can do 1000 NM by car in a long day of driving and at the end of the trip I have a car to use and none of the hassle that the airlines dish out. Over 1000 NM it gets to be a bit difficult and certainly a problem logistically because you just cannot safely do that in a day. For that kind of trip I will still face the indignity of getting onboard an airliner.

It is also worth noting that I am not restricted from carrying a knife or pair of scissors in my car. I did not mention that some 1300 NM out over the Pacific enroute to Honolulu I was asked to assist a passenger in distress? While starting an IV line on the passenger, now patient, in the back of the 757 I found myself with only a single syringe from the “medical kit” on board and no scissors to cut tape. Try treating a heart attack patient with one syringe. Fortunately for the patient it was a much simpler problem, but as I rigged a solution in the night over the ocean I found it ironic that the first Flight Attendants were in fact Registered Nurses and today they are at best uncertain of how to care for the most basic of problems. Crossing oceans without a pair of scissors or even a dose of morphine for pain. Add to this a passenger who thought nothing of getting on an over the ocean flight with a known medical problem that had every likelihood of deteriorating enroute and you have the perfect illustration as to why the bus is the best descriptor of modern commercial travel. There is nothing unique about crossing oceans today.

Captain, update that resume. Herb, et al, get those 737s ETOPs certified.

In my practice I care for several airline captains. Stories of people urinating in the aisles are not unknown, stories of people slobbering drunk raiding the liquor on the beverage cart are not unknown and I even know one pilot who is close personal friends with another captain who happened to be piloting an airplane in which a passenger was able to bring a pig, yes swine, barnyard animal, pig, on board as a human assistant animal. Public transportation in all respects, now if buses would just serve booze. Go to Central America and chickens and pigs are not uncommon on a bus.

Do I want my wife exposed to this stuff again? Will I be willing to pay an additional $50 -$100 to avoid American Airlines? YOU BET.

First class passengers, the largely business oriented group that are in some miniscule part funded by my stock holdings in their companies, still enjoy first class and are treated well accordingly, meals and hot towels abound. Ironically those of us who are actually paying for our tickets and not using a business travel account are treated to the absurdities already documented. Nobody cares because they know that those of us in the back by and large are riding American not because we want to ride American but because by some Byzantine and alchemical twist of fates the AA flight from Columbus to Honolulu on the 14th returning the 21st of September was priced cheaper than any other going the same way. FA’s see us as just another group of penny-pinching bargain shoppers deserving of worse service than we might get at a WalMart. I am no kidding, you get better service today at a WalMart than you do with most major airlines.

Southwest walk up fares are pricier than most airlines and they do not fly to Hawaii, but they remain committed to keeping passengers feeling good about Southwest. It works.

Now back to the disjointed question above; Where do you go to fly?

This payoff of cheap flying has come not in small part because insurance companies have demanded such exacting standard in flying and made it so safe that people feel safe enough to get on the planes to go places. This has driven up demand, increased services and driven down costs. The economics are much like that with home computers. The first personal computer I ever saw was a basic Texas Instruments scientific calculator programmed by small plastic strips that sold for $200.00 in 1977. That calculator did less than the $15.00 scientific that I can buy at WalMart. (There it is again, I wonder if WalMart will play into this later?) More people more airplanes more companies more competition. How to stay competitive?

Curiously, the airlines have not read “Nuts” or they happen to employ such imbeciles as CEOs, that they cannot seem to figure out the system. The system so well described by Mr. Kelleher. Amazingly while Southwest keeps gaining market share the airlines are being forced into a Southwest mold as they speed toward Chapter 11. Lest you think I am being too harsh on others consider that I own US Air, United and AirTran stock, I myself have failed to purchase Southwest stock.

If you are wondering, Yes, if I were the CEO of American, I could do a better job.

Insurance companies have made it such that almost anyone can afford to buy a light twin, say an Apache, but you will not be able to fly it with coverage for the odd engine failure over downtown Detroit because the insurance company will make keeping your insurance in force so expensive through mandated re-currency training you will not risk leaving the ground. It is the same phenomenon with flight schools. Our last flight school locally just closed and re-opened as a flying club because the insurance cost so much that it was economically unviable to stay open.

Think LSA will change the complexion of flying in the United States? When a new “Cub” costs $80,000.00 the hull insurance alone will make it cost prohibitive to own one. Insurance companies already demand frequent simulator training to insure a twin pilot, how long before the same is required of the 210 pilot and how long after that will a 172 pilot need an appointment at SimCom just to keep his insurance? That is something that LSA manufacturers need to understand. Unless they can lower the insurance premiums on their airplanes through reduction of the cost of the airplane they will not sell enough of them to make the concept of LSAs available to the masses, which I might point out was the entire reason behind creating LSAs in the first place.

Is an aviation community solely made up of Airline pilots and very wealthy bored people who can afford to travel to Florida to find a flying school really the aviation community that we want in the United States? Mind you, I can afford to fly. I will continue to afford to fly, but I am really worried that the future of flying in the USA will be only people who learned to fly to get a job and the odd group of us ducks who want to build our own airplanes. This is not the group of people got us to the moon and who created wonder in the form of actually flying to pancakes on a Saturday morning. In my mind this country needs to be filled with people who learn to fly a Piper Cub at their local airport. That is what motivated me. I spent almost every day of my childhood in Redding, California looking over the fence of St Joseph elementary school at the ramp of Benton Airpark and dreaming about what flying would actually be like.

When we demand flying become so common that everyone can afford it, ultimately we make flying so expensive that nobody will be able to do it. Does that make sense? In the process we lose the magic of actually controlling the machine as it lifts off of the grass on a crisp fall morning. We might get a ticket from Cincinnati to Phoenix for a day’s pay, but we will never be able to enjoy the experience of traveling from Cincinnati to Columbus for a hamburger because the cost of actually doing that will actually be more than the trip to Arizona.

There is no wonder in a bus.

Fly Safe,

FF