Used To Be

Headline: PIT Airport to hit airlines with big increases in landing fees.

Per passenger costs will jump 48 percent, from $11.19 to $16.62, under the $88.9 million operating budget adopted today by the Allegheny County Airport Authority board.

Landing fees will increase from $2.49 to $3.36 per 1,000 pounds and terminal fees will jump from $110 to $149 per square foot. The biggest increase will be in ramp fees, which will go from $197.47 to $574.74 per linear foot.

Southwest doesn't like it. Airtran doesn't like it. Seems like it's a trend.

There used to be steel mills here. When the steel mills were closing, there were steel workers sitting outside the gates, telling each other "they'll never keep it shut down, boys". The steel mills never came back - there are some boutique operations but steel on the old scale is gone.

After the mills were closed, for a long time the Airport was the new Steel. 18 million people a year passed through the PIT airport, and remarkably few of them wanted to be in Pittsburgh - they were in Rochester NY and wanted to be in Richmond VA. The County and USAirways made that happen.

The County wanted to make sure it stayed that way. In the mid-1990's Southwest wanted to start flying in and out of the Allegheny Airport, south of downtown, just like they fly to secondary airports in other cities. An Airport's got to have a fire department to support airline operations. The County shut down the firefighting facility at Allegheny to ensure that nobody would threaten USAir's fortress hub. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

We spent a half-billion of the public's money on a new "airport", although really it was a just a new terminal and a highway. They told people it was a new airport, but it wasn't. Sort of like when they took federal money for a beltway system and delivered the color belts. But the new airport brought lots of jobs and patronage. The money flowed. The terminal was world-class.

The world changed. Airlines started making money not by flying passengers, but by filing bankruptcy and busting contracts. New airlines hired kids and didn't pay benefits or retirements. Established airlines (now called legacy airlines ) had those expenses, so they filed bankruptcy and then they didn't have to pay the benefits or retirements that they'd agreed to.

I'd like to think that in a nobler time, robber barons and Frank Lorenzo wannabees who abrogated the agreements they had signed would be shunned in decent society. Lately they get bonuses.

Sometimes the Airlines didn't overtly bust their union contracts, which set pay rates for 727s, 737s, 747s, etc. They just bought planes that didn't meet the terms of the contracts, and so now they fly RJ's, which the airlines call Regional Jets, and the pilots call Replacement Jets. Want to know why you're flying in a cramped 75-seat RJ with a higher CASM than a 737? Union busting, plain and simple.

Airlines realized they could do more than bust their union contracts. They could file bankruptcy (maybe more than once) and break their agreements with vendors, airports, counties. Long term lease for fifty gates? Gone.

Nobody in the know is giving the true story, but USAir and the County stared hard at each other, and USAir effectively walked away. Used to be there were 600 USAir departures a day; now there's 58.

The County took on massive long-term debt in order to build the terminal for USAir, and USAir cancelled the agreement. The County still owes the debt. They divide the bills by the dwindling number of passengers, and the fees climb faster than an RJ on an August afternoon.

The airport's conundrum, I imagine, is whether or not to play the airline's game. Does the airport continue playing by the old rules and pay its bills, or do the lawyers fill out the correct forms and default on the debt? The airport is flirting with some of the airline's bag of tricks - they're more in the real . estate . development business than the airport business, and they recently toyed with drilling wells on the airport property before that became too entangled in County politics and the bidders walked away.

In a world of insufficient runway capacity, the airport is sitting on a way-underutlized gem of a facility, with four runways capable of supporting more operations that PHL, LGA, EWR, or JFK. But until they figure out how to make the numbers work, nobody's going to use those runways.

Where's the bail out for the airport? If PIT was a hedge fund they'd be getting help. I keep hoping that the wind will change, and somebody's going to start using the airport in a big way that involves a lot of jobs. But I'm afraid I'm just like those guys sitting outside the steel mills, waiting to wait up from the bad dream.

Until something changes, PIT is a used-to-be airport in a used-to-be town. Used to have direct flights. Used to have steel mills. Used to have a baseball team. They should change the three-letter luggage-tag identifier from PIT to U2B.

I'm NOT being down on the airport or the Burgh - it's just that until the region gets past the DABDA loop, it's not going to get better.

Google Marches On, Microsoft Responds

I'm going to completely avoid political comments in the run-up to the elections, except to say that if it were Google vs. Microsoft and I were a political analyst, I'd probably be saying: "Google's got the momentum, and they're changing the game faster than Microsoft can adopt to it. Google is doing what it wants, and Microsoft is marching to the tune of Google's drumbeat".

Microsoft has just announced that the next major version of Windows (if you track them sequentially through the broad consumer market, ignoring WIndows 1.0 and 2.0, then we have first Win3.0, second Win 3.1 and 3.11, third Chicago/Windows4/Windows95, 98, ME, fourth NT5.0/Windows2000, fifth XP, sixth Vista/WIndows 6.0, next Windows7 ) will be called Windows7, will be here real soon and it'll be much better than Vista. What this really means is - don't buy a computer before Christmas, or if you're a corporation don't buy new computers for your thousand desks, because something that might work better is coming soon. This seems like a bad way to run a business unless you're desperate.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that Office 14 (v11 was Office 2003, v12 was Office 2005, 13 was skipped due to triskaidecaphobia or the Vista botch) due on the street at some future date like late 2009, 2010 (not specified) will include lightweight web versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint - all the things that Google Apps presently offer. And Microsoft will let you store your data on the Cloud (just like- well, Google).

And Google won't get locked out of the web-based world if Microsoft plays tricks with Internet Explorer because Google has it's own browser now. I love it when a plan comes together.

What the Web is For

I get an email today that looked at first like it might possibly be a scam, a French graduate student in Copenhagen is researching a project on bicycle rain gear and asks my opinion - since, according to the internet, I have a small expertise on bicycle rain gear. (My bike blog is Number 1 in Google for "bike rain cape", and Number 2 for "bike rain".)

The message seemed too long and detailed to be a ruse, so I googled the name and it turns out to be a French grad student at Copenhagen Business Sschool. Her question dealt with women bike commuters in Copenhagen - they tend to drive on rainy days, but if a solution to rain on the face/makeup could be found, perhaps congestion and pollution could be avoided on rainy days.

I went to her blog and remarkably the most recent entry has a photo of a Bakfiets (if I've got the model right).

I suggested they consider the bike visors I saw in Beijing as an option for keeping the face dry.

Here's her blog entry about being Googled by an American. I have learned that "MORT DE RIRE !!!" or MDR is the French for LOL.

This is what the internet is all about - a French student in Copenhagen asks a fairly narrow-niche question of a Pittsburgher. It all happens in one day, doesn't really cost anything. This is what Vannevar Bush had in mind when he described the Memex, the precursor to our internet.

About Google Chrome

With the First Browser War almost forgotten (Microsoft/Internet Explorer beat Netscape) and the Second Browser War in midstream with Firefox and Safari eating up market share (and I grieve for plucky Opera, who was first to the scuffle but perhaps lost the marketing buzzwar), why would Google get into the Browser Business by developing Chrome, the newest browser on the block?

Google's business runs on browsers. The focus used to be on computers and operating systems - Wintel Pentium2 with Windows 98 and IE, for instance- but now the focus is on phones, palm pilots, blackberrys, mall kiosks, etc. The web is the new platform. This is the "ubiquitious web" (aka ubiweb, ubinet) - it's everywhere, it's embedded. So it makes sense for Google to ensure continual advancement of browsers by adding their own to the competition.

Why now? What browser do you think comes on Google's new Android handsets? This establishes Google's browser position in their new cellphone initiative.

Improving Google's environment. Chrome raises the bar for the other browser developers, especially in the way each tab is a separate process that can't crash the other tabs. Chrome's Javascript engine is lightning fast, and that's important since Javascript has come to life (again) with the new focus on AJAX-driven Web 2.0 websites. Google introduces a browser, competitors focus on improving their browsers, and Google wins.

Safeguarding Google's model. Google's business runs on advertising. Most of the current browsers have ad-blocker features, and that's not good if your business model is advertising. Now Google ensures that there's a very cool browser out there that won't block ads. Their challenge is to deliver a browser so nifty and fast that you'll live with the ads.

Attacking Microsoft's model. Microsoft's cashflow derives from (1) operating systems (and we just decided that OS's don't matter in the world of ubiweb) and (2) on Microsoft Office. Oh gosh, Google is offering web-based FREE alternatives to Word, Excel, Powerpoint - the key Microsoft cash cow. In fact, Google will store your documents in "the cloud", and probably back up your docs better than you will. Google's Chrome is built to ensure that Google Docs and Google Mail will work very well, and all of a sudden Google makes you wonder why you should give Microsoft any. money. at. all. Breathtaking.

Technically, Chrome is a great browser. It complies with W3C standards. Not a lot of distraction in the browser, so the websites beckon to the user. The Privacy Policy isn't as nice as you'd want - whatever you do on Google's browser becomes Google's property - but you're getting what you paid for. It's interesting that when you go into "stealth mode" (aka porn mode), your spouse can't see what you've done but Google sure tracks it.

My personal recommendation? Firefox first, Safari a close second. I tip to Firefox because of the AddOns and the notion that Firefox is Netscape's granddaughter; Safari on a PC just proves you bought the wrong computer, go get a Mac. Use Opera if you want, it's a great browser. Never, never use Internet Explorer. Leave Chrome alone because of the privacy issues, but be glad they're prompting the competition.

Justifying a Client's Blog, The Long Tail

Had a client meeting about strategic information. It's easier to compile information inside the company than outside, but the outside info is where all the fun is.

I've recommended blogging to the key leaders and they challenged me, what makes an interesting blog and 2) how do I do this without sinking a lot of time into it? I don't know that I had a good answer prepared, but I'm looking here, here, here, and elsewhere.

I need to develop solid rational arguments in favor of blogging to establish authority in the community. In a Web 2.0 world, community and communicated expertise (wikis, blogs) establish credibility in a way that can't be bought. I did find a brand-new blog by Georgia Berner, a Pittsburgh CEO, it's a good example of what I'd like my client to do

Had a discussion of the "long tail" market and the potential that niche websites have to pursue significant business from a lot of small customers that wouldn't be practical without the web. The interesting notion, of course, is that the area under the right side of the curve (orange, niche markets) is greater than the area on the left side of the curve (red, big business). link: Long Tail Blog

Finished "The Four Agreements"

Finished Reading "The Four Agreements".
Excellent (short) book, identifies a perspective on cultural scripts and expectations, humans as a auto-domesticated species, provides four behaviors (IPAB) for a better life: be Impeccable with your words, don't take anything Personal, don't make Assumptions, do your Best. The initial pitch is thought-provoking and potentially controversial, but the four prescriptions for a better life are valuable regardless of what you may think of his metaphysical position.

Artist's Show at Freebird Gallery Opening

Went to see a Gallery Opening at Freebird Gallery in the Strip District. The event was a Pittsburgh debut for a Los Angeles artist named Emmeric.


It was a great space and an interesting show. There was, I thought, a bit of tension in that the artist and the work was a bit edgy for Pittsburgh, probably a bit more LA than Burgh. We didn't stay long, we had a dinner reservation to make. My favorite piece was the first to be sold. It was interesting to watch and a nice night in the city.

My Website Calls Your Cellphone

I run a scheduling application for a group of sixty professionals where they pick their work schedule for the next year and then block vacation periods based on a roster and availability rules. When one person picks their vacation the next one can begin, which involves time latency and it generally results in a rather lurching process.

The web application is well accepted and the audience seems to like it. They make their picks more efficiently then previously, and they don't have to be physically present with "the books" anymore. The online picking process goes faster, and the remaining inefficiency is the time it takes to notify people that they can begin their pick.

Last year I implemented email notification - when person 12 picks, person 13 gets an email informing them it's okay for them to commence - and that reduced the time delay, but not significantly.

This year, after person 12 picks, the application sends a text message to person 13's cellphone (if they've opted in). This has been well received; initially just a few early adopters opted in, but there's been positive word-of-mouth and it's catching on.

The website needs to know the participant's cellphone number and their cellphone company, then it sends an email in SMS format to the phone number at the cellphone company. For instance, for cellphone number 724.555.1212 at Verizon, the email is 7245551212@vtext.com.

Some higher-end web applications have embraced SMS messaging - for instance, Southwest Airlines will provide you text message updates on flight arrival times. This seems like a killer crossover app that extends one media system (the web) into another media system (the cellphone). Generationally, I think that younger people may be more comfortable with it, but I think that the non-text-message crowd will be seduced by it. The trick from the marketing perspective is to use the text message to deliver messages that the user sees as very-high-value, or as a Harvard Business Review said about CRM "the goal is to woo them, not stalk them".