Joe Sharkey At Large

A new Paramount film, “Up in the Air,” is generating good advance word in screenings. It stars George Clooney as a road warrior. Release set for mid-December.

Here’s the trailer.

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If you happen to be in Los Angeles on Halloween night, here’s a suggestion. Go to see the screening of the 1922 silent-film vampire classic Nosferatu at the magnificent Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown.

It will be accompanied by Clark Wilson playing the hall’s great pipe organ, and presented in the way the film was designed to be seen.

The Disney hall is one of the great concert halls in the country. There’s not a bad seat in the joint, and the acoustics are wonderful. My wife and I heard Mahler’s Sixth there with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and it was a transformational musical experience (except for the lout whose cell-phone rang just as that last sublime chord faded out — ouch!)

Anyway, here’s the phone number for tickets: 323-850-2000. If I were going to be in Los Angeles that night, I wouldn’t miss it.

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The case had firmly been made for business aviation as a viable, defensible alternative to commercial air service until the recession hit last year — right about the same time three invincibly tone-deaf  CEOs from Detroit auto companies swanned into Washington on their heavy-metal private jets to demand taxpayer bailouts.

Lots of factors combined to put the kabosh on years of robust growth in the business-aviation market. The collapsing economy was the main one.

But there was another, lesser factor. The business-aviation industry evidently still does not — or will not — recognize how much public-perception damage was done, at precisely the worst possible time, by the haughty decisions of those three Detroit worthies to use their private jets to get from Detroit to Washington to testify before Congress and ask for taxpayer relief.

Currently, there are signs that the important U.S. business aviation industry is picking up a little bit. As reported here yesterday, business-aircraft activity rose in October for the first time in a year, mainly because of an increased use of turbo-prop planes. Business jets, and especially the heavy-metal beauties like those favored by our Detroit dandies, continued to languish.

I have frequently made the case, here and elsewhere, for the judicious use of business aircraft. Smart corporations know that a well-thought-out corporate flight department, with a mix of planes suitable for various purposes, makes clear bottom-line sense. Most business-aircraft use involves sending teams of managers or technicians somewhere on a tight schedule, often to a location with poor commercial air service.

Getting them in and out efficiently is not a matter of luxury. It is a matter of business efficiency.

Commercial airlines have been slashing capacity (there are 21 percent fewer seats in the U.S. airline market than there were in October 2000, says OAG) and yanking service from small and mid-sized airports. More often, getting there by commercial air requires multiple time-wasting stops — if you can get there at all by air.

Talk to industry experts, as I often do, and you will hear a general consensus that well over 80 percent of business-aircraft use was clearly justified as a productivity tool.

On the other hand, a small percentage was not. Richard Santulli, the founder of and until recently the CEO of the fractional share business-jet leader NetJets, told me, for example, that the heaviest use of NetJets’ top-shelf Gulfstream G5 fleet occurred on the New York/Teterboro-Washington D.C. route. Given copious options on the commercial air shuttles and on Amtrak on that short route, that was obviously not a sensible way to use a big corporate jet.

The business-aviation trade groups nevertheless lost control of a message they had been very successful in establishing till the Detroit trio swanned into Washington last year.

If the had simply conceded that flying a G5 from, say, Detroit to Washington is an asinine way to use corporate jets, they could have regained the high ground to argue that in most cases, corporate aviation does make economic sense.

Instead, they blamed the messenger, as if the widespread public revulsion against obvious misuses of corporate jets that followed the Detroit scandal was something cooked up by the media.

And they still at it, as witnessed by the tendentious lede paragraph in a joint announcement released today by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the National Business Aviation Association, which contains an otherwise useful argument on behalf of corporate aviation.

To wit:

“Washington, DC, October 15, 2009 – The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) today published a new survey showing conclusively that some of the recent portrayals of business aviation are inconsistent with the true nature of the industry.

The survey, conducted for GAMA and NBAA by Harris Interactive, depicts an industry in which the typical company is a small or mid-sized business flying a single aircraft that is used by a broad mix of employees to make business trips utilizing community airports, often with little or no airline service.

“These findings stand in stark contrast to recent mischaracterizations of business aviation operators,” said GAMA President and CEO Pete Bunce.

The findings are interesting, and reiterate the case that had ALREADY been made when the boys from Detroit made their ill-conceived flights from Detroit to Washington on their luxury private jets last year.

Those dumb moves were not “mischaracterizations” by the media. The characterizations were accurate. Rather than fingering those three Detroit CEOS for their poor judgment, the industry went into a defensive crouch and pretended that the media was picking on business aviation in general — and, of course, some elements in the media then did just that.

The smart move by the business-aviation industry would have been to point out that the self-entitled Detroit Three should have used common sense and flown commercially, and then move on after noting (correctly) that frivolous use of corporate jets is relatively uncommon.

As I said, the case for judicious use of business aviation had already been made when Manny, Moe and Jack from Detroit decided to fly the industry into a brick wall.

Making the sensible case again, the GAMA CEO Pete Bruce said this in yesterday’s announcement: “The reality is, companies of all sizes rely on many different types of aircraft to be more competitive, productive, efficient and successful.”

NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen added: “Although the manufacture and use of business aircraft contributes significantly to the national economy, the industry is often not well understood. This important study will help people see the real face of business aviation and underscore its importance to citizens, companies and communities across the U.S.”

The survey, based on actual interviews conducted with pilots and passengers involved in business aircraft flights, finds:

–Small companies operate the majority of business aircraft. Most companies (59%) operating business aircraft have fewer than 500 employees, and seven in ten have less than 1,000 employees.

–Companies using business aviation typically operate only a single aircraft. The majority (75%) of companies operate only one turbine-powered aircraft.

–Managers and other mid-level employees are the typical passengers on business aircraft. Only 22% of passengers on business aircraft are top management (i.e., a company’s Chairman, Board Member, CEO or CFO); the majority are other managers (50%) and or technical, sales or service staff (20%).

–Employees use their time onboard company aircraft more effectively and productively than when they are on airline flights. Some passengers even estimate that they are more productive on the company aircraft than they are in the office because of fewer distractions.

–A large majority of flights (80%) are made into secondary airports or airports with infrequent or no scheduled airline service.

The survey was conducted online and by mail within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of GAMA and NBAA between June 1-October 6, 2009 among 350 pilots, flight department mangers, and directors of aviation of business aircraft, as well as 289 passengers of business aircraft.

Here is a link to the Harris Interactive survey. It’s worth reading.

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Now that it has been satisfactorily demonstrated that people will put up with just about anything, domestic airlines are jacking up fares — over and above the recently announced $20 roundtrip surcharge for travel during the upcoming peak holiday seasons.

Airlines clearly figure that demand might soon exceed supply, with overall capacity down sharply (there are 21 percent fewer domestic seats flying this October than in October 2000, according to the airline schedule data firm OAG). Unclear is whether they’re right about the demand, or whether a fair number of former passengers have abandoned or sharply cut back on air travel altogether, fed up as they are with the hassles.

As usual, the intrepid Rick Seaney at Farecompare.com is on the case.

Here’s his report this afternoon:

“Airlines Hiking Domestic Airfares by up to $16 Roundtrip

“Yesterday our proprietary airfare processing system detected an unusually large number of domestic U.S. city pairs with an increase of up to $16 roundtrip — a hike initiated by American Airlines.

“Continental and Southwest started matching late last night, and hours ago Delta/Northwest, United and US Airways began matching — rounding out the legacy airlines.

“Most airfare-hike attempts occur late in the week, and either “stick” or “fizzle” over the weekend as carriers decide whether or not to match. It is unusual to see an airfare hike early in the week, which is typically reserved for discounting and sales.

“We contacted American Airlines about the airfare hike attempt and they confirmed the mileage based domestic airfare increase at the following levels:

0-450 miles $3ow/$6rt

451-750 miles $5ow/$10rt

751+ miles $8ow/$16r

“A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines further notes they have matched with at a lower level than the legacy airlines (with no increase on their cheapest “fun fares”):

0-450 miles $2ow/$4rt

451-750 miles $3ow/$6rt

751+ miles $5ow/$10rt

“This hike is layered on top a targeted peak holiday surcharge of $10 each way over the past two weeks and appears to be well on its way to “sticking” as the fourth increase of 2009 – all four occurring since June (compared to 15 total in 2008 and 17 in 2007).”

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In September, business aircraft flying in the United States was at the highest level since October 2008, near the start of the recession, according to flight data tracked by ARGUS TRAQPak. Data are based on serial-number-specific aircraft arrivals and departures.

Turbo-prop aircraft accounted for much of the increase, including in the troubled fractional-aircraft market where turbo-prop flights were up 24.4 percent while flights for fractional-owned jets were down in all categories.

Overall business aircraft activity increased 2.7% from August 2009. Compared to September 2008, the increase was .4%. In all categories, Turbo-prop aircraft activity showed the strongest recovery at 11.1%, with large-cabin jet aircraft activity showing the greatest decline at -12.7% as compared to September 2008. ARGUS estimates the percent change of flight activity, rolling month over month, for the last twelve months is up an average of .71% per month. Total flight activity for the last twelve months as compared to the previous twelve months is off -20.28% (Oct. 07–Sept. 08 vs. Oct. 08–Sept. 09).

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In the biggest development yet for total in-flight connectivity — encompassing both Wi-Fi service and voice cell-phone roaming capability — Lufthansa said it is equipping most of its long-haul fleet with a suite of products largely developed by Panasonic Avionics that will allow passengers to use their cell-phones or access the Internet in-flight almost anywhere in the world.

Lufthansa’s confusing announcement (maybe it was more comprehensible in German), and an equally confusing one by Panasonic, made for bewildering reading, especially since it was framed as a re-launch of the ill-fated Connexion by Boeing Wi-Fi service (which Lufthansa branded as FlyNet). In 2001, Lufthansa had agreed to be the launch customer for Connexion by Boeing. The Boeing subsidiary eventually signed up other customers, including ANA, Japan Airlines and SAS, but the company went out of business (after losing about $1 billion) in 2006, two years after Lufthansa first began offering it on flights.

Connexion by Boeing died of its own weight, literally and figuratively. The equipment was too heavy to be used on anything other than big long-haul planes; the company was bloated with 600 employees; the timing turned out to be awful, in the travel depression that followed 2001, and well before it had become clear that enough people would pay for such a service to make it viable. Neither the market nor the technology was ready.

The new Lufthansa service — still branded as FlyNet — has nothing to do with the long-gone Connexion by Boeing. Instead, the technology is by Panasonic and the cell-phone component of the system is being provided by AeroMobile, which is one of two foreign companies (the other is OnAir) that are leading the current revolution in in-flight Wi-Fi and/or cell-phone development on many foreign airlines.

Stripped of some of its more-windy verbiage, Lufthansa’s statement said: “Easy to use, the system will allow passengers to utilize the Internet in-flight as they would at a public hot-spot, with WLAN access, sending emails with attachments or an SMS from a mobile phone and synchronisation of smartphones, like PDAs, iPhones or Blackberrys.

“FlyNet will be available to all passengers in the cabin … It will be installed in stages, worldwide, on all Lufthansa long-haul routes. Rates will differ, from time-based to flat rate …

Facts and Figures

* Bandwidth:
5-50 Mbps (in ther aircraft
1 Mbps (outside the aircraft)
* Services:
WLAN, GSM, GPRS
* Re-launch:
2010
* Lufthansa long-haul fleet:
96 aircraft
* Lufthansa Partner:
Panasonic Avionics Corporation
* Transmission mode:
Satellite-supported broadband system.”

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Here is Panasonic’s statement about the development.

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AeroMobile and OnAir are behind the Wi-Fi and/or cell-phone revolution on airlines outside the U.S. An American start-up, Row44, is also trying to make inroads in the international market, though its major customer so far is Southwest Airlines, which does not fly overseas. Southwest has said it will outfit its fleet of 737s with Row44′s satellite Wi-Fi system.

AeroMobile’s chief executive officer, Bjorn-Taale Sandberg, said today that the Lufthansa initiative will transform the industry. “Major airlines are recognizing the need to keep their passengers connected with broadband and cellular connectivity,” he said.

“AeroMobile is unique in providing airlines with flexibility and a future-proofed connectivity vision. We have customer commitments from airlines operating Inmarsat Classic Aero, Swift64, SwiftBroadband and now Ku band. Lufthansa’s commitment to Panasonic’s multi-megabyte Ku band solution, eXConnect, will allow AeroMobile to deliver a much richer user experience, provide more comprehensive value-added cellular services and a growth path to 3G,” he said.

AeroMobile was the first company to offer in-flight mobile phone services in full commercial use when it launched with Emirates in March 2008. The system is currently installed on over 50 wide-bodied aircraft across six aircraft types with Emirates and Malaysian Airlines. This figure will rise into three figures in 2010 as AeroMobile’s equipment is installed on other long haul flag carriers.

The Lufthansa announcement, which sees AeroMobile’s equipment installed through Panasonic’s eXPhone system, means AeroMobile now has commitments spanning all wide-bodied aircraft variants including B747 and A380.

Last month, I spoke with Benoit Debains, the chief executive of AeroMobile competitor OnAir. He said that OnAir is negotiating to provide service on super-jumbo A380s before the end of the year, though he wouldn’t identify the airline or airlines.

The big question, as world airlines gear up for full connectivity, including cell-phone capability, is the United States, where in-flight Wi-Fi is being eagerly adopted but there remains huge public and political resistance to allowing voice calls in flight.

“I used to say the people who are against voice calls are the people who didn’t try it,” Debains said, adding: “We have 10,000 flights (every month). I have been on some of these flights and I have to tell you, it is not an issue as people fear. The average duration of a phone call is about 2 minutes. And because there is already a certain noise level in the cabin, a call is not as noisy as people believe it would be.”

He called the opposition in the U.S. “very emotional.” He said, “When you talk to [U.S.] airline CEOs or to fleet managers, they give you a very personal opinion — ‘You know, an airplane cabin is the last place where I cannot be reached,’ blah-blah-blah. They not even thinking in terms of all those things you can do [with full connectivity] that you do when you are on the ground.”

Nevertheless, he said, OnAir is trying to persuade some U.S. carriers to carry its system on international fleets. “We believe that the U.S. market ultimately will open up to this,” he insisted, though he said that high costs for outfitting a plane (“three or four times higher” than the $100,000 per aircraft it costs to wire a plane for the AirCell’s Gogo-branded Wi-Fi service that many domestic airlines are already installing) makes it more likely that OnAir would be installed, if at all, mostly on new factory-built long-haul aircraft that might be ordered in the future.

There has been strong resistance in the United States to any proposal to allow cell-phone use – or even so-called voice over Internet protocol on airplanes.

Among the strongest opponents are flight attendants, though their main union the Association of Flight Attendants, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America union. In a statement, the union said:

“AFA-CWA is urging members of the Senate to ensure that a ban on in-flight cellular telephone usage is included in any Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization legislation that passes out of the Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives has already included such a ban in H.R.915, the House FAA Reauthorization Bill. Cell-phone usage in the cabin would create a new security risk by compromising your ability to maintain order in the cabin and to safely execute an emergency evacuation if necessary.”

It isn’t clear exactly how a cell phone would impede an aircraft evacuation (safety is always trotted out to oppose anything the flight attendants don’t like) — but it is very clear that the opposition to in-flight voice calls in the U.S. is fierce and possibly politically insurmountable.

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California became the latest state to ban enforcement of bogus foreign libel judgments against Americans when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this bill into law last night.

These troubling foreign libel cases, which fall broadly under the heading of “libel tourism,” typically involve a judgment obtained in a foreign country against a U.S. citizen who has been sued for libel for something written in the U.S., which would be fully protected as free speech under the U.S. Constitution.

The main case that triggered the legislation in California and a small number of other states, including New York, involved Rachel Ehrenfeld, a New York author and academic who was sued by a Saudi billionaire in a British court known for being favorable toward libel plaintiffs who travel to the UK to shop for judgments.

The Saudi businessman, who objected to his brief depiction in Dr. Ehrenfeld’s 2003 book on Saudi financing of Al Qaeda terrorist activities, “Funding Evil,” won a $200,000 judgment against Ehrenfeld in the pliant British court, even though the book was largely unavailable in the UK and Ehrenfeld’s mention of the Saudi would not have constituted libel in the United States.

The most recent twist in this awful phenomenon, of course, involves me. I was sued for libel and defamation of Brazil, in a bizarre case in which it was claimed that an “insult” to the dignity of Brazil constituted an injury to every citizen of that country.

The case stems from the horrific mid-air collision that I luckily survived over the Amazon in 2006, and ostensibly concerns statements about air-travel safety in Brazil that I allegedly wrote or made, including reporting and commentary on Brazil’s atrocious handling of the investigation, or about Brazil’s faulty air-traffic control system, which was found to have been the major cause of the crash.

I did argue forcefully against what I saw as Brazil’s failure to address obvious flaws in its air-traffic safety while rushing to scapegoat two American pilots. But weirdly, the Brazil lawsuit presents as evidence comments that I never even made, and which actually were picked up from Brazilian blogs or news sites that linked to a blog I wrote, and discontinued in January 2008. That lawsuit, which accuses me of calling Brazil “most idiot of all idiots,” among other bizarre charges, seeks a judgment against me in the United States of nearly $300,000.

A New York law firm, Grant, Herrmann, Schwartz & Klinger, is assisting the Brazilians in this suit, and had the papers delivered to me at my home in New Jersey a a few weeks ago.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, among other groups, including the Business Travel Coalition, denounced the Brazil suit as an assault against free speech in the U.S.

New Jersey is considering passing a bill, introduced by state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, similar to the one that just passed in California.

There is also a federal bill pending in the Senate, the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009, introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter, that would protect all Americans from libel judgments in a foreign country for speech in the United States that would be fully protected under U.S. law.

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‘South Park’ took on the stranded-passengers issue last week in its “Dead Celebrities” episode, and Kate Hanni’s FlyersRights.org — which has been leading the fight for a federal law to require airlines to address the many problems associated with flights stuck idled on tarmacs for long periods of time — lost no time in promoting the segment.

Here’s the link:

http://www.sendspace.com/pro/fefdlg

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Thanks to the Economist for weighing in on the bizarre and troubling (for free speech in the United States especially) Brazil suit claiming I defamed that nation by reporting and commenting in the U.S. on the horrible mid-air collision over the Amazon three years ago.

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Business travel may be coming back a bit, but USA Today is still reeling from the slump. The five-day-a-week paper says it lost 17 percent of its reported circulation, or 398,000 daily copies, between April and September.

Here’s the Editor & Publisher exclusive on the startling decline. The paper now claims a total circulation of 1.88 million.

USA Today, which has always depended far more than other newspapers on discounted so-called bulk sales for much of its circulation, says that its hotel distribution is off about 40 percent in the April-September period.

That’s partly a result of the net decline in business travelers, but also partly the result of a decline in demand even for a newspaper that arrives free outside your door.

Last April, Marriott decided to stop delivering the paper for free to its hotel rooms, which formerly had accounted for 50,000 copies. I understand that decision was made after Marriott chairman Bill Marriott decided that too many USA Todays were being left untouched in hallways outside hotel-room doors. That looked untidy, the famously tidy Marriott boss said.

In a memo to staff, USA Today publisher Dave Hunke expressed strong faith in the future of the newspaper and said its fortunes would rebound as travel continues to pick up. “We know these circulation declines are temporary and as the economy continues to recover and the travel industry rebounds, we know our circulation will rebound with it,” he said.

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