Is There Life After the National Airline?
On 06/01/2012, in Viewpoint, by steve
There used to be a time when each country had an airline and it was called the flag carrier. Some countries had more than one airline, but generally only one of them was recognized as the “flag carrier”. Those were the times when States regulated flights between their cities and more often than not, connections were based more on political considerations than economic viability. Very few of the flag carriers ever made money but that was not a problem. Taxpayers were “happy” to pitch in to cover the losses (even though they were rarely aware of their own largesse).
You will only find Hungarian products here!
Then times changed, deregulation hit both the US and Europe and airlines were forced to transform themselves into real commercial operations, accountable to their shareholders. Some were successful, others less so. Icons of the industry like Sabena, Swissair, Pan Am and TWA wend bankrupt and disappeared. Consolidation swept through the industry bringing disgrace to some great airlines as they were gobbled up by their rivals (think of Delta and Northwest or, even worse, KLM being bought by Air France). In the meantime, low cost airlines flourished while traditional carriers kept reducing their costs year on year. One thing is sure: through sweat and tears, the airline industry managed to stay on its feet through the worst economic crises the world has seen since the great depression.
Interestingly, there are a few holdouts, kind of legacy “flag carriers” which still struggle along thanks to handouts from their home States which, apparently, have not caught on to the changes taking place in the world.
One of these holdouts is Malev, Hungarian Airlines. I am particularly interested in them because I started my aviation career in 1969 at Malev, who was back then also the owner of the air traffic control service in Hungary.
Malev has never been big and in the communist times they were operating like any other state enterprise. No problem with fuel guzzling Russian aircraft types, no problem with being inefficient and no problem with having roughly nine times as many people per available seat than any comparable western company. Money was not an issue…
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States should be Made to Pay
On 09/12/2011, in Viewpoint, by cleo
When I read about the Paris-Toulouse flight conducted by Air France to show how much CO2 emission they can save by optimized air traffic management including continuous descent approaches, my immediate reaction was not happiness about saving the planet. No sir, my reaction was: here is the best source of funds to pay ATM developments with, including aircraft equipment.
For decades, airlines were (and still are by the way) obliged to fly uneconomical routes, circumnavigate military areas, stay on sub-optimal levels because of outdated letters of agreements between control centers, fly obsolete departure routes… the list is endless. Politicians have paid lip service to wanting to improve ATM but did little to actually implement really effective improvements. Just look at EATCHIP, ATM2000+ and the political statements associated with them and compare to what had actually been done. Hell, the first wave of SESAR “improvements” are little more than what should have been accomplished by ATM2000+ years ago.
By inaction and omission, European States have caused billions of extra costs to the airlines and by proxy to their customers, the passengers. If anyone had any doubts that it could have been done much better, just look at the improvements that are suddenly appearing in air traffic management, driven by environmental considerations but still using much the same ATC equipment that was there also 10 years ago!
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The pessimism of an optimist
On 21/11/2011, in Viewpoint, by cleo
Some readers of Roger-Wilco asked me why we tend to report on problems so often. The answer is simple. Because almost nobody else seems to be doing it.
If you read the official communiqués from various projects, they do tend to project a much brighter picture and if you read only those, you will sleep well. All is fine in the world of ATM. I am not saying that the official sources of information are saying things that are not true. But what they often do is leave out the context or simply ignore certain pertinent facts.
Let me give you a few recent examples.
SESAR has split its plan for implementing things into three packages, IP1 to IP3. Everyone is now raving over IP1 and the super effort going into realizing it. Great. What is rarely added is that the content of IP1 is nothing more than what should have happened under the previous European project, ATM2000+ anyway and some of the elements got delayed by 3+ years because everything stopped while the world was waiting for the SESAR miracle to happen…
A while ago the folks in the FAB Europe Central announced that airlines will be saving millions in fuel due to the more direct routes now formally agreed for night operations. What they did not add was the simple fact that most aircraft have been flying those direct routings at night for many years now on an ad hoc basis and these were now formalized. Sure, being able to plan for the shorter route brings some savings but to claim credit for the millions that were already being saved is not exactly how these things should be communicated.
SESAR has some 300 projects running… When was the last time you read in their official communications how far those projects have come and whether or not they are on schedule?
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Outdated Mentality Slows ATM Progress
On 07/11/2011, in Viewpoint, by steve
I am sure Jane’s Airport Review will forgive me for picking the title of one of their articles but it was so stunning, I could not resist the temptation.
It looks like October was a month of bad news from the world of ATM and I am starting to get a terrible feeling of déjà vu… again.
Back in the times of EATCHIP and ATM2000+ meeting after meeting we were banging the tables, telling anyone who would listen that air traffic management modernization was not rocket science, the technology aspect was almost a no-brainer compared to the kind of cultural change that was necessary on the part of all stakeholders but from ANSPs and airlines most of all, if we were to get anywhere.
When EATCHIP was faltering, ATM2000+ came along and this latter was even signed off by the ECAC Ministers of Transport and what happened? Nothing… or anyway very little compared to the lofty aims defined originally. After a few horrible summers, it was 9/11 and the ensuing economic slump that saved the day. The ATM system would have collapsed had the 5 % year on year traffic demand increase actually materialize.
Then NextGen in the US and the Single European Sky and SESAR in Europe came along. This time it was going to be different… We are well into those programs and here is what we have learned in this black October of the year 2011.
As reported in Aviation Week, the FAA’s En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) is turning into a major embarrassment. It is four years late and may in fact slip by another two years while the cost is already 330 million bucks over the original budget and it may go to 500 million… ERAM is an essential step in getting NextGen operational, even if ERAM itself is not a NextGen element as such.
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The advantages of not being American
On 17/10/2011, in Viewpoint, by cleo
Remember how we used to say to anyone willing to listen just how wonderful the FAA was and how happy they should be in the US for having just one big ATM organization to contend with?
This was of course before NextGen and the current reshuffle of the FAA to make it better suited to achieving the NextGen goals. We have now learned that David Grizzle, the COO of the Air Traffic Organization, is of the opinion that the FAA-wide changes will go a long way toward making them one FAA as opposed to independent and often feuding activities all housed at 800 Independence Avenue. I also read in Aviation Week with great surprise that two FAA guys will be used as “battering rams” to break down the cultural barriers inside the FAA… All this is of course set in the context of setting up a new Project Management Organization (PMO) within the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, to look after NextGen and improve the general management of that project.
Wow… we always thought the FAA was better.
Of course this highlights immediately how lucky we are in Europe.
Our world is composed of EC and EUROCONTROL member states, the two sets not being identical. EUROCONTROL has more members but that organization is being made irrelevant albeit its final name (Network Manager) is something even the FAA can be jealous of. Then we have the FABs, composed of ANSPs but no real European organization that would oversee the FABs of which there are far more than anyone would ever need… The ANSPs in the FABs are forming alliances but those alliances do not align with the FABs. Then there is the SESAR Joint Undertaking with ANSP and industry members trying to realize SESAR, something that has never envisaged having to contend with the fragmentation represented by the FABs and the ANSP alliances. On top of all that, we have the European Commission who is actually responsible for the FAB idea in the first place (big mistake) but they are also laboring on what is called the Single European Sky (SES), something that almost died in trying to bring that jigsaw puzzle into a coherent whole… and the jury is still out on what will come of this all, SES or not.
Suppose, somebody somewhere discovers that there is a problem in Europe similar to what the FAA has faced and to which their reply was establishing the PMO. What would we do?
Wrong question. We can never discover a problem like that…
Meanwhile at EUROCONTROL…
On 31/08/2011, in Viewpoint, by steve
If the jungle telegraph is to be believed, EUROCONTROL is discovering that they have slimmed down just a wee bit too fast and too much. So much so, that in certain areas of expertise there is a lack of people to do the job.
To cover such cases it appears that they are organizing internal conversion courses. You need a safety expert? Get a radar guy ready for something new, put him or her through a one (!) month conversion course and you have a newly minted safety expert.
Apparently the long standing ban on hiring new people will also need to be lifted to some degree and there will be new hires, preference being given to young people straight from university. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, except for one thing. When Boeing or Thales hires young folks, their lack of experience is compensated by the environment into which they arrive and the collective experience of those already working there. EUROONTROL has divested itself of most of its talent base and the new hires will arrive in a near vacuum.
Who will guide them to avoid reinventing the wheel?
Air France and Hungarian water-melons
On 13/07/2011, in Viewpoint, by steve
While Hungarians are being urged by their Minister of Agriculture to buy a few extra pieces of water-melons, thereby helping local growers, French politicians under the leadership of right-wing MP Bernard Carayon are proclaiming: “Air France is Airbus, not Boeing”. Excuse me?
Of course this incredible folly is a direct retaliation for the US Air Force’s decision to source their tanker aircraft from Boeing and not Airbus. At stake now is Air France-KLM’s fleet renewal involving the purchase or leasing of scores of long and medium range aircraft, a multi-billion euro investment decision.
I very much doubt that either Air France-KLM or Airbus is pleased by this ham-handed and totally uncalled-for political interference which, like all such interferences whether they concern water-melons or aircraft, ultimately will only hurt those it was supposed to help.
One can only hope that the French initiative will stop at being grand-standing and will not in any way influence the airline group’s purchasing decisions. Should this not be the case, the French MPs will have given an extra trump card into the hands of those who had opposed sourcing such a strategic asset as the US Air Force tanker fleet from a company under the thumb of a country known to have its own peculiar way of doing things.
In a post back in February this year, we commented: “I tend to agree with those who have said right from the start that a strategic asset like the tankers for the US Air Force should not come from anywhere else but the US. While from a commercial or even operational point of view an Airbus product may have its merits, having such a strategic asset being dependent on a foreign government (however friendly… ) is not a good idea.”
If (and I stress this is still a big if) Air France-KLM is “encouraged” by the French to buy Airbus rather than Boeing it would be easy to picture what might have happened if the US Air Force equipped with Airbus tankers and then found itself in a conflict somewhere in the world not to the taste of some French parliamentarians…
The French MPs should take the example of the Hungarians and if they feelt this urge to meddle, stay with water-melons.
When Technology Overtakes Obfuscation
On 13/04/2011, in Viewpoint, by steve
Not so long ago the hottest topic of discussion, and a major item of contention, was the idea of Free Flight. In case you are not sure what that was all about let me just say that free flight is an air traffic management concept under which the responsibility for providing separation is transferred to the fight deck and pilots do a part of what air traffic controllers normally do. And this happens with IFR flights in controlled airspace and not only for the odd crossing maneuver we have long used it in visual conditions.
No, I have not gone off my rocker, every research project on the subject has shown that this is eminently possible, is safe and does bring capacity and efficiency benefits. Of course it was not surprising that controllers were not exactly charmed by the idea. The arguments ranged from the purely technical through the operational to the social… Admitting that you were a believer in Free Flight was likely to earn you few friends.
Headwind or not, the idea of Free Flight has persisted sufficiently that it is in fact part of the new air traffic management paradigm albeit being pushed more and more into the future with the opponents no doubt fervently hoping that it will go away…
While this uproar about free flight grabbed most of the attention, another revolution, much more critical, has been slowly shaping up quietly reaching the point where it is not possible to open an aviation journal without stumbling on multiple articles discussing the subject.
Click here to read the full article
Volcano kicks European ATM cooperation into high gear
On 03/06/2010, in Viewpoint, by cleo
In the past, programs to improve European air traffic management went under the name EATCHIP (1 to many) and the results were meager at best. More recently we got the Single European Sky (SES 1 and now 2) and of course SESAR. Introduction of SES was a major problem even for the European Commission powerhouse and of course SESAR is still too new to be properly judged.
But no matter, we now have Eyjafjallajokull, apparently the best driver yet for European air traffic management co-operation and hopefully an effective one also. When Iceland’s wayward volcano came to life spewing volcanic ash into the atmosphere which was promptly carried by winds towards Europe, the reaction was almost predictable. Under the banner “safety first” air traffic over the continent was grounded, commencing the longest and most widespread ban on flying since WWII. That no one had prepared contingency plans for such an eventuality is perhaps excusable but the disorganized, fragmented and less than scientific response to the disaster once it struck was not. It was a shame…
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Seat pitch – a matter for the European Parliament?
On 10/05/2010, in Viewpoint, by cleo
My travel plans were only slightly affected by Iceland’s wayward volcano but I understand some members of the European Parliament and the European Commission were less fortunate. This is good. Hopefully they now have a better appreciation of the value and performance of an industry they are so keen to regulate but which otherwise they tend to take for granted. Kiwi growers from New Zealand to flower tillers in Africa all got a good appreciation of just how important and indispensable aviation really is.
This reminder came just about in time. If the rumors are anything to go by, the new parliament and commission is about to go into one of their regulatory overdrive periods and what better target for something like this than aviation? For some reason aviation is the first that comes to their minds when there is a need to pay for something (see Galileo) or where, in their view, passengers must be protected by big brother (and increasingly big sister).
We all know what EU regulatory zeal can lead to… just think of past attempts to standardize the curvature of bananas and the proposed ban on some French cheeses because of their too high concentration of bacteria (never mind that it is the bacteria that make the cheese in the first place).
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What would Adam Smith advise to modern airlines?
On 28/04/2010, in Viewpoint, by cleo
Adam Smith as we all know was an 18th century Scottish scholar with a number of famous books to his name, among them The Wealth of Nations. In this tome, Smith argues that self-interest and free, competitive markets are powerful forces for prosperity and the common good. But he does, for good measure, also demand the regulation of interest rates and laws to protect workers from their employers. No doubt all this reflects the times in which Smith lived and wrote, although many of his theses are current to these days.
When reading about the recent industrial actions at Lufthansa and British Airways I started wondering. If by some magic Mr. Smith were to come back to this world and face the predicament of many airlines (and other companies for that matter) would he demand laws to protect companies from their employees?
Mind you, I am not saying that workers should not get their due and if an employer mistreats them, there should not be proper remedies. But having this kind of rights is not the same as having unions that organize actions and set limits and demands that result in many of the workers losing out in the end.
When Boeing outsourced a lot of the 787 work, there was an outcry and even if some of the criticism was correct, opposition coming in the wake of the longest and most costly strike ever did not sit well with the management of a company that is not known for mistreating its people. The result? The second 787 assembly line was set up in a right-to-work State, clearly a loss to the Seattle area but a big win for the South.
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Making the ATM infrastructure cheaper will also cost money
On 23/04/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
Few other parts of the air traffic management infrastructure come in for so much criticism these days than surveillance. To be precise, the hopelessly obsolete, rotating antenna based radar surveillance. Those rotating monsters are not only expensive to buy but they cost and arm and a leg to maintain too. It is no accident that companies in the business of making and selling them are keen to push new and replacement radar projects. The higher the price, the nicer the margin of course.
Places like Europe are teeming with radars and some areas have triple and quadruple coverage, quite unnecessarily one may add. It is a wonder birds don’t get fried in the air as they fly in what must feel like the insides of a microwave oven.
The airspace users have been complaining for a long time about the cost of this infrastructure, urging its elimination and replacement with cheaper and equally effective alternatives.
There are alternatives. ADS-B and multilateration both enable surveillance equal or better than conventional radar in all environments except the airport surface where, for now, only multilateration seems to provide the required precision.
Australia, Canada and the US have shown conclusively what can be done with ADS-B. Considering the price tag, which for ADS-B is 12 times less than conventional radar, making the business case is not that difficult.
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Is it nice to work for an airline?
On 20/04/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
When I started my life in aviation, air traffic control was part of the corporate structure of the local airline, Malev. A bit like having the police department integrated into the taxi company and with no less interesting situations that arose when the owner airline was not given the priority they desired.
So, yes I have worked for an airline and it was not bad. We were even entitled to free travel and this was being granted long after IATA had decided that controllers were not really worthy of the privilege.
Good. But all that was long ago and we are now interested in what it is to be working for an airline today.
Around February each year, Fortune magazine publishes an article describing the 100 best companies to work for. I browsed the list with interest. Google is number 4, Cisco number 16, Intel 99 and Colgate-Palmolive 100. So, who are the first 3? Are there any airlines up there? Nope! Other than FEDEX at the 90th position, there is no airline or even aircraft manufacturer mentioned at all.
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Oceanic airspace, the proving ground for future separation techniques
On 23/03/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
It was more than a decade before SESAR that I first heard the term “free flight”, a new paradigm for separating aircraft that would replace concentrated decision making with a distributed one by giving the flight crew the responsibility for ensuring separation between their aircraft. This is the normal state of affairs for VFR flights or flights in uncontrolled airspace, but “free flight” is meant for the big league, IFR flights in what is to-day called controlled airspace. Free flight techniques were being looked into as advanced methods for increasing capacity. The abbreviation ASAS was born at about the same time and stood for Airborne Separation Assurance System, basically a more scientific sounding name for free flight.
Jane's Airport Review, March 2010
The reaction of air traffic controllers and certain ATC experts was immediate, fierce and damning. It did not help that the idea of free flight originated from the airlines, with Lufthansa and American Airlines being its biggest proponents. The message from ATC was clear: over our dead bodies.
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Supermarkets and air traffic control – what is the connection?
On 10/03/2010, in Viewpoint, by cleo
It is tough times in Belgium these days. After the shocking news that Opel will close its car plant in Antwerp leaving thousands without work, it is now the Carrefour supermarket chain that announced the closure of 21 of its locations in the country. For our non-European readers, Carrefour is a French chain similar to K-Mart in the US but with a more comprehensive assortment of food.
Carrefour (ranked world number two in 2008) arrived in Belgium at the time it became known that Wal-Mart was opening its assault on the European retail market several years ago. European retailers, even the big ones, were worried that Wal-Mart would snap them up to create its foothold in Europe. So they went on to consolidate inside France snapping up smaller competitors there and they also spread out into neighboring lands, like Belgium where Carrefour bought the local chain GB.
About a year ago, one of the Carrefour supermarkets created a lot of buzz when it hired a crew at a rate below the one used at other Carrefour locations. Those who got work were happy but the unions went on strike and shut down the other locations, demanding that the salaries of the lower paid workers be raised. Several of the latter were on TV saying that they were happy as they were and did not want this interference.
What does this have to do with air traffic management?
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A kid in the tower, a pilot without license and other things
On 08/03/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
The unprecedented success of the air transport industry is due mainly to the spectacular improvements in safety booked overt the years. True, the convenience of being able to travel to the other end of Europe for a meeting and back the same day count for a lot, but without the safety factor, few passengers would accept the hassle of endless security queues and legroom appropriate for the shortest 10 % of the population only.
The exemplary safety record is the result of constant vigilance, safety management systems and the responsible attitudes of those working with or around aircraft.
Any disturbance that could negatively affect safety or even the perception of safety would be a disaster to the industry on a scale that would dwarf the effects of the recent financial meltdown in the world.
In a well running system complacency is one of the biggest dangers while it is also one of the most basic treats of the human character. Fighting complacency must be one of the most important items in any safety manager’s kit.
Recently however we seem to be seeing signs of a disturbing trend.
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CANAC2 operational – is there a future for CANAC2?
On 12/02/2010, in Viewpoint, by pbn
February 10 was a day many in Belgium will remember for a long time. Most of the populace for the longest ever traffic jams, 950 kilometers in total, caused by early morning snow bringing chaos to the motorways. For a select few, February 10 will mark CANAC2’s going into live operations. CANAC is Belgium’s cutting edge air traffic control system and its most recent incarnation, representing a 60 million euro investment, puts a host of new, even more advanced functions at Belgian controllers’ fingertips. Surely a cause to celebrate…
But this is not what a number of protesters thought, picketing Belgocontrol’s entrance with slogans that read: “No SABENA bis, no time to celebrate”. What is going on?
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Blogs, aviation and the rest of the social media
On 27/01/2010, in Viewpoint, by steve
When we started Roger-Wilco, a lot of people questioned the format. For some, a blog was not the right format for dealing with the serious questions of air traffic management. I could see the point in as much as a lot of blogs are indeed little more than a place for certain individuals to air their grievances about all kinds of subjects, many of which are of little interest to the world at large. But who can deny that they too have the right to publicize what is on their minds?
We simply had to make a better blog…
It would be easy to claim that I was always open to things like Twitter or FaceBook, but I was not. Especially Twitter
appeared to me the epitome of uselessness right alongside the male breast. FaceBook was something I could almost like but when they introduced the new “features” enabling users, among other things, to become “computer experts” by answering four or five ridiculously simple questions, I felt like running away. Seeing some of my most respected colleagues becoming such experts left me puzzled but no less determined to avoid FaecBook whenever possible.
LinkedIn was a different proposition right from the start. There one’s professional qualifications, work experience and other “real” things rule and people have actually found work when they were discovered by recruiters of major companies. LinkedIn actually reversed the switch in my mind…
But back to our blog…
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What is wrong with Performance Based Navigation (PBN)?
On 14/12/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Exactly one third, that is what! The P is ok, the B is ok but the N? That is what is wrong and in a big way too! Let me explain.
Recently we had a very successful workshop on PBN and the agenda included a presentation on modern surveillance techniques and another one on cost-benefit analyses tailored to performance based systems. It was soon clear that several experts (mostly outside the workshop) thought that the surveillance presentation was out of place in a meeting on PBN. After all, PBN is dealing with navigation and not surveillance.
There you go, the good old silo mentality again! Thou shall not mix things from different silos!
Do a local reality check. How is your organization set up? Do you have separate departments for navigation, surveillance and communications? Ask someone from surv or com what PBN stands for… Are you getting the picture?
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My FAB my Castle – is there hope for the European air traffic management enterprise?
On 27/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by pbn
I guess from a purely political point of view, criticizing the Functional Airspace Block (FAB) concept is probably not correct. I will not criticize the FABs. What I will do is share a few thoughts with you and also raise a few questions. Who knows, someone may even have the answers.
So what is a FAB? Contrary to what you may have heard, the FAB concept was/is an effort by the European Union to bring some order into the fragmented European ATM scene. That this was not exactly to everyone’s taste was amply evidenced in the time it took to get the first FAB (and subsequent FABs) off the ground. The process stalled a few times and lots of screaming brides had to be dragged to the altar before it was restarted again.
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U.K. airspace “developments”?
On 26/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
A short article in Aviation Week and Space Technology caught my eye the other day. “Restructuring U.K. Skies” was the title and it announced that the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was beginning the process of defining airspace out to 2030, with industry-wide dialogue to begin in 2010. I counted the number of times the word “airspace” appeared in the item: six. I also counted the number of times the words trajectory based operations appeared. ZERO.
I think it is fair to assume that the editors of Aviation Week would have used the term “trajectory based operation” if they had seen it in the CAA’s press release or the “Airspace for Tomorrow” guidance document. So, its complete lack can be safely taken for an indication of its absence in the CAA’s material.
The United Kingdom is part of SESAR and experts from NATS have been involved in the writing of the SESAR Concept of Operations. So what gives?
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NCS – What? Not CNS?!
On 22/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Whoever came up with the abbreviation CNS (a.k.a. Communications/Navigation/Surveillance) probably had no idea how much damage their invention would cause in air traffic management by perpetuating the kind of silo mentality that keeps many organizations hopelessly divided and experts retreating into their respective ivory towers.
If at least the inventors had the good sense of putting their beloved letters into some kind of logical order, like history, which would have given us NCS… We did navigate first (as in trying to find our way by reading the names of train stations and flying along highways), then communicated at first with lights and hand signals and later via radio and more recently we do surveillance. Not that NCS would have been any better at driving the silo mentality from the face of the earth.
Of course in the old days there was some logic in looking at navigating and communicating as something totally different from each other. You trained for one or the other, aircraft carried separate navigators and radio operators and when radar came along, the wizards of that kit were a completely new breed yet again. It was only logical also that separate fiefdoms should grow up along the letters NCS with hardly any horizontal contact between them. That they should fiercely protect their respective domains was perfectly natural…
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GDP and the Key Performance Indicators of air traffic management
On 18/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by pbn
Time magazine in their 2 November issue published a very interesting essay. The author, Steven Faris, argues that using GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to judge how well a country was doing is wrong and misleading. The idea behind GDP was only to show how much money is changing hands, nothing more, nothing less. Should we not use a metric that actually measures the things we really care about, he asks.
To illustrate the inadequacy of GDP to measure what we always thought it did, he gives a few telling examples. Natural disasters, oil spills, car crashes, riots, crime: anything you pay to fix will boost GDP. Helping a neighbor up the stairs, skipping work to see your son’s basketball game or walking in the woods will not.
Reading the essay it occurred to me that in air traffic management we have our own ingrained GDP equivalent, the famous KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. True, GDP was devised by economist Simon Kuznets at the end of the Great Depression (not the current one but the one before it…) and the KPIs for things like the SESAR project were put together within the last five years. They should be ok… Well, I am not so sure.
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Passengers are not the only ones who need good communications – pilots do too!
On 14/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Few parts of aircraft have evolved as little as the communications capability. OK, we no longer use tubes in the radios but other than that, the VHF AM system is as legacy as they come. To add insult to injury, when the shortage of frequencies in the aviation band finally forced the industry to do something, instead of going for a modern and future proof solution, the channel spacing was split from 25 to 8.33 kHz. While partially solving the frequency problem, this solution did little more then perpetuating the shortcomings of the legacy voice system for decades to come. Who wants to think about yet another upgrade when the industry has just recently invested in 8.33? This sad picture in the voice communications arena is matched by an even bigger problem in air/ground data communications.
While the world has moved to high-speed comms en-masse, aviation is still stuck with ACARS (slow) SATCOM (slow and expensive) and VDL Mode 2 which offers the most, at least in continental airspace.
In the meantime, more and more airlines and aircraft types are offering truly cutting edge technology to enable passengers to send
email, browse the internet, watch television and (brrrr!) even use their cell phones in flight. Earlier attempts, like Connexion by Boeing were not a huge success but this has not discouraged airlines like Lufthansa from signing up with new contenders. True, these now offer much more efficient and reliable service, so the added value is there. In fact, there are several new offerings on the market, all competing to get on board somebody’s aircraft. Clearly, passengers’ thirst for maintaining their connectivity while airborne is an irresistible force for airlines and providers alike.
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Air accident investigation – is Europe moving?
On 14/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
If you purchase a WiFi router or other WiFi piece of gear, you expect it to work anywhere in the world. After all, that is what standards are all about. Except for some channels not being available in the US for example, your expectation is correct. If you inspect the specs on the box however, you will find an interesting note, at least if you buy your gear in Europe. The authorized output power is different in France from that in other countries of the Union! Why is this relevant?
Well, in daily practice you will not notice much of this discrepancy but in our little EU there are other examples of this parochial approach to handling things, to the greater glory of our politicians and their efforts to gain popularity even at the expense of public good. European Union public good to be sure.
When we step on board an aircraft, we expect to step out in one piece and becoming a statistic is far from our minds. This is the correct attitude, after all flying is still the safest method of transport and the odds of not getting hurt are all on our side.
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Competence counts
On 07/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by phil
Listening to the interview with Capt. Sully Sullenburger who successfully ditched his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after multiple bird-strikes knocked out its engines, I was impressed by his calm, considered and authoritative manner. He is a first class ambassador for airmen throughout the industry. I think I might buy his book.
While recognising that he and his crew did an excellent job ditching in the Hudson, I would still like to think that most
competent crews would have performed equally well. The problem is that we normally never hear of the first class jobs done day in day out by many crews that avoid an accident. They achieve this either through good judgement which avoids anything happening at all. Or by well applied skill so that only those within the profession ever hear about the event. It is only the incidents which become obvious to the media or which turn into accidents that are noticed by the general public.
But what I find really disturbing is what seems to be the general erosion of the standing of the professional airman as described by Sully. We will be in danger of not getting enough good recruits, and if the accountants press too far, not training them well enough. What that will do for aviation safety must be of great concern to us all.
Air traffic service provision – business logic in reverse?
On 01/11/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
The letter S in the abbreviation ATS stands for Services. Air traffic services are the essential commodity all but the simplest VFR flyers are obliged to purchase, at least for the foreseeable future. Air traffic control is one of these services. The price varies as does the value for money across the planet.
What happens if demand for a given service goes down? The price drops right? WRONG! In European air traffic service provision air navigation service providers are obliged to recover 100 % of their costs from the airspace users. When demand for the service diminishes, the price goes up. This is logical since the cost of the service is only loosely connected with the number of aircraft handled while reduced demand means there are fewer aircraft who will share the same overall cost.
So, those users who manage to survive the first onslaught of a crisis will be rewarded by the system with higher user charges… Taking this to an extreme, and admittedly hypothetical, scenario the last airline standing would not only need to switch off the lights but also take out a loan to pay for the passage of its last aircraft as it heads to the scrap yard.
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Delta 767 lands on taxiway in Atlanta
On 28/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
OK, so those Northwest pilots were having a heated argument about company policies (at least that was reported) and they overshot their destination Minneapolis by a cool 150 miles… But what was the crew of the Delta Airlines 767 coming from Rio doing in the early morning of 19 October when they landed on taxiway M at Atlanta Hartsfield? Were they also discussing company policies? Ah this marriage between Northwest and Delta!
Taxiway M is parallel with Runway 27R and the weather conditions were good. 10 miles visibility in night conditions, no wind… The taxiway lights were on as were the runway lights. Apparently the approach lights were not switched on, who knows why? No vehicles or other aircraft were on the taxiway, so nobody was hurt. This time…
Atlanta is Delta’s home and one can assume that it was not the first time the flight crew landed on 27R there. Are statistics catching up with us (the very unlikely will also happen some time…) or are we seeing the results of a systemic problem many like to pretend does not exist?
Missing its destination – not the first time
On 27/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
You have all seen the news; Northwest Airbus misses Minneapolis with crew preoccupied with whatever they were doing… But this is not such a big deal. Listen to the following story.
In September 1995 I was out walking the dog (we had a wonderful Siberian Husky called Cyrano) when I noticed a DC-10-30 in Northwest livery taking off from Brussels. We live near the airport and our walks with Cyrano always had a dual purpose. Sniffing for the dog, plane spotting for me…
Northwest did not have flights in and out of Brussels and seeing the plane climbing steeply I said to myself, good, finally they are coming here also and I will not have to connect via Amsterdam when flying to the US (I was a WorldPerks member so flying NWA or KLM was important).
Well, they did fly into Brussels but only that once and unintentionally at that.
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What is common between SUVs and business jets?
On 27/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Nothing you will say. But wait a second. These are not normal times…
Some of the people with the environment close to their hearts take to the streets every now and then and stab the tires of big, ugly and expensive SUVs. They are sending a message to the owners of the offending vehicles to improve their ways. Exchange them for bicycles… Never mind that some of those SUVs generate less green-house stuff than a host of smaller cars, they are a great object to turn their hate towards. Stabbing the tires does more damage to the environment than leaving them alone, but that is beside the point.
In aviation, business jets have suddenly become the SUV. Latent hate must have been there for a long time… anyone crammed into seat 59A who has seen a G650 taxi by must have felt the bile rise in his or her stomach. Those big, ugly, expensive business jets and the rich people riding in them… nothing short of a scandal.
Of course, it was the auto guys who finally ruined everything when they flew to Washington in their business jets to pick up a few billions in taxpayer money doled out by the US government. Who would think of driving their SUV to the social security office to pick up their unemployment check?
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Put your 0.5 % where your mouth is
On 23/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
The next big event on the environmental Agenda is the UN’s climate change Summit in Copenhagen in December. Since tackling aviation is high on the Summit’s priorities, the aviation world has been working frantically to get ICAO to agree on a set of high level emission goals to be put forward at the conference. For a time it looked like all efforts to the contrary, ICAO might go to the meeting with precious little to say. This would have been a total disaster because in the ensuing vacuum interests not exactly big fans of aviation would have tried to dictate the terms with regional differences and other spice added for good measure.
This danger is now past, the ICAO agreement is not only there, but it is more or less what the airspace user community and other partners in the industry wanted. IATA was key in shaping the industry position and also in advocating it in the ICAO machinery.
In the end, the industry found itself in the rare position of being praised by the Secretary General of the UN who said that aviation’s targets could be set as examples for other industries to follow.
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Having fun with context sensitive ads
On 19/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Editing a blog has many interesting aspects, not the least of which is wrestling with the technology we are using to bring you nice and interesting stuff. If a picture is sometimes temporarily misaligned or the text wraps in a funny way, well, it is not us trying to innovate… It is the undocumented features in our tools that crop up here and there.
But context sensitive advertisements are the most fun by far!
Our regular readers will perhaps remember the big skyscraper ad on the right hand side of the main page that showed attractive ladies in various degrees of undress, alternatively proposing to find your new Ukrainian date or to conquer the world by playing on-line games… We do try to make ads as unobtrusive as possible while also ensuring that they are relevant and useful to our readers. Believe it or not, those ladies were generated by a piece of code supposed to react to the content of the blog and show ads that matched the content.
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What is nanotechnology’s equivalent in air traffic management?
On 17/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
It has been all over the trade press recently. 10 billion extra euros to go into French aeronautics research, the money coming from a planned public bond issue. Some of the fruits of this dough will come in the form of ground and flight demonstrations in the 2011-2014 time-frame and the primary aim of the effort is to meet the threat to Europe’s lead in the narrow-body aircraft area. Those new Chinese and Russian (not to mention Canadian) designs are being taken seriously and for good reason. Replacements for the A320 family and of course the 737 will be needed and probably sooner than later if Europe and the US wants to remain big players.
The line-up of planned demos is impressive. Replacing hydraulics with electrics, 15 % improvement in the performance of existing turbofan technologies, improved rotorcraft, and blended winglets… Airframes with nanostructure enhanced materials and intelligent skin and even new cockpits to mate up with SESAR and NextGen are also on the Agenda. All very good and timely.
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Will training finally meet the future?
On 16/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
There are places in the world where ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information System) is still the hard to understand analogue affair, suffering not only from poor voice quality but also the multitude of accents their operators will dish out for you. Of course, somebody somehow will have approved them for use, poor quality, accent and all. Now talk to any organization that has installed a new type of digital ATIS and most of them will tell you horror stories (backed up by the manufacturers) about the new and in many cases totally unreasonable requirements such a digital system had to meet, supposedly to improve safety.
Safety is of course our primary concern but it is not served at all by allowing suspicions about the hidden gremlins in digital technology to drive requirements which are either not possible to meet or which drive up costs without contributing to safety. It is also counter productive to dream up new requirements simply because new digital versions of old tools “can do it”.
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Whatever happened to (the benefits of) Mode S Enhanced Surveillance (EHS)?
On 14/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by cleo
Though there are few who will not be familiar with the term Mode S Enhanced Surveillance, let me quickly recap. Mode S is a legacy, ground based surveillance system which has a rudimentary data link capability. It is this latter that was being pushed in the 90s as a solution to all ills of air traffic management. Using the link capability, certain parameters from the aircraft, the so called DAPs, can be sent to the ground ATM system. Part of these are for display to the controller and part serve in theory to enhance system functions.
Back then the airspace users saw clearly that the benefit claims made for Mode S EHS were grossly overstated. It did not help that the first business case created for Mode S EHS was, to put it mildly, questionable. A later version showed more realistic figures but the damage was done.
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We need pro-active safety
On 10/10/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
After two aircraft collided over Zagreb on 10 September 1976, authorities in the region started to scramble, speeding up the introduction of more modern ATC equipment. The Uberlingen mid-air in 2002 highlighted several shortcomings in pilot training as well as ATC practices. Then we jump to 2009 and a crash near Buffalo in the US reveals not only that the captain of that flight had withheld important information from the airline about his previous performance shortcomings but also that the crew was operating in a fatigued state that would normally be too much for driving a car let alone flying an aircraft. A few months later, an Air France Airbus 330 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and even without the flight data recorders, authorities point to a possible failure of the Pitot tubes on the aircraft (and an apparent failure to heed earlier warning signs from other aircraft) and possible training shortcomings limiting the crew’s ability to deal with an extremely complicated situation.
What is going on here? Mind you, the airlines and air traffic services providers involved in these incidents have safety policies and practices that meet the industry expectations. Yet, somehow those policies and practices were undercut with disastrous consequences.
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High price to pay
On 23/09/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
Driving to Brussels airport is easy these days and parking is a cinch. The new parking garages are ready and even the ridiculously narrow space between the hotel and the terminal (where were the airport planners when that thing was put there?) has been rearranged to make better use of what is available. Conspicuously missing though is the expanded European hub of DHL…
DHL had great plans for Brussels Airport, unfortunately all of them involving aircraft. They waited a long time while the airport, ministries, local and federal governments and who knows what other organizations wrangled, argued and made impossible claims and counter-claims. At the end, almost unnoticed among the general clamor, DHL packed up and moved to Leipzig where it was welcome to grow.
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Space junk and global warming… Heads up!
On 18/09/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
An Air France jet falls out of the sky over the Atlantic Ocean, pitot-tubes are blamed but otherwise there is little clue as to the cause. Several passengers and crew are injured when aircraft in cruise encounter severe turbulence. Tennis-ball size hail demolishes part of the historic wine-growing region in Hungary. Tornados ravage villages in Austria and forests in the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia… The list goes on.
True, clear air turbulence has been described decades ago, severe storms have happened before and the chance of space junk reaching altitudes where we fly is negligible. So we are ok. Or are we??
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Fast trains and airplanes in China
On 27/08/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
When we say High Speed Train, we tend to think of France and Japan first and foremost. We also know that there is a kind of love-hate relationship between those fast train companies and the airlines. Love is in the air, or rather on the tracks, when some Thalys trains run with an Air France flight number between Brussels and Paris Charles De Gaulle airport or when several of Germany’s ICE trains carry a LH number… But when trains take passengers away from certain flights instead of feeding the airline network, love changes to hate…
Xinhua photo
The competition war between air and high speed rail travel is being fought in several areas, some of which make the playing field anything but level. City centre to city centre or airport to airport, the nightmares of airport security and the lack of it on the trains, public money in the infrastructure against full cost recovery for the airlines… No one has figured out yet how best to make these two great forms of transport live with each other.
In 2009, China is investing 50 billion US dollars in the construction of the world’s biggest high speed train network. What are the airlines in China thinking?
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Is the training of air traffic controllers better?
On 20/08/2009, in Viewpoint, by steve
One of the surprising and possibly unexpected early recommendations coming out of the investigation of the recent Air France Airbus 330 crash is that training in certain basic piloting skills and the handling of unusual situations must be strengthened and improved. Excuse me? Have we already reached the stage where the pilots of a sophisticated aircraft like the 330 are left wondering what to do when the screens go blank or numbers no longer add up?
One accident, however tragic, is probably not enough to draw far reaching conclusions on this thorny issue. But it does pose a question in a different context: is the training of air traffic controllers any better and is it keeping up with developments in the cockpit?
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