The Gimli Glider, one of the greatest “feel good” stories in aviation history, was retired by Air Canada yesterday. The plane flew from Montreal to Tucson before heading to Mojave where it will probably meet its fate as a bunch of Molson cans. Actually, there is hope that someone will rescue it, but the future is up in the air right now.

For those who don’t know, you’ll be surprised to hear the the Gimli Glider was not some newfangled type of aircraft. It was just a 767-200. Actually, it was this ship:

What you’ll be amazed to know is that back in 1983, it ran out of fuel at cruising altitude due to an error converting between metric and imperial measurements. The skilled crew was able to glide the airplane down for over 100 miles, line up with an old abandoned military runway that was being used for go-kart races at that instant, and successfully bring the plane back to Earth without killing a single person. Sure the nose gear collapsed, but the plane was to be repaired and fly for 25 more years.

Where is Gimli, you ask? It’s about 55 miles north of Winnipeg. Where is Winnipeg? Find the border between North Dakota and Minnesota and head north.

If you’d like some more reading on this topic, there’s a good article on the retirement here. You can also buy a book and a movie that were made on the subject.

I’ve just survived what may possibly have been the first tornado warning I’ve ever endured living in LA. And yes, I grew up here. I’m not quite sure why they’d bother doing that because none of us have any clue what we’re supposed to do if there’s a tornado nearby. It’s not like we have basements here.

I swear I’m not just hear to tell you about the weather. I’m actually trying to figure something out, so hopefully someone can enlighten me.

The airports here have been operating in reverse configurations all day today (eg landing over the ocean and taking off over land at LAX). Here at home on the west side of Long Beach, that means we can see landings heading to runway 12 instead of the usual departures from runway 30. You know what? This isn’t going to make sense to 99% of you. Let me throw down a map here. We live west of the airport.

Anyway, I was out walking the dog a little after 530p when I saw an Airborne Express 767 fly overhead lined up for runway 7L. He throttled up and ended up going around before landing on 12. This seemed really odd to me, because I’ve never seen a large jet operate on those smaller runways. I’ve only seen them on 12/30. So, I went back and listened to the tower archives on liveatc.net to see what was going on.

Here’s the conversation that occurred:

ABX1753: Tower, Abex1753 Heavy, we’re trying to get on runway 12 here
LGB Tower: Abex1753, Long Beach Tower, runway 12 cleared to land
ABX1753: Cleared to land runway 12, Abex1753

Then a couple minutes later . . .

ABX1753: Are we cleared to land runway 12?
LGB Tower: Abex1753 Heavy, you’re lined up for runway 7L right now
ABX1753: Ok, we’d like to go around for 1753

Needless to say, the tower cleared him to execute a missed approach, and that’s what I saw. Now I’ll get to the point . . . how the heck does that happen?!? Shouldn’t an aircraft know with which runway it’s lined up? I mean, even a simple compass could tell you that you’re lined up at heading 070. Can someone explain this?

It’s earning season, and most airlines are doing their best to mask their weak fourth quarters. It’s hilarious to see the headlines talking about what a great year it was. Then they bury their fourth quarter loss down below.

Just today, we saw US Airways and Alaska talking about how fuel prices are choking them. US Airways said, “Our fourth quarter results were materially impacted by increases in fuel prices. Had our fuel price per gallon simply remained at last year’s fourth quarter levels, our 2007 fourth quarter fuel expense would have been approximately $230 million lower.” And Alaska? “The loss was driven primarily by skyrocketing fuel costs combined with fares that have not kept pace.”

Just in case you’re a visual person, let’s take a look at some graphs showing what’s happened to fuel. Once again, I turn to government data for the answers. This time, it’s Schedule P-12A. Oh man, just the name makes me think it’s going to be interesting . . . riiiiiight.

Anyway, I isolated 16 of the airlines and graphed them below. Unfortunately, government data only goes up through September 2007 so far, but you get the point.

As you can see, they all follow the same trend . . . up, up, up. I know some of the colors are light, but with the exception of some early spikes by Hawaiian and a couple other airlines I’ll talk about in a second, they all moved together. Prices hovered below $1 a gallon until early 2004 at which point they took off like an empty 757 in a headwind. (Maybe I should stay away from the analogies.) Prices passed $2 toward the end of 2005 and except for a couple of dips back, they’ve stayed there. Ouch.

Let’s focus in on some of the exceptions. I’ve taken the 16 lines and put them into an average. Then I’ve highlighted Southwest, Allegiant, and Skybus.

As you can see, we’re looking at these airline for different reasons. Starting in 2004 when fuel prices took off, Southwest kept them low. How? They bought a bunch of fuel hedges keeping their future cost of fuel less than they’d have paid normally. Though the prices have continued to climb, they have continued to keep their prices lower than average, and that is pretty much why they’ve continued to be profitable. With average fuel costs, I believe Southwest would have been break-even at best last quarter.

In case you’re wondering, they’ve continued to hedge fuel. It looks brilliant when prices keep rising, but when (if) they fall, Southwest will be stuck paying more than others. Personally, I think that’s fine. It’s worth having some certainty in your fuel costs even if you end up paying a little more.

The other two airlines, on the other hand, are highlighted for paying way above the average. Allegiant seems to be paying through the nose for fuel. Considering that they operate fuel thirsty MD80s, this is really costing them dearly. The fact that they remain profitable is even more impressive with that knowledge.

Then we have Skybus. They seem to be paying the most of all. They like to call themselves an ultra-low cost carrier, but, um, this clearly shows otherwise. I’m not sure why they’re paying so much. It can’t be because they’re new – Virgin America is new and they fall into the pack. Maybe it’s all these small airports they fly where nobody else goes. Come to think of it, they share that characteristic with Allegiant. Hmmm.

Well at least the trends look good, right? Of course not. You see the average fuel cost in that graph was maybe around $2.10 or so. Well just to give you some numbers . . . Alaska paid $2.48 in the fourth quarter. US Airways paid $2.56. And it doesn’t look better elsewhere.

So just remember, if you’re complaining about your ticket price being too expensive . . . pipe down. It should probably cost you even more than that.

Chances are that you’ve never heard of Arctic Circle Air. That’s not much of a surprise. See, these guys do the tough flying up in Alaska with a fleet of props. They do a lot of cargo work, but they also fly passengers around. After seeing that shot of one of their planes at left, um, how is it that I can call them the most comfortable airline?

Well, people are always complaining about how cramped and annoying it is to be on full flights. You won’t have this problem with these guys. In October, the latest month that government data is available, their 1,254 flights carried a whopping 285 passengers. Since they flew 5,482 seats, that means they only filled 5% of them. Just think of all the room you’ll have to stretch out. Actually, that’s probably not true. They’re probably full of cargo, maybe a moose, but that doesn’t count. Feel free to book your next flight here.

I’ve actually been playing around with the government data a lot lately, so you can expect more posts on it in the next couple days. Not sure what government data I’m talking about? Don’t worry, I’m putting a post together on that as well.

We all know that crowded airports create plenty of nightmares for fliers here in the US, especially during the busy summer. A couple weeks ago, the FAA came out with its latest proposal to fix this by allowing for congestion pricing. There has been a lot of talk about this in the blogosphere, and some people are in favor of this plan. I am not one of those people. (If you’d like to read the the opinion of someone who thinks it is good, try here.

Before I get into my thoughts, let’s outline the plan itself. If you’d like to read along, you can see the entire 25 page docket in this PDF file. There are three basic parts to the plan.

1. Landing fees determined by both departure and weight instead of being solely by weight
2. Allowing airport construction costs to be included in landing fees before completion of project
3. Allowing airports to charge landing fees for secondary airports to the primary congested airports instead

It might (definitely) not be clear why this would reduce congestion, so I’ll talk about each one as I explain why they won’t actually solve the problem. It’s important to know before we get started that airports are required to charge “reasonable fees [that] must be based on the capital and operating costs of the facilities for which the fees are assessed.” (from the PDF)

Proposal #1 – Right now, landing fees for aircraft are almost always determined by weight of the aircraft, but airports are allowed to charge on a mix of per departure and by weight. This proposal actually just clarifies and I guess encourages airports to start charging landing fees based on a mix of weight and a per departure basis.

The idea here is that small jets are problems because they don’t carry a lot of people, but they contribute just as much to airport congestion as a 747. So, if you charge on a per departure basis, it will effectively push smaller jets out because they can’t spread the cost of landing over nearly as many passengers. Will that stop regional jets from flying to an airport? Some of them, sure. Higher landing fees will make for unprofitable flights.

The end result, however, may be a less congested airport, but it’s also going to mean less access to the hub from smaller communities. If flights are marginally profitable to a small city now, this plan could end up making it largely unprofitable and the service will cease. We shouldn’t be discouraging flights to smaller cities just because they don’t have as much demand.

Proposal #2 – This is really the heart of the congestion pricing proposal. Since airports can’t charge above and beyond their cost of operation, the FAA had to get creative here. Currently, airports cannot charge for construction projects in their landing fees until that project is finished. There has to be a tangible and current passenger benefit for inclusion of the cost in landing fees to be permitted. This rule would change that to allow for projects under construction to be included when construction begins.

I don’t really have a problem with this proposal in its basic form. It will encourage airports to start construction projects because they can pay down their debt faster. It’s definitely an incentive that would help get things rolling, but how does this encourage congestion relief?

Well there are two proposals here. One of them would let them only charge for construction projects during congestion periods. That way, they could charge more when the airport is congested and less the rest of the day. The other would allow these costs to be charged at any time. So why would you only charge this during congestion periods? I guess because it’s the only way they can figure out how to charge more during busy times without breaking the rule about having reasonable fees.

As a congestion-relief tool, this proposal is garbage unless you’re willing to accept large fare increases. A small increase in landing fees during peak periods will not get any airline to shift their flight times to a non-crowded time. A large increase for a more massive construction project may get some flights out of there, but the remaining flights would have to raise fares a lot to remain profitable. So you either don’t relieve congestion or you end up with extremely high pricing during peak periods just to cover costs.

Really, this would be a temporary measure anyway. As they say: “Any costs recovered for principal and interest during the construction period would have to be deducted from the amount later capitalized and amortized for recovery in the rate-base after the facility is put into use.” So, once construction is done, the fees would then be spread across all departures as they are now.

Proposal #3 – This one would allow primary, congested airports to begin charging landing fees for secondary airport operations. Put it this way. If LAX is a primary airport and it’s congested, it would be able to incorporate landing fees for Ontario into its landing fee package. Meanwhile, Ontario would be able to lower its fees so that costs would be lower over there. This can only work if the two airports are owned by the same operator.

I still don’t see how this would relieve the larger airport. Lower fees would probably encourage more flights at the secondary airport, but people still want to fly out of the larger airport. As long as that’s the case, the flights won’t disappear just because the costs go up. Instead, the fares will go up and the customers will have to pay.

Can you see a common theme here? These proposals aren’t really going to fix the problems. Now, if you could start jacking up fees to the point where airlines would stop flying routes, then you’d be able to reduce congestion. But at that point, you’d also see a steep fare increase, and that shouldn’t be the goal here.

There’s even more ridiculousness, like the fact that Pittsburgh, St Louis, Tucson, Long Beach, and others are all defined as “congested” by this proposal. Um, those are not congested airports, but I won’t get into that right now.

The primary goal should be to create more capacity by building more runways and terminals. In the mean time, we need to get better at increasing the number of flights that can be handled at the airport. I know that at JFK, for example, there are ways to get more flights in an out by reconfiguring runways. That’s not an easy task, but it’s a good medium term fix until the long term airport projects are completed. And in the short term? Airport caps. You’re going to get to the same place with caps as you are with congestion pricing. The only difference is that with caps, fares will stay the same whereas with congestion pricing, fares are bound to increase.