American Airlines Goes On A Diet

Airlines are taking huge steps to cut fuel consumption as fuel prices start inching up. Airlines are currently running on such slim profit margins that even slight increases in fuel costs can nearly cripple an airline if unprepared for the increase.   Airlines across the board have begun jacking up prices and have already started grounding aircraft to reduce capacity and maximize the usage of the current aircraft (read: extremely full aircraft).  I’ve even heard that some airlines are toying with the idea of offering variable rate tickets to transfer some of the risk of increasing oil prices on to the passenger – although I don’t know who in their right mind would buy such a thing?  I guess people bought variable interest home loans so maybe they will do the same for an initially cheaper airline ticket.

In addition to increasing fares and grounding aircraft, American Airlines is working especially hard to be prepared for increased oil prices.  They have put together an entire program called Fuel Smart consisting of fuel saving measures that individually may not have a significant impact, but across a fleet of hundreds of aircraft will begin to add up.  AA is currently working on modernizing a fleet of older Boeing 737 aircraft with weight a primary concern.  Here are the current 737 airplane weight saving changes:

• Replacing all 19,000 drink carts with new 12 lb lighter carts
• Testing a new paint coating that is meant to improve airflow over the airplane body
• Removing seat back phones and their heavy wiring
• Installing lighter seats
• Lighter carryon luggage bins
• Lighter TV monitors

          (not specifically related to the 737):

• Buying more tugs to tow airplanes from terminals to hangars for when maintenance or testing is needed instead of starting the jet engines to taxi

All told, these improvements add up to and estimated $370 million in savings relating to fuel burn.  I’m not sure how that relates to their overall operating budget but I’m sure it makes a difference.

This story gave me an idea though.  AA is investing in tugs to pull aircraft from the terminal to hangars and have apparently done the math to figure out that the extremely expensive tugs are still less expensive than taxiing the aircraft to maintenance hangars.  In fact, AA saved 3.6 million gallons last year just by towing instead of taxiing to maintenance hangars.  I started to think about the savings and wonder, wouldn’t airlines save even more money by towing the airplanes to the run-up area for takeoff? Especially if the airplane is delayed for takeoff. 

Imagine a tow-taxi procedure in operation at the larger airline hubs such as JFK, Atlanta, Dallas, and Chicago among others where departure delays regularly drag on up to three hours, if every jet sat with engines off, being both tugged and cooled via the much cheaper to operate Diesel or electric Tug engine, couldn’t that save the industry millions if not billions of fuel dollars?  I did a little poking around online to see if the idea has already been presented and sure enough, it’s out there - sort of. 

Apparently Virgin Atlantic had been working on this very idea as part of the airlines various “green” initiatives.  Virgin claimed that towing aircraft to a starting pad at the end of the runway could save two tones of CO2 per flight if it normally takes a non delayed airplane 10 minutes to taxi. Obviously a conservative estimate.  The project was gaining steam in 2006 with the first 6 flights starting with a tow to the runway when Virgin received information from both Boeing and Airbus stating that repeatedly towing airplanes at full gross weight would weaken the landing gear and potentially shear it off after repeated full capacity towing.  Additionally, they stated that they would not offer product support to aircraft that had been towed at full capacity. Virgin has since stated that the towing initiative is indefinitely grounded.

My question is this:  If reducing a few jet powered trips to the maintenance hangar saves AA 3.6 million, easily justifying the investment in new tugs, wouldn’t the drastic reduction in fuel consumption from an entire airline industry towing their airplanes to the runway be enough of a savings to justify investment in stronger landing gear that could handle the stress of towing a full aircraft?  I guess I am just surprised that when one airline is looking at even small weight reductions as a means of saving fuel, that there wouldn’t be enough industry pressure on Boeing and Airbus that they could find a solution if the airlines collectively requested a fix.  As it is, I read airline news on a daily basis, and have been for around three years, and had never heard of an airline talking about this solution until I looked for it.  As a note, airlines are not blind to the issue of taxi fuel burn as most if not all request that their pilots taxi using only one engine to reduce consumption, but even on one engine, the fuel burn is significant.

Oh well.  And I though I had a little jewel of an idea too!! 

Here are my links:

American Airlines Gets Creative to Save Fuell

Virgin’s green idea loses its pulling power  

  

Why is the Airline Industry Doing so Poorly?

This is an article I found in the December/January edition of Flightline, the Allied Pilots Association union publication, I found it fairly clearly described some of the reasons behind our poorly performing airline industry.

By Captian Robert Herbst:


One of the most frequent questions I get asked during
interviews is: "Why is the airline industry doing so poorly?"
There can be a long list of answers to that question depending
on if you are the passenger buying a ticket or the employee
working for an airline.
The question actually has an easy answer. Contrary to what
politicians frequently attempt to suggest, airfares on average are
simply too low to cover the ever-increasing and required costs
for safe air travel.
In 1990, the average passenger cost to fly one mile in the
United States was 13.4 cents. Twenty years later, the cost was only
12.7 cents per mile. During the last two decades, the average U.S.
domestic airline passenger fare measured on a per mile cost basis
stayed in a range of 12.0 cents to 14.6 cents. Note: This is revenue
to the airlines and does not include government taxes, fees, security
charges etc. that are now approaching 30 percent per passenger fare.
Comparing 2009 with 1990, the cost of air travel decreased
by 9.9 percent while the Consumer Price Index for inflation
increased by 64.1 percent (cost for air travel excludes government
taxes and fees).
If airline passenger travel costs had kept up with CPI inflation
over the last 20 years, the average fare to fly one mile in 2009
would have been 22 cents per mile, a 59 percent increase over
the actual cost.
Here are a few staggering statistics for the U.S. airline industry:
• In 1990, there were 460 million passengers. In 2009, there
were 704 million passengers.
• In 1990, there were 546,000 airline employees. In 2009,
there were 536,000 airline employees.
• The U.S. airline industry has lost money in 12 of the last 20
years and accumulated a net loss of approximately $29
billion (excludes airline bankruptcy and reorganization
write-downs).
• The price of jet fuel for 2009 was at a four-year low and still
240 percent higher than the airlines paid in 1990.
• Since Jan. 1, 1990, there have been 98 U.S. airlines file
for bankruptcy.
After 20 years of on and off airline industry growth, there
are now 2 percent fewer airline employees responsible for a 53
percent increase in passengers. The numbers make it easy to see
why there are so many complaints against the airline industry.
Sometimes the old cliché: “You get what you pay for,” has
true meaning.
The chart below provides average passenger revenue per
mile for U.S. airlines, commuter rail, and intercity/Amtrak travel
as compared to the Consumer Price Index from 1990 to 2009.

Night Flight with Joel

So I didn't exactly make it out to the airport before sunset, but I still managed to go flying!  What's more, I was able to get my brother Joel out for the flight which is exciting.  While he had been flying with me before as a rear seat passenger, this was his first time in the front where he could do some of the flying himself.  Here are some of the photos from this evening:








It's hard to tell, but Joel is currently flying the airplane at around 3,000 feet!!




In addition to quickly picking up how to make controlled turns in the aircraft, Joel also managed to smoothly take off at the Yolo County airport with only a little rudder assistance from me, good job Joel!!

I want to go fly in that sky!!

We finally got some good weather today after seemingly weeks of bad weather keeping me on the ground, and just look at that blue sky!!  A pilot couldn't ask for much better weather than we have today, cool temperatures and only the slightest breeze, I have a serious itch to get up there.  It's been since January 14th since I last flew which feels like way too long in my book.  Plus, I've been doing mostly night flights which is great fun in it's own way, but common, blue sky like today deserves to be flow in!!  We'll see, maybe I can pull myself together and make an early evening flight happen.

Rest Rules Could Create Pilot Shortage?

(From a recent AVweb news article)

American Airlines says proposed rules intended to reduce pilot fatigue would require it to hire an additional 2,325 pilots at a cost of $514 million annually, and seemed to suggest the industry-wide effect could be crippling. The rules would effectively decrease maximum time on duty for pilots. In November, American offered public comments on the rules, saying "if AA needs 2,300 more pilots to meet the proposed rules, other certificate holders will need many additional pilots, too." Stakeholders also claim that the regulation's cost will be substantially higher than the FAA's estimate of $1.25 billion over 10 years. 

The Air Transport Association says the rule would cost more than 15 times that figure. As for the total number of pilots needed to meet the requirements of the bill, American said, "The industry figure will be so large as to raise the question of from where they all will come." American wasn't the only carrier to express concern.

Southwest commented on the proposal, saying "we feel than many of the rule changes will impact our operation as dramatically, if not more so, than the impact on any other carrier." The proposed rules call for nine hours rest between shifts and 30 consecutive hours away from work, each week. The proposal arose with support of people who lost family members in the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407. There were no survivors of that flight, so the exact role of fatigue is unknown. However, the investigation found that neither member of the cockpit crew had slept in a bed the night before the crash, both had long commutes, and fatigue may have affected crew performance. In February 2010, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman called the crash "an opportunity to reexamine fatigue in aviation."

Fatigue in aviation has been on the NTSB's Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements since 1990. The FAA accepted comments on the proposed rules (PDF) through Nov. 15, 2010.

My comments:

Reduced safety due to short crew rest periods and long duty hours has been a major concern especially after the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 that killed all on board.  Crew rest was cited as a possible contributing factor as neither flight crew member had what many would consider to be adequate sleep prior to the flight.  

What I hear in this news story is an airline industry unwilling to make small changes to ensure the public receive safe air transportation.  I understand that decreasing the length of time a pilot is allowed to remain on duty, while also increasing crew sleep periods will require an added expense to the airlines, but no airline is being singled out to carry this burden. Rather, the ruling would affect the entire airline industry and the cost would  be passed down to the consumer.

While the airline industry at first, and later consumer advocacy groups may balk at an increase in cost, the public outrage that was voiced immediately after the Colgan crash over the extreme personal loss following a zero survival crash, should be enough to remind us that the consequences of industrywide pilot fatigue are far to great to warrant complaints over a small increases in ticket prices.  

Finally, the airline industry is expressing concern over an inadequate supply of pilots to support a change like this.  In fact, there is likely to be a significant pilot supply issue over the next 10 years.  Here are the numbers, airline industry experts expect airline passenger traffic to double by 2020, mainline carriers are expected to need to train 17,000 pilots a year between now and 2020 - roughly 3500 more per year than we are currently training to fill seats vacated by retiring boomers, as well as the pilot seats of roughly 16,000 aircraft on order through 2020. 

The problem is, it's hard to attract smart college graduates to the airline industry when entry level pay into a regional airline remains somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000 per year, especially when most airlines are willing to publicly balk at the idea of increasing pilot quality of life by increasing rest periods and reducing duty duration to a level that doesn't cause regular and often life threatening pilot fatigue.  

Decreasing Pilot Population - Why?

Many recent pilot news stories have focused on the issue of a dwindling pilot population as many WWII era pilots pass on with few young people filling their spots; many are struggling to figure out how to enable more to join the ranks while also keeping current pilots active.  The FAA estimates the total number of active airmen in 1999 at 635,472 compared to only 590,349 in 2008, a decline of 45,123 pilots in only 9 years.  Those numbers are especially staggering when you realize that decline is occurring as population overall is continuing to grow. What is especially dissapointing is that there seems to be a large audience of people who would love to become a pilot but remain unable to pursue the dream.  If you attend just about any air show or Red Bull air race, you will see thousands of people in wide eyed wonder at the airplanes and the pilots who fly them, and no doubt almost every person in attendance is at that moment wishing they could themselves fly an airplane.  But the numbers are dismal.  Even if they do start training, many will never complete the flight training program.  Of all the people who start a flight training program, based on AOPA statistics, only 20% of them will end up completing the program.  In fact, I almost became one of the 80% that didn’t make it.  Let me back up a bit. . .

I can’t figure out exactly when I first caught the flying bug.  I remember going to the Castle Air Museum with my Dad as a kid, and I also remember going to the Seattle Air and Space Museum at some point, but I didn’t right away say “I’m going to become a pilot one day.” Not to say I wasn’t fascinated by airplanes – I still vividly remember sitting out in our backyard watching formations of jets that would fly low over our house during training flights out of the old Mather Air force Base. But becoming a pilot myself had hardly crossed my mind as it seemed like a thing you were only able to do in the military or as the hobby of wealthy old doctors. The first time I really thought about pursuing flight training is when I happened on a website with what seemed like a very reasonable estimate of training expenses.  The amount I saw was $4,985 making me think, well maybe flying isn’t just for “rich people.”  The cost seemed reasonable to me.

Fairly soon after seeing that number, all those memories of airplane museums, and jets flying low overhead suddenly came back to me but in every airplane I saw myself at the controls!! OK, maybe not exactly but the point is that a switch had been turned and I had to go for it!  I took out a loan for almost $8,000 wanting to be sure I wouldn’t run out of funds before completing the program and I also wanted to cover some of the other training expenses including charts, books, and a nice aviation headset.  So I started training at the beginning of August 2006 at a rate of two flights per week and was almost finished in December with only 2 – 3 weeks until my check ride when I ran out of funds.  That’s right, more than $3,000 over the advertised price and I wasn’t even done yet.  It took me until September the next year to pick up where I’d left off and after a couple months spent relearning material, I finally took my check ride on the 28^th of December 2007.  I earned my Private Pilots license with 65.1 hours and total training related expenses (including a $400 headset) of $10,465.97. 

Now, getting back to the point is that I was nearly a part of the 80% of people who never complete flight training. I was only able to finish the program because I put college student loan funds towards the training and was able to remain focused and determined to finish the program no matter what.  Now the cost of training on its own may not always be a major issue, as some have pointed out, many motorcycles cost that much and there are a lot of young people buying motorcycles.   The significant difference I see is that after you get a pilots license you don’t own an airplane, you don’t have 10k worth of flight credits available to go out and enjoy your new adventure toy, and in fact the average 4 seat airplane costs in the range of $95 – 115 per hour to rent making it a challenge to mindlessly enjoy on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  For more than two years after I earned my license I was paying $214 per month on my flight training loan meaning if I ever wanted to fly, I had to first factor in the flight loan, then add on the individual flight expense. For example, one of the shorter yet still meaningful flights I’ve taken from my home base airport in Davis, CA is the 2.1 hour roundtrip flight to the Half Moon Bay airport.  The Average Cessna 172 would cost around $220 to rent for that trip meaning a pilot in my situation would need to budget $435 that month for flying.  That may not be completely out of the question but Half Moon Bay is still one of the shortest destination flights one could possibly fly – making most destinations out of the average young persons budget until the flight training loan is taken out of the picture.

Let me generally recap the problem here: the pilot population is dwindling as WWII and even boomer pilots retire from the cockpit, even as wide eyed youth try to become pilots, only 20% of those who try will succeed, and of those who do become pilots, many will not remain current as airplane rental rates can be prohibitively expensive for anything more than quick local flights.  So maybe my youthful perception that flying is a hobby generally restricted to wealthy old doctors was more accurate than I would like to believe.  But I don’t think it needs to be so out of reach.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately and believe there are some reasonable solutions that will help to keep the spirit of adventure alive and within reach for a larger group of people. So decreasing pilot population is the issue, but what’s the solution?  On my next few posts I will try and actually address some of the problems with possible solutions.

 Talking points for the next post:

• How to create a flight training environment that encourages quality flight instruction that succeeds in graduating more than 20% of students.
• How to build a stronger support network for pilots who have recently obtained their license.
• Use modern business techniques of marketing to bring more pilots into the flight club while offering proper customer service to keep them coming back.
• Working with banks to offer more funding options for flight training.
• And the list goes on . . . for next time

Night Flying

N711PG    Cessna 172 CalAggie CAFF Cal Aggie Flying Farmers

Night flight holds a certain magic for me and is one of the most peaceful times to fly with typically calm air, less air traffic, and a quiet radio, each contributing to an especially pleasant flight environment. As you lift off the ground and slowly climb above it all, the lights of the city begin to lie out in front and all around you, slightly twinkling as you fly along. There is nothing actually magical about city lights at night, but the sight of a city from the air still manages to make me feel something, maybe even a little starry eyed.

Flying at night is so pleasant it can have the negative effect of lulling one into a false sense of security. The added dangers of night flying can really add up to make it a whole different animal from day flight, to the point that I’m surprised the FAA hasn’t required a unique rating specifically for night flight. Here are some of the more challenging aspects of flying at night: at altitude, it can be almost impossible to distinguish if the horizon you think you see, is the bottom of a cloud or the top of the earth, a lack of depth perception on especially dark nights requires a pilot pay special attention to altitude when near mountains, when close to the ground it is hard to distinguish the lights of a moving airplane from ground lights – which reminds me of a flight last summer.

I was on a night flight with a buddy of mine and had just done a landing at the Woodland airport which is just around the airplane corner from my little Davis airport, on the way back we decided to take a couple of turns over Dixon, not that there’s much to see, it’s just more interesting that doing turns over the pitch black earth. After we impressed each other with our turns around a point, we headed back over to the Davis (KEDU) airport. To properly set up for the approach to KEDU, you fly east from Dixon until 45 degrees east of the runway, then you turn in to enter the traffic pattern. While heading east from Dixon, I caught a flash of light just off my right wing that was barely discernable from a light on the ground when a never seen before instinct took over and I quickly banked hard left. Afterword my buddy confirmed that that flash of light that I’d seen was a helicopter that had apparently seen the flash of my airplane lights and quickly banked away as well. Never before and certainly not since have I ever come so close to another aircraft, though I still never saw the helicopter, something just told me that the light I saw wasn’t on the ground and was in fact closer than it should be, so I reacted.

What I really took away from that moment was to never become lulled into a false sense calm and comfort when flying, especially at night. I remember back when I was in flight training when my instructors would repeatedly tell me to keep up my “scan” which is pilot talk for continuing to look out all the windows for oncoming traffic. What I never understood until that night flight, is how little time it takes for two approaching airplanes to close in on each other. I’m still not sure how close I was to the Helicopter that day, but certainly close enough to make me appreciate having had the correct gut reaction to bank hard when I did.

Flying at night, low over a city of lights is a really special experience that allows me to really appreciate the joy and freedom of flight while also keeping my flying skills and pilot instinct alive and kicking - and I guess that’s part of the reason I keep coming back for more!