Think Airplanes and Turkeys
I love offering my two cents on everything aviation here at Jetwhine. But every so often I also like to share a few stories about some of the cool people I’ve met along the way during my career.
Since today is Thanksgiving and most everyone is thinking about turkey, it seemed appropriate to tell a quick story about Herb Kelleher, who at the time I met him was still the head honcho at Southwest Airlines. Today Herb is chairman of the airline’s board.
Seven or maybe eight years ago, I was invited to hear Herb speak at the Transportation Center at Northwestern University where I interned as a grad student.
After Herb gave his talk, the professor who invited him gave him a bottle of Wild Turkey - that’s bourbon for you non drinkers - as a thank you gift. A bunch of us went back to a meeting room that had been set up for everyone to get chatty over a few cocktails. For those of you who don’t know Herb, it doesn’t take much work to engage in any kind of conversation with this icon.
They raffled off a copy of Herb’s book, “Nuts,” the inside story of how the people at Southwest has made their so successful - 125th straight dividend recently I believe. I won the book and walked up to receive my gift and have Herb sign the volume.
As I approached him, I just suddenly got nervous. Sounds crazy but I didn’t know what to say. Here’s this icon of the airline industry, a man who arm wrestled someone to settle a business dispute and I froze up.
So I said the first thing that came to mind. “Hi Herb. Sure looks like that bottle of Wild Turkey is going to waste.” He looks at me and smiles and then takes another drag on his cigarette - the Northwestern folks were really upset with him about his smoking too. “You know, you’re right,” he says to me. “What’s your name?”
I tell him and Herb grabs the bottle of Wild Turkey, puts his arm on my shoulder and yells to the crowd, “Hey everybody. My friend Rob and I are going to crack open this bottle. Who’s going to help?”
Suddenly we had plenty of friends. That’s just the way Herb is around people. My guess is he’s like that as a boss too. There are too few like him though. Say hi to Herb if you meet him.
How a story for two from some of you about the people you’ve met along the way? I’ll bet there are plenty of people who would like to hear about more of our industry influencers. Was it your flight instructor, a school professor, a neighbor. Tell us.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Whose Side Was Past ALPA President Duane Woerth On?
Some of you might recall a post from a few months back in which I expressed disdain that former ALPA president Duane Woerth had in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, signed on to the same old tired airline/FAA line about what’s wrong with the ATC system … it’s general and business aviation’s fault for not paying their fair share.
I thought this former AFL-CIO vice president and former ALPA president was wrong then and I still do. Union folks have no business pitting one side of an industry against another. That hurts everyone. I know it happens, but it’s still wrong.
Then there was yesterday’s Post editorial that took the same line as Duane Woerth (And for the record … business aviation is willing to pay it’s fair share if someone will help us figure out precisely what that is. Hint: We don’t trust the airlines and FAA to give anyone the best numbers on this).
Now I don’t know Duane Woerth … never met the man. But I do know what I’ve learned about his reputation and it’s one that might well make people wary when he comes knocking in his new role as an aviation consultant simply because it’s tough to know which side he’s on. And then there was the letter I received from a Jetwhine reader that got me all stirred up again.
But before I show you the note, a bit of background. It was on Woerth’s watch at ALPA that the RJ Defense Coalition evolved. 
That’s a sort of anti-ALPA national group of Comair and ASA pilots - good union folks - that tried to sue ALPA on numerous occasions for giving Delta Airlines pilots bargaining priority over those regional partners. Essentially, ALPA looked to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth trying to fairly represent both groups with the Delta mainline pilots coming out of the fight with far fewer bruises.
Union Picket Line Outsourcing; Are Pilots Next?
There’s an interesting union story floating around that seemed worth sharing although it honestly made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Maybe some of you can add something to it.
A story made the wires last night about a carpenter’s union picket line strung around a job site near Washington DC.
What made the story important was not the picket line itself, but the makeup of the picketers.
Most were not union carpenters.
Almost all were people down on their luck - OK, homeless - who needed the work. For eight bucks an hour, the union hired theses folks to yell and scream while they marched the job site with picket signs. The picketers looked about the way you might expect someone to look who had been living on the street too. Not exactly the folks any union might want in front of the TV cameras on the 6 PM news.
Southwest Airlines Boarding; A Blast from the Past
Southwest Airlines has again proven that running an airline - at least from a customer’s perspective - doesn’t need to simply fluctuate between chaos and more chaos.
On the way back from the Blog World Expo conference in Las Vegas last week, I had a chance to try out the airline’s new passenger boarding system. I’d give it 9 out of a possible 10 points.
In the recent past, the trick was to check in early online to be selected for the “A” team - the first 50 seats.
Problem was you’d still need to line up early at the airport gate since seating in the “A,” “B,” or “C” group was first come first serve. If you checked in late online and showed up within 15 minutes of boarding time, a “B” passenger could easily wind up in a middle seat.
Unfortunately, the Southwest system airline used until last week also meant either standing in line at the gate for half and hour, or sitting on the floor, something that turned my wife off to the carrier from day one. (more...)
NTSB Looks at Pilot Fatigue; Not Soon Enough
The National Transportation Safety Board met Thursday to talk about an industry epidemic … pilot fatigue. It’s about time. The Air Line Pilots Association folks were nice enough to let me write an article about fatigue in their magazine … 18 years ago … so this is not a new problem.
Too often though, we pilots let our desire to never say “enough” cloud our good judgment.
The media has recently grabbed on to a few incidents of pilots falling asleep with passengers aboard, but there are many other examples of how tough flying can be on your body that you should know about if you’re new to the industry.
Stand Ups
Here’s a scary, fatigue-inducing schedule I used to fly at one airline. Keep in mind as you read, these schedules are still in use at some companies today, at least in the U.S. Maybe a few of you outside North America can tell us what you’ve seen.
Called continuous-duty overnights, or stand up overnights - you never got much sleep - the carrier scheduled you to arrive at work late in the evening around 9 PM. You’d clock out of work about 8 am the next morning. For an airline job, 11 hours of duty doesn’t seem like such a big deal. But these schedules were killers.
The airlines designed them for a very specific purpose however, most importantly to protect the first bank of aircraft in the morning. If the first gaggle of airplanes were late coming in from the outstations -because a pilot or flight attendant was late for work or there was a mechanical - the rest of the day’s flight schedule was a mess. (more...)
News Flash … United Airlines Has a Good Idea!
Jim Ott wrote an interesting article in last week’s Aviation Week and Space Technology called Surly Skies about … what else, airline travel.
He said, “Any adaptation airlines make to counter the negatives of air travel seem to be useless … amid the turmoil, customer loyalty is disappearing …”
Occasionally though, an airline develops a good idea and this time I think United has done it.
Many of you are probably thinking I’ve lost my mind because my relationship with United has never been what I would call warm and fuzzy. Let’s just say I view United as an inconsistent service provider and leave it at that.
Here’s the Beef
We all realize how annoying boarding and deplaning are at the airport right? So what if someone recognized the fact that airliners have more than one door to use for boarding? Imagine the time it might save getting on and off if they actually used more of the doors? (more...)
Psst! NASA … The Safety Data is Already Public!
NASA’s administrator Michael Griffin said he made a mistake the other day and for many people that was enough. People do make mistakes and he said he was sorry.
Griffin was answering demands from the public and the press about his agency’s refusal to release safety data that might well affect the people who ride on the nation’s air transportations system. The reason for NASA’s refusal was just plain silly … they were afraid they might scare people and damage the system if people heard the truth.
Some nice public affairs person must have gotten to him though by telling him how incredibly stupid that statement made both him and the thousands of smart people at NASA look. This is a place after all, where people really are rocket scientists.
NASA now says it is going to come clean, but I still can’t figure out what the big deal is.
Everyone within the aviation industry knows NASA has been collecting safety data for decades … and it’s OK with us. We’ve been freely offering NASA aviation safety information through the Aviation Safety Reporting System because we thought we were going to help better the industry, not just to expand some huge government database that would never see the light of day. I’m thinking this must all be the same data everyone is talking about. And most of it is already public. (more...)