A Question of Fracking Priorities

Drilling Is Just The Beginning

Delta's PIT - CDG flight draws full $5M subsidy

Excellent post at NullSpace regarding Delta's direct flight, PIT to Paris.

The Pittsburgh Business Journal reports that the Allegheny Conference will have to pay the full $5 million subsidy to compensate for revenue shortfalls.

The agreement between the Allegheny Conference and Delta is a two-year contract stating that if the flight doesn’t reach a revenue threshold, the Conference will pay the airline up to $5 million during year one, and up to $4 million during year two.

• The average load factor over the first eight months was 68 percent. Delta’s average load factor for transatlantic flights between June and January 2009 was 83.6 percent.
  
  
• What the Conference projected as a $582 average one-way fare for a trip from Pittsburgh to Paris turned out to be an average $412 rate in 3Q 2009.
  
  
• With about 407 daily passengers traveling internationally at PIT during the third quarter of 2009, about 88 of those utilized the Paris-Pittsburgh flight.
  
  
• Two Indian cities — Mumbai and Bangalore — are among the top 10 destinations of the Pittsburgh-Paris flight’s travelers.
  

My take-away is this reflects a government inability to affect the marketplace. In a way, the Allegheny Conference subsidy contract was a non-government (NGO) stimulus to jump-start international service at the airport. After one year, it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe it's too soon to tell.

Or maybe it's a leading indicator for our other, larger government stimulus programs.

New Airline / Flight School In Pittsburgh

The Post Gazette brings us the story of Gulfstream International Airlines, which may reintroduce air service from PIT to Harrisburg, DuBois, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and other smallish cities. They're going to fly 19-seat Beechcraft 1900's, which are really nice airplanes.

No less a person than County Executive Dan Onorato said, "We are thrilled that Gulfstream International Airlines is interested in restoring important regional flights to our world-class airport".

On the face of it, it's more good news. It's evident that people are working hard to attract new airline service, and I applaud that. For instance, the recent incentivized/ guaranteed service to Paris, France with Delta - that was a great move.

The thing is: We know Delta Airlines.
We've flown Delta Airlines.
This Gulfstream Int'l outfit is no Delta Airlines.

Gulfstream flies as a Continental Connection carrier. You remember Continental Connection, the umbrella outfit that outsources airline passengers to low-cost contractors, like Continental Connection Flight 3407 which crashed while approaching Buffalo Niagara International Airport recently. The passenger's tickets said Continental, but the airplane and crew were Colgan Air.

From Wikipedia:

Gulfstream International Airlines has been under additional scrutiny due to three recent fatal crashes that all involved pilots that were trained at the Gulfstream Training Academy (its sister company), the last one in February 2009, where 50 died on Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, NY.

In May 2009, the federal government issued a fine of 1.3 million dollars against Gulfstream International Airlines after the Federal Aviation Administration found that it had falsified flight time records, allowing crews fly longer hours than allowed by law, and providing below standard aircraft maintenance. The fine is being disputed at this time.

• In July 1997, the airline's entire fleet of Shorts 360-300s were repossessed by the leasing company due, in part, to maintenance irregularities that included the welding of hydraulic lines
  
• Despite its status as a mere stepping stone in the minds of most pilot employees, the company was able to keep whistle blowing in check through selective disclosure of training documents

It's not just an airline, it's an adventure

Gulfstream is not just an airline; it's a flight school. The Gulfstream Training Academy (check the site, very TopGun) teache$ people to be pilots. It's a flight school. Then the graduates can pay to be copilots on your Continental Connection flight! They pay tens of thousands of dollars, get 250 hours of experience as a copilot, and the airline pays them $8 an hour. They are, essentially, taking lessons with uninformed passengers in the back.

Here's the menu: for $25K they'll declare you a co-pilot (aka first officer) in three months; for $48K they'll declare you a pilot in five months. If you don't have any flying experience at all, for $73K they'll make you all that in 14 months. The brochure calls the time you spend flying around (pretending to be a copilot) the "first officer internship". George Orwell would be proud.

Your family sitting in the back of the Beech 1900? Priceless.

It's really a brilliant "business model". In addition to charging passengers for snacks, drinks, headsets, blankets, and checked baggage - hey, let's charge somebody who wants to learn to be a copilot, and let them ride up front!

From USA Today:

Capt. Marvin Renslow, who was at the controls when a Colgan Air commuter plane went wildly out of control and plunged to the ground on Feb. 12, trained with Gulfstream in 2004 and 2005, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. Colgan Air was operating under contract for Continental Airlines at the time of the Buffalo crash.

The copilot on a Comair flight that crashed in 2006 after trying to take off from a dark, closed runway in Lexington, killing 49 of 50 people aboard, also worked at Gulfstream, according to NTSB records. So did the two pilots on a Pinnacle Airlines flight who were joyriding in an empty jet before snuffing out both engines and crashing in Missouri in 2004.

I really do applaud the people trying to rebuild air service. But I've got a message for Dan Onorato: you'd be better off with MagLev. Or Greyhound. Or anybody where the co-pilot isn't an intern, paying for the experience.



Related Posts: 30 Years of Outsourcing Safety.

Two Tickets to Paris? Nice!

The Post-Gazette is carrying advertisements for free airfare to Paris. Winners must complete their round-trip travel by December 31st.

UGMT (usually, generally, most of the time) when a city or airport is giving away tickets between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's because either (1) they'll lose the service if they don't get a certain number of passengers per year, or (2) they've guaranteed a certain number of passengers a year, and they're trying to make good on the guarantee.

Does this mean that passengers and revenues have not met the levels that the County agreed to guarantee?

So now the County is going to have to make good on the difference between the guaranteed passenger revenue and the actual money, and so the County is giving away free seats (that they're we're paying for anyway)?

• Could there possibly be a more unfriendly URL than http://www.flypittsburgh.com/Win_Round_Trip_Air_Fare_For_Two_to_Paris_Courtesy_of_FlyPittsburgh_com_and_Delta_Air_Lines ?
  
• Couldn't there be a more Pro-Pittsburgh tagline - "From the Paris of Appalachia to that other one over there"?
  
• I'd like to clarify that I think that it was a good move for the County to guarantee a certain activity level in order to reestablish international flights. It was a smart thing to do and a legit risk.

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Two Tickets to Paris. Nice.

Pittsburgh to Paris via Delta : Tres Bien N'at

The PostGazette reports that Delta airlines will commence Pittsburgh to Paris flights in a B757 starting April-May 2009. The new flights are generally recognized as a win for the Airport, even though local entities are responsible for guaranteeing $9M in revenues for the first two years.

Guaranteeing revenue for the airline is a bit like self-publishing and calling yourself a published author - you're paying for it - but these days it seems reasonable for the community to put some "skin in the game", and if $9M gets us international service for two years and begins some virtuous economic cycles, it's money well spent. And inevitably, it's a zero-sum world: Delta's PIT flight competes with Continental's Cleveland-Paris flight.

It seems interesting that the new flights were announced by the County Executive and his minions rather than the Airport Authority. Either way, Bravo Zulu to whoever made it happen, it's the first good news for the airport in a long time. Also, I can't put N'at in the post title without giving Eggs N'At a shout-out.