Industry Updates for Clients & Friends of Boyd Group International

May 3, 2023

In This T&G: 

• A Candid and Iconoclastic Unvarnished review of key sections of the FAA Reauthorization

Key Points In the FAA Reauthorization Bill

A Hard & Non-Political Review

The final version of the FAA Reauthorization Bill is expected to see the light of congressional day (such as it may be) in the next week or so.

There are some key sections that will affect airports and air service planning which need to be understood.

Too Prevalent: Obsolete Assumptions. Myopic Planning. I will start with this bit of anathema: Most of the foundation of the sections of the bill covered below are based on complete misconceptions of air transportation economics and the structure of today’s air transportation system.

Particularly in the areas of air service and airline structure, a lot of the contents were concocted by people with insufficient industry expertise to legislate.

However, there are some sections that are way late and have value, particularly those intended to make travel for consumers with disabilities as transparent and hassle-free as possible. The sections on CVR requirements and foreign repair stations are on the money. In this T&G I cover the areas most pertinent to airports and air service.

Let’s look:

Section 422: Pilot Shortage. The bill requires the FAA to form a committee to determine the damage done to small community air service as a result of the pilot shortage.

Sorry to disappoint the RAA, some politicians, civic leaders, and pandering consultants foisting unethical studies on small airports, but any “pilot shortage” is now a non sequitur in regard to restoring lost rural air service.

You can add hundreds of new pilots, and that won’t do diddly to get scheduled flights back to Williamsport or Topeka or Youngstown.

The truth is that the economics of pilot resources now cannot be supported by small airliners operated by network carrier systems. In point of fact, it’s revenue shortages that are the cause, and this trendy canard that it’s just a matter of filling cockpits in airliners that no longer exist only misleads small communities.

Conclusion: A bogus section. Irresponsible in regard to misleading the public. The issue of rural and small community air service demands futurist thinking. Dimbulb committees don’t do it.

Heck, go back to 2016. The Transportation Research Board commissioned a task force to explore and research solutions to the small airport service issue. Lots of great people. Lots and lots of hours. Lots of opinions. But they were focused on airport service, not consumer needs and potential in the region.

And nothing – zip – ever came of it. This latest FAA committee will do the same because it is based on fantasy.

Section 505: Requirement For Human Operated Customer Service. The bill dictates that airlines provide passengers with live customer service support, either by telephone or by text, but in all cases a modality with a living breathing human on the other end.

This would seem a given at any company - having customer product support is a basic business need. Like, an automobile dealer without a service department.

Yet, some airlines have almost eliminated it for their passengers. One airline just disconnected its customer service phones. Text us, is the advice. That’s always fun for momma with three whining kids, trying to get through when the re-book line looks like a Depression-era soup kitchen.

Others make consumers do a magical mystery tour of touch-tone text options, only to end up with nobody on the other end. One airline actually claims to close its terminal (ticket) counters one hour before departure. Arrive 50 minutes early and have a booking problem? Tough balloons. You need to read our small print.

Combine this with the situation where some carriers in some cities contract out airport processing to price-chosen mercenary vendors who have no concern if the customer is happy or not. So when the flight gets delayed or oversold or cancelled, things go really bad, really fast. Do a YouTube search.

Conclusion: The airline industry should be ashamed. This should never have involved the feds. After adding lots of rules that make air travel a flying minimum security prison, they inflict financial punishment if not followed. And then they take a powder when the customer needs assistance.

Deal with it: the perception is that some parts of the airline industry treat customers like a truckload of heifers loading into the sale barn. Accurate or not, failure to have a viable customer service remediation channel is inexcusable.

Section 504: Know Your Rights Posters. Requires airports to post signage warning consumers about their rights in regard to service failures, refunds, baggage and other issues.

More like the warning notice on a pack of Camels.

Or maybe a reverse Miranda requirement. Here’s probably how some of the consumerist gadflies might want it worded. Probably won’t be like this, but they can dream.

It’s the foundation thinking of this that’s troubling: the FAA deems that airports need to warn passengers that the airlines may shaft them.

Conclusion: This is more of the trendy consumerist thinking that assumes airlines systematically short-service passengers.

In some ways, the industry has allowed this to happen, one driver of this  is cutting out product support, as noted above. Should make life fun for airports posting this stuff.

Section 514: Report on Consolidation & Competition In The Airline Industry. Big deal.

Another study of the obvious, founded on complete misassumptions on air travel economics.

This is where we expect leadership, not politics.

What is needed is a report on new channels of economic development for rural and small airports. This section is a total waste of time.

Conclusions: Political pap that will make headlines, concocted probably by a carefully-selected cadre of jihad consumerists.

Section 519: Seat Dimensions. This is an outgrowth of the inaccurate and in some cases dishonest reports, both in various media channels as well as politicians dancing on their soapboxes, that USA airlines have consistently reduced seat size over the years.

Rather than do a review of the facts, the framers of this legislation ran with bad data.

The truth is – get this – the average width of seats in economy cabins of USA carriers has actually increased over the past 30 years.

But the lore gets good press. Some travel publications and their politician fellow travelers like Senator Schumer have spouted that seats have declined in width by 2 inches in recent years.

These are flat out lies, because there is no way that these clowns could come up with that conclusion, except by fabricating it.

But it makes consistent press along with other stories of airline consumer outrages.

Here’s the truth. Boeing narrow-body economy cabins in standard 6-across configuration have been at 17 to @ 17.2 inches wide since the first 707s hit the skies in 1958.

(Oh, and by the way, regardless of what some supposed experts have declared, the fuselage width dimensions on the 737Max is the same as the first 707s.)

In the early 1990s, Airbus A320s came into fleets with seats 18+ inches wide. In the last three years, these have been joined by A220s with 19-inch seats. Point: that means wider tushy room over the industry.

But it’s accepted lore that airlines have shaved seat width. NBC reported that average width today is 16 inches – simply fake news. CNN published a silly illustration of how seats have varied over the years, which is fantasy. USA Today even claimed that seats were once 19.5 inches.

Conclusion: The FAA needs to consistently review emergency egress of airliner cabins. This certainly involves the matter of seat density. But average seat size has not changed over the years, which is the bogus and inaccurate foundation of this section.

Section 541 to 552: Access & Standards for Passengers With Disabilities. This is where the reauthorization bill literally shines. These sections are critical to opening air travel to consumers with physical issues and assist equipment.

Let’s not sugar coat this. While USA airlines have addressed this issue over the years, passengers with disabilities have been on the margins of customer service issues. An interruption. That perception must change.

The fact is that airlines are in business to carry consumers, and this includes – inherently and without differentiation of value – those that have special needs.

This must include comprehensive employee training – functional and awareness training – in accommodating passengers with needs.

Conclusion: These sections are consistent with the necessary move to make air travel as transparent as possible to all levels of travelers.

Section 570: Study on Restoration of Air Service At Small Communities. Funny, why bother to review hard economic realities?

Pandering to civic fantasy is so much more satisfying than facing economic truth.

After hearing that pesky scraping sound, it worked for a while on the Titanic, at least until raw physics came into play.

And raw economics and physics are in play in regard to service potential at small communities that have lost scheduled air access.

This section blindly assumes that connective and consumer-viable air service at every local airport is not only necessary, but entirely possible. To pander to this nonsense is irresponsible.

Conclusion: This section might as well include a study on the restoration of paddle wheel steamboat service on the Mississippi. America needs futurist airport economic planning. Again, this is the Achilles heel of much of this legislation: it takes refuge in politically-safe non-solutions..

Sections 561 to 568 – Essential Air Service. The various sections wallow around aspects of the EAS program, generally without any real relevance to the structure of the airline industry or whether the EAS program actually works.

The entire program assumes that there is a robust section of the airline industry that can jump in and deliver viable air service to small airports, regardless of any realities of consumer needs or demands.

It modifies the Small Community Air Service Development Grant Program to emphasize a preference for applications that include support from an airline, which in the past is simply a milquetoast letter noting that they’re aware of the application but have no hard service commitment.

It also notes that preference will be made for applications from airports that have lost all air service.

There’s nothing like legislation conceived in a fantasy cocoon. The SCASD program as it stands has almost never been responsible for restoring air service at an airport with no service. Or building more service for any length of time at a truly small community. It also assumes that there are lots of airlines out there just hankering to go into small communities, if only a subsidy is offered.

The entire funding of this program may be as much as $20 million, which is chump change. Today, a major airline will be hard pressed to answer the phone with an offer of a million bucks. Do the math.

Conclusion: These entire sections are devoid of any earthly connection with the new obligation to recognize that regional communication and trade connectivity efforts now need to go beyond the stupid trendy assumption that lack of service at the local airport will turn the place into a ghost town.

That’s nonsense.

BOTTOM LINE: There will be the usual kudos issued by the alphabet organizations and airlines and airports regarding the FAA Reauthorization.

These groups have no other option, and, to be fair, the process of getting this bill together represents an enormous deep dive into bureaucratic systems, dealing with various gadfly congresspeople who demand stupid additions, and trying to get something at least somewhat cogent out of the giant vat of political yogurt. This was accomplished.

This bill also includes a lot of areas that need to be addressed. The passenger access issues, noted above, is one. It also tackles the issue of foreign aircraft overhaul, and improvements in CVR standards.

Nevertheless, it is incumbent on aviation leaders to fully recognize where this bill falls short. For example, because politicians demand “solutions” to small community air service, that does not relieve leaders from being forthright and honest about such nonsense.

The final version should be out shortly.

__________

__________

We rely on Cirium for accurate and timely aviation data.

Thanks for joining us!

Be sure to log on to our other aviation intelligence portals

Boyd Group International: 303-674-2000 | info@aviationplanning.com

| www.AviationPlanning.com | Aviation Unscripted