As we all known that fuel and emission that are provided by our earth will soon run out, especially fuel from fossil, and as we also known the fastest and fuel consume transportation, which are airplanes need alternative fuel solution. Two aircraft manufacturers researching the use of sugarcane for jet fuel. If applicable, fuel use is expected to cut emissions in large numbers.
Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho, chairman of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Sustainable Aviation Biofuels Initiative, which helped fund the research, said “This study will examine the possibility of alternative jet fuel production from sugar cane in a sustainable and large scale.” Carvalho Brazil exemplifies success in using sugar cane to produce ethanol as a substitute for kerosene.
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Aegean Airlines Choose CabinVu CDMS
Aegean Airlines, Greece’s largest airline, has chosen CabinVu in-flight security systems from AD Aerospace, an AD Group company, for fitting on a Boeing 737-400 aircraft.
The cockpit door monitoring system (CDMS) improves the security of the flight deck and the entire aircraft. It increases the pilots’ situational awareness by providing them with a clear and unrestricted view of the area outside the cockpit door and in the adjacent galleys.
“At Aegean Airlines we offer our customers a premium service and this extends to the care we take of their safety,” says Antonis Grigoriadis, avionics development engineer at Aegean Airlines. “CabinVu adds to the systems that we already have in place to ensure that our passengers and crew have a secure flight.”
Keeping the cockpit safe
CabinVu, the popular choice for cockpit door surveillance, provides pilots with a forward-looking, clear and unobstructed view of the area outside the cockpit door and in the adjacent galleys from their usual seated positions. A series of cameras are linked to either one or two monitors and associated controllers within reach of the pilots for easy and comfortable use.
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Radar to help pilots avoid birds
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C.: A trailer with antennas and wires temporarily parked on base awaiting transit to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, might not look like much, but it could save the military lives and money when it gets shipped later this spring.
The trailer contains a Merlin Aircraft Birdstrike Avoidance Radar System that will alert pilots and air traffic controllers to the presence of birds near one of the U.S. military’s busiest airfields in Afghanistan.
While currently used at some stateside Air Force bases and international airports, the installation of the bird detection radar at Bagram Airfield will mark the first use of this technology in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, said Gene LeBoeuf, the chief of the Air Force Safety Center’s Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard, or BASH, team.
Having bird detection radar at Bagram Airfield is a result of three years’ of effort between the Safety Center’s BASH team, headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and the U.S. Air Forces Central Command Safety Office at Shaw Air Force Base.
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Do technology standards make sense for airlines’ attempts to differentiate?
GDS executives are calling for the development of technical standards for the booking and processing of airlines’ unbundled fares, ancillary revenue and other sales innovations.
Sabre chief Sam Gilliland raised the issue at November’s PhoCusWright conference.
But other industry players are saying, “Not so fast.”
“Standards are good, but let’s all keep in mind that this is about differentiation,” Suzanne Rubin, American Airlines’ managing director of merchandising and distribution strategy and president of AAVacations, said. “We don’t want something that puts us right back into the same box of commodity product.”
Gilliland has warned that the merchandising trend could become “e-ticketing 2.0.”
Electronic tickets made their debut in 1995. Many passengers resisted using them because if a flight was canceled, they had to stand in line to have a paper ticket issued and endorsed to another carrier.
The airlines quickly realized that e-ticket adoption would increase if that hurdle were removed, yet the first interline e-ticket agreement was not signed until 2002. It covered two airlines.
Early adoption of standards would have eased the transition to universal electronic ticketing, but some industry participants say merchandising is a different animal.
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne, managing partner of T2Impact, a business accelerator for travel distribution, said, “Airlines are saying that this is not a standardized service and should not be covered by standard rules that somebody mandates.”
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What Would Yoda Say to the APFA?
Where I would typically use this space to talk about the fact that the rumor mill has United and Continental in serious merger talks, I am not going there. My feelings on a US Airways – United hookup are well documented in a number of posts. I will be most pleased if United and Continental are indeed in talks. Each carrier has aggressively pursued a path to the least exposure to the US domestic market, and that is a path resisted by US Airways.
I respect many people at US Airways, particularly those managerial types who have done yeoman’s work with a network that, in my opinion, holds little promise long-term. It is, as I say, presence everywhere and a dominant piece of meaningful real estate nowhere.
To me the biggest piece of news this past week was the fact that the National Mediation Board (NMB) did not release either the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) or the Transport Workers Union (TWU) into a 30-day cooling off period that each union sought in their negotiations with American Airlines.
At least until we see the rule drafted by the NMB on representation elections, all seems right at the Board. They did not release a case that is nowhere near exhausting the mediation process, even though I had feared that they might given the political winds in Washington.
So, the APFA is, for the time being, reduced to trying to convince the world of the numerous grievances its members carry. The union’s You Tube videos claim that AA flight attendants are oppressed. They talk of the past like somehow it will reappear, even when reality knows it is but a faint memory. And through it all, APFA’s reckless talk of a strike continues – reckless because the circumstances don’t justify the action as I have written before, most recently in Self-Help or Self Sacrifice or Self Fulfilling Prophecy? What Will This Accomplish?
I am reminded of a quote by Yoda in Star Wars: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.”
American’s Conundrum
Few people, if any, have been as critical of American’s union leaders as I have. The one union that has been left unscathed by swelblog has been the TWU because, as a leader, John Conley is typically careful in misusing power and rhetoric. But in this case even Conley has come close to the line.
Is the fear that a union working to address American’s productivity deficiencies in return for improved wages somehow collaborating with the “dark side”? I think it is. The fear of reprisals from a vocal minority of members toward a union’s leadership has led to a campaign based on anger toward the employer. The anger has become hate as unions try to tie everything wrong in the industry to executive compensation, particularly that part of their pay in at-risk company securities.
But without executive pay, what are the unions really protesting? Change? We’ve got plenty of that in the airline industry, which is all the more reason cooler heads should prevail in approaching negotiations in a way that promises the best long-term pay and job security for airline employees.
But that’s not how the flight attendants union is approaching it. The APFA is trying to stir up a lot of anger and hate with a strike vote that, if it eventually led to a strike, runs the risk of doing serious harm to wages and working conditions for their members.
The APFA has been speaking out of both sides its mouth in urging members to support a strike a vote. On one side it encourages flight attendants to send a message to management and channel their anger by threatening a work stoppage that would bring the carrier to its knees. On other other it tries to calm flight attendants with reassurances that they themselves would not be hurt by going out on strike.
And that’s just wrong. APFA President Laura Glading should be careful what she asks for.
What good did the strike do the BA flight attendants and their union Unite? Zero. Nothing. Nada. It did entice a management to put into place a plan to fly through the “three strikes.” Three strikes and you are out right? Glading’s plea to her members is pathetic. All the while she reminisces about 1993 and 2001, she mentions that a “yes vote” does not mean that they will strike. She talks about the power of yes. But she does not once mention the potential risks of a strike to her members.
Glading also does not mention that her flight attendants are the highest paid among her network peers according to MIT’s Airline Data Project; the least productive in terms of hours flow per month; generally lagging in terms of in terms of passengers served per flight attendant equivalent; and the beneficiary of a relatively costly benefit package. It makes the negotiations between American and its flight attendants very complex and difficult to conclude – even for the most skilled negotiator and/or mediator. American is asking for increased productivity for one simple reason: whereas American’s salary per flight attendant is comparable to that received by flight attendants at Continental, if American achieved the same flight attendant productivity as Continental the carrier would require 1,254 fewer flight attendants. And the carrier has offered to grow into the productivity over time rather than lay off even more flight attendants.
If I am an American flight attendant, I would carefully consider these facts. Negotiations are now data driven – just like a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) would be. APFA likes to talk to the world about labor cost per available seat mile (CASM). But that metric is fraught with potential error as the calculation is influenced by a wide number of items which are not in the control or purview of the flight attendant collective bargaining agreement.
In fact, as CASM is influenced by factors as varied as seat configurations, stage length, aircraft utilization and network design to name a few, even analysts and economists would be hard pressed to make the kind of bold analytical statements and sweeping conclusions that the APFA is making. Pay and productivity are expressed in hourly rates and hours worked and that is why the MIT Airline Data Project examines pay and productivity against an hourly foundation. The APFA refers to staffing as the culprit in American’s high flight attendant unit cost. The problem is that the 3-class fleet is a very small portion of the fleet. Can 3-classes really be responsible for the highest flight attendant costs in the industry among the legacy carriers? Warning to United: the same argument is coming your way.
American does have a conundrum in that it is the first major case in front of the NMB and it has the highest costs among its peer group, particularly with its flight attendants who, as a group, are highly paid relative to their low productivity. In a recent Dallas Morning News, I was quoted by author Terry Maxon suggesting that there will be an airline strike. Inside of my comment was a challenge to management: Is the airline ready to take a strike? If American caves in its position, the industry suffers. The American Airlines flight attendants suffer because American will have agreed to pay more than it can afford. Even the best heeled US airline cannot afford what American’s employees are asking from their management.
American’s unions constantly point to management compensation as unfair but, as is typical, they use only the parts that serve their purpose. Conveniently, forgotten is the fact that there have been years in which management got well below their target pay (and well below their industry peers) because the system of pay linked to performance actually works. Yes, management pay is higher than pay on the front lines.
That’s pretty much the way it works in every industry. That’s because the market for management labor is different than the market for flight attendant labor. That’s a reality. And in a market-based economy, no one is entitled to more for their labor than what the market will pay. The NMB got it right at this point. Exposing the company to the destructive threat of a strike doesn’t serve anyone’s interest.
Yoda was right to focus on fear as a path to the dark side. In this case, the dark side is not so much a strike but, rather, the fear, anger and hate churned up by union leaders that could lead to a disastrous outcome for the members they represent