There has been plenty of press about the completely unnecessary delays that hit the US air traffic control system last week thanks to political gamesmanship, but once the legislators hammered out a quick deal, the press coverage subsided. The way this situation was handled was so frustrating that I thought it important to not let this slide into history so easily.

For those expecting a partisan rant blaming one side or the other, you’re not going to get it. The blame lies on both sides of the aisle, both in Congress and in the President’s administration. Quite simply, it’s something that never should have happened, but politics meant it was inevitable. Let’s start with a little background.

The Sequester Gets Its Start
We all know about the sequester by now. A series of automatic spending cuts were put into effect by Congress with the express belief that they would never go into effect. It was thought that such drastic and thoughtless cuts would force Congress to pass something better before they had the chance to create an impact. They were wrong. As always seems to be the case these days, the right and the left couldn’t come to an agreement and the sequester cuts went into effect earlier this year.

These cuts were across the board and impacted every agency, including the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration as part of that. (There’s also an impact on Customs and Border Protection and on TSA that has seen lines increase, but I’m not even touching on that today.)

Making Air Travel the Center of the Debate
Early on in this fight, the President’s administration decided to make air traffic control a posterchild for how bad the sequester would be. It’s hard to really convey the impact of the sequester cuts when some don’t really impact a lot of people, but air travel has a huge impact on a wide swath of America so I can only assume that the administration thought that it could use delays to break the gridlock in Congress.

Before the sequester, the rhetoric ramped up. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood warned of dire consequences if the cuts went into place. Small airport tower closures were announced (and delayed, and eventually canceled) and furloughs were announced for air traffic controllers. That was bound to mean delays and the press jumped on it.

I was extremely skeptical. The law said that “the same percentage sequestration shall apply
to all programs, projects, and activities within a budget account.” So there has been a lot of reporting that the FAA couldn’t do anything unless Congress passed a law. But there are others who disagreed; others who have tremendous credibility.

How about two Solictor Generals, those who represent the federal government in the Supreme Court? Both Seth Waxman (Solicitor General under Clinton) and Paul Clement (Solicitor General under Bush II), both gave opinions that the FAA could have moved funds around to avoid the furloughs that led to delays. This was all just bluster and wouldn’t actually happen, right? That’s how it should have played out.

The Plan Goes Into Effect
As furloughs went into effect in mid-April, air traffic delays quickly grew. LAX was an early victim with arrival delays of up to 2 hours. Charlotte saw delays one day because a controller had to go on jury duty. The New York airports all saw massive delays, though the FAA tried to cloak those as being weather-related when it fact they were not.

Speaking to airline operations people, the delays seem to have been even worse than they could have imagined. Part of it was the extent of the delays, but it was also the inability to predict them. The FAA refused to give much guidance on which airports would see delays and when. It was as if they didn’t want the airlines to know where the problems were so that they could have maximum effect. At least, I can only assume that was the directive from the administration.

This went on for a week, and delays continued to grow…randomly. One day it was Dallas/Ft Worth. The next day, it was Washington/National. The importance of air travel to the US economy is well documented, and this kind of uncertainty was only going to hurt. The anger was rising and it was directed rightfully at everyone in government. Congress had failed to do anything about the sequester in the first place, and the administration hadn’t done what it could have to prevent the pain.

And why was that? Well, the FAA leadership was either stupid and couldn’t figure out how to deal with the budget cuts or there was a directive from above to make it painful as a way to push a resolution through Congress. I’m putting my money on the latter. Regardless of the reason, it was clear that the damage being done wasn’t sustainable. A few days in, and Congress was working on a plan.

A Partial Solution
Unfortunately, the plan was just to solve the air travel issue and not the entire sequestration problem. That’s not a surprise, however. Air travel delays impacted CEOs, lobbyists, and Congresspeople themselves, so they were bound to act in their most selfish interests. The other issues didn’t impact all these people directly so those could apparently wait.

Congress hastily threw together a bill to shift funding from one area to allow air traffic control to operate at full staffing. The bill was put together so hastily that some of it was handwritten. And when it was sent to the President to sign, there was a typo that caused a delay in getting it done.

The threat of air traffic control delays for budgetary reasons has now passed, but I wish the story had a happy ending. While airplanes are flying on time, there is still no relief for all the other less visible programs that have been hurt by the sequester around the country. The impacts are just starting to be felt as the budget noose tightens. It’s still a terrible situation.

[Sloth photo via Shutterstock]

Another day, another government “crisis” because our Congressional leaders can’t find a way to do what’s right. I’m not looking to point fingers in this post, because it doesn’t do any good. (I have no doubt you will all do that in the comments anyway.) I simply care about sifting through what’s actually going to happen and what is just political posturing. Sequestration goes into effect on March 1 unless a compromise can be reached, and once again, doom and gloom is predicted. This time, the face of that disaster is crazy flight delays because the government can’t staff the air traffic control system. I don’t believe it one bit. (But I should be clear that sequestration is a terrible idea.)

First of all, I assume that they’ll come up with yet another deal that kicks the can down the road, preventing the major budget cuts that come with sequestration but failing to put together a long term solution. That’s been par for the course. But what if they don’t come up with a solution? Then what happens?

Well, when sequestration goes into effect, major budget cuts hit across the government. Before, the big talk was about how it would cripple our national defense because budgets would be cut so much. But now there’s a new face of doom, and it’s that our air traffic control system is going to be paralyzed. Oy vey.

The big push on this has come from soon-to-be-retired Secretary of Transporation Ray LaHood. (Oh man, I can’t wait until he’s retired.) If sequestration goes into effect, there will be cuts of about $600 million at the FAA. Part of that will come from cutting contracts and moving funds around as best as possible, but according to LaHood, it’s not enough.

In the end, there has to be some kind of furlough of air traffic controllers, that then will also begin to curtail or eliminate the opportunity for them to guide planes in and out of airports.

Oh no, the sky is falling! The sky is falling! What are we going to do?! We’re going to keep operating the national airspace system, that’s what.

Clearly the goal here has to be to shift resources around as much as possible in order to make sure that the impact on day to day operations is minimized as much as possible. Will furloughs be needed? Probably. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to go slash staff at enroute air traffic control centers or in towers at major airports. Instead, you should see the impacts around the edges.

For example, the FAA has put out a list of what it might do, and it includes about 100 airports that could face air traffic control tower closure. Recognize any of these airports? If you’re a private pilot, you probably do, but very few of these have commercial service. The ones that do have commercial service see very few operations – Santa Rosa (CA), Trenton (NJ), and Latrobe (PA) face closure. We could also see cuts in Sioux City (IA) and some other airports with a few regional flights a day. Those have just a handful of flights per day at most, but let’s be clear. Just because the tower closes doesn’t mean the airport closes. Those flights can actually still run without a tower if the airline chooses to. Keep in mind, these are all just potential closures anyway.

If this happens, I simply cannot see the air traffic control system becoming paralyzed as many seem to have predicted. For commercial flights, it will run as normal in the short term, or at least it should run as normal unless the FAA does something stupid. I say that for the short term only, because longer term they’re doing things like putting off preventive maintenance on ancient systems that could result in more pain and suffering down the line. But hopefully at worst, this is a short term issue.

Please don’t take this as an argument in favor of sequestration. It’s a terrible way to cut a budget, and it will be bad in the long run. We will have to expect further delays in getting the NextGen air traffic control system going (on top of the insane number of delays we’ve already seen). It will also mean FAA employees (and employees of all government agencies) will take a big hit, and yes, it will have on impact on our aviation system. It’s just not going to be the immediate doom-and-gloom that others predict. Still, it would have grave consequences over time. And that’s true for our entire country, not just for air travelers.

The EU’s Airplane Carbon Trading Program and What It Means – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
I walk through what’s been doing on with the EU emissions trading scheme and why it was suspended. (This has been one heck of a political brawl.)

In the Trenches: Customer Relationship Management – Intuit Small Business Blog
The time has come to put together a better way to keep track of our customers.

Episode 223 – Nils Haupt from Lufthansa – Airplane Geeks
I was back once again with the Geeks as a co host. This time we had the North American head of PR, Nils Haupt, on the show.

It looks like this has turned into Small Community Air Service Development (SCASD) week here on the blog. Monday, I looked at the winners of the 2012 grants that I liked. Tuesday I looked at the ones I didn’t like. But there were a lot of requests via the comment section, email, and Twitter to review what happened to the winners from last year. So here we go.

Last year, there were 29 winners of SCASD grant money. Of those, very few have had any sort of success at even getting the planned use for the grant money off the ground. Looking at the ones that were hoping to get a revenue guarantee to attract air service, we had four successful efforts.

The Lucky Four

• South Bend, Indiana wanted low cost carrier service to Denver. It took awhile, but Frontier will begin service in October.
• Grand Forks, North Dakota wanted Denver as well, and it will be getting service on United that same month.
• Bozeman, Montana wanted a New York flight. It got it with Saturday-only service this summer on United.
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania wanted a Denver flight like the others and it might be the biggest success. Frontier delivered with a summer seasonal flight and it did well enough for the airline to extend it by a couple of months through the end of October.

Those all seem to be a shot at success, and the SCASD grant is a big part of that. But there are a lot more that have yet to see any success at attracting service. Flagstaff (AZ), Santa Rosa (CA), Evansville (IN), Pikeville (KY), Baton Rouge (LA), Kalamazoo (MI), St Cloud (MN), Fargo (ND), Albany (NY), Toledo (OH), North Bend (OR), Tri-Cities (TN), San Angelo (TX), Lyncburgh (VA), Spokane (WA), and Green Bay (WI) have all failed to attract the service they wanted so far. But they still have time before the potential to use the grant money expires.

Auburn and Dubuque Talk about Their Struggles
One that I was particularly curious about was Auburn/Lewiston (ME), something that drew my eye when the grant was announced. I called the airport to see how efforts to get commercial service were going. I was told that the airport is currently without a manager so efforts seem to have slowed. It didn’t sound very promising.

I also spoke with airport manager Bob Grierson in Dubuque, Iowa to see how efforts were going to get DFW service. Things don’t seem to be moving very quickly. He said they’re “going back for a 3rd visit [to American Airlines] trying to negotiate opening up Dallas.” They are also trying to work with United as an other option. But the former’s bankruptcy and the latter’s merger with Continental is hurting opportunities.

One thing Dubuque won’t be doing is going after Allegiant. “I’m not going to continue talking with Allegiant. They wanted two years of everything free, and we just don’t have that kind of dynamic here.”

Escanaba and Its Marketing Money
But what about the marketing grants? Some communities like Crescent City (CA) and Pocatello (ID) received money to help promote either new service or changed service. How has that gone? I called up Delta County Airport in Escanaba (MI) and spoke with airport manager Connie Ness to understand how things have been going with their $72,500 grant meant to help market big service changes by Delta.

Escanaba is an Essential Air Service market that sits on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it used to have service to both Detroit and Minneapolis in tandem with Iron Mountain, just a few miles west. Delta shuffled things around and now only does Detroit. It also upgauged from turboprops to larger 50 seat regional jets. How’s it going?

“The marketing has actually seemed to help a lot. Our numbers are up.” That does seem to be the case. Looking at masFlight data, In January 2011, Delta boarded 1,581 passengers in Escanaba. This year, it was 1,813. (January 2012 is the most recent data available.) Load factor has remained fairly steady (over 50% to Detroit), despite the larger aircraft type.

Is this due to the newspaper and radio ads that Escanaba has been able to run? Beats me. It’s very hard to tie these things together. I asked, but the airport hasn’t done any surveying to try to judge effectiveness. So it’s really just going off boardings.

Does It Count as a Success?
So was 2011 a successful year for the program? I’d say so. Four airports have new service that they probably wouldn’t have been able to get on their own. It took $2.5 million in revenue guarantees, but those might not even need to be tapped if the service works well enough. And the rest of those revenue guarantee grants don’t get used unless service comes in before the grant expires. And what about the marketing money? That’s harder to judge but it was less than $1.5 million of the total grant awards. So it’s a fairly small number.

As I’ve said before, I still like this program. It provides opportunities for sustainable, new service that might not be realized otherwise.

[Update 8/23: St Cloud, a SCASD winner from last year, just nailed down Allegiant service]

Yesterday I wrote about the Small Community Air Service Development (SCASD) grants I liked. Today it’s time for the fun ones. These are the ones that I just don’t like at all.

Here’s my list, in alphabetical order, of the grants that don’t make any sense to me. If you’d like to learn more about this program, you can see all 61 applications at regulations.gov. You can also see the list of winners here.

Arcata/Eureka
Way up in Northern California, about 300 miles beyond San Francisco, lies Arcata and Eureka. Today, this airport has United Express service primarily to San Francisco and Sacramento and not much more. In recent times, Alaska tried to serve the market from LA and failed. Delta tried to go east to Salt Lake and failed as well, leaving us where we are today. So what does the airport want? It wants service to the east again. Now it wants United to Denver. We’ve already seen that it can’t support Delta’s short-lived service east, so why will this be different? Well, it’ll be even worse because now it will cannibalize United’s existing San Francisco flights and that’s a bad plan. The airport tried for this same grant last year and lost, but apparently this year, the feds changed their minds.

Champaign/Urbana
Most of the small cities here complain that they are plagued by high fares and they need some relief. Champaign/Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, has service to Chicago on American but that’s it, and it thinks the fares are way too high. So how will it solve its high fare problem? It wants United service to Dulles. Oh please. There is no way United is going to come into that market with low fares. It’s also pretty tough to imagine that there will be enough demand to support the route after the money dries up. Sorry Fighting Illini, but this one isn’t going to get you what you want.

Corpus Christi
Like most smaller cities around the US, Corpus Christi in Texas has seen fares rise and service cut. Unlike most, however, Corpus Christi maintains Southwest service. Not much has changed in terms of overall service at the airport, but Corpus Christi thinks a marketing campaign telling people how convenient the airport is will help keep people from going elsewhere. I don’t buy it. If there was something new to communicate, then sure, but there isn’t.

Redmond/Bend
Go another 400 miles north and east of Eureka and you’ll find Redmond/Bend in Oregon. These guys really want service to Southern California on United, Delta, or American, and they got the grant to do it. But is that a good idea? Well, Alaska tried it on Horizon turboprops and failed. With codesharing opportunities with both Delta and American, if Alaska couldn’t make it work, what’s the chance these others can on their own? Not so good. This one seems destined to fail.

Topeka
As one of the few state capitals without air service, you might think there would be some opportunity in Topeka. But there’s a reason there’s no service there. Kansas City’s airport is only an hour away with plentiful service, so people just go there. But maybe Topeka is right, maybe there is something that will work out perfectly. What’s the plan? United Express to Chicago, where Topeka says it has demand for 50 people a day. There’s only one problem with that. Fares from Kansas City to Chicago are relatively low, so it’s going to be hard to keep fares high enough to be profitable and low enough to prevent people from going to Kansas City. Topeka’s proximity to Kansas City is what it kills it, and I don’t see this service being able to survive.

What bugs me most about the wins for these cities is that there are other grants that came in that I thought would have been more worthy. I found myself laughing at the Del Rio, Texas request for marketing funds now that its United service will be operated by ExpressJet instead of Colgan Air turboprops. There were plenty of angry words in the proposal about how horribly unreliable Colgan was and that pushed people away from booking. But if the service was truly unreliable, the community needs to be educated that things are changing.

Of course, not all the losers were good ones. There were even worse proposals than these that mercifully didn’t get an award. For example, French Lick, Indiana says it wants to study air service. Why? Because there were about 1,000 people in a year that had to drive 1.5 hours from Louisville to the French Lick Resort and they think they’re leaving a lot on the table. Really? I’m sure something might be left on the table but not enough to justify sustained air service. This would be a waste of money even to study it.

My favorite of the bad ideas, however, is probably Mineral County, Nevada. They seem to think that it’s the right time to start High Sierra Airlines in order to connect a bunch of small cities in Nevada. Hmm, not so much.

I do still think SCASD is a good program that doesn’t cost much (only $14 million max this year). I just wish that some of the criteria were changed to prevent funding applications that just don’t really make much sense.

[To see my least favorite proposals from last year, go here.]