Save the contract towers

ATN_Pilot said:
That's not really the argument at all, in fact. The argument is that the government was directly responsible for lax security and ignoring intelligence information, and is therefore responsible for the loss of revenue. The airlines not being able to predict it has never been an argument that I've heard anyone make.

Again, $15 billion is a phantom number!!! Apportioning money is not the same thing as distributing it. Congress approved up to $10 billion in loan guarantees, and $5 billions was direct compensation for the grounding. But only $1 billion of the money set aside for loan guarantees was ever actually loaned, almost all of it was paid back in short order, and the airlines actually attacked were denied their loan requests!
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Source?
 
Seggy said:
Nah, y'all stay out of the way. I have seen y'all fly over NYC and hasn't slowed anything down. But when you are waiting to depart over BIGGY from LGA and are slotted behind the TEB traffic, THEY are the ones slowing things down.
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Why blame that on GA Pilots. That sounds more like a problem you should take to the Airport reservation office who controls slotting.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Got Google?
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You know, I've asked as you kept saying the data was wrong, so I wanted to see the reports you were referring too. Guess you don't have actual reports in mind since you just push to wiki and now google.

Wasn't there a whole thread on this and asking people when the provide numbers to show there work?
 
This is giving me a headache. I have been very sick (still am) so I don't feel like having long dialogues, so give me a pass on that:

These figures come from DOT and from the GAO. Not wiki. Revenues to the Major carriers had already dropped 41% in the first 6 months of 2001. Legitimate industry analysts (again wiki) projected industry wide annual losses of 2 to 3 Billion long before the attacks in September. Several carriers were already in the process of negotiating loans to preserve their liquidity. This is fact.

"As Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said
in late September 2001: “The airlines told us they were going broke long before these attacks occurred,
while at the same time giving their executives $120 million in salaries and bonuses this year."

Again, DOT figures (not wiki) The carriers (427 of them) all received in total, 5 billion in cash. UAL for example got 774 million, AA got 664 million and DAL got 636 million. The loans (again from DOT) that were paid out to the 7 carriers totaled 1,558.6 billion. Some carries did not qualify or ask for loans, some were able to get private loans, some got private loans and used some of the government loans as collateral for private loans exceeding what they received form the government loans, but the money - 10 billion was set aside for them. That is where the 15 billion figure comes from. To recap:

Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, which provided a means to stabilize the industry at a time when it was financially reeling. This act provided a framework for federal financial assistance, including:

5 billion in direct compensation, 10 billion in guaranteed loans, insurance protection and liability protection and also - 40 billion for the federal response to the terrorist attacks, including funds for increased transportation security. In reality, 43 billion spent in 10 years for airport security alone with only 40% covered by the pax from the $2.50 security fee per flight.

Lets also not forget: Most carriers had War Risk Insurance that they obtained through commercial insurance companies which covered damage due to any act of war or terrorism, including invasion, insurrection, hijacking and rebellion. This covered complete hull loss or damage, Pax liability - either death or injury and also covered third party on the ground/anything outside of the aircraft liability.

Read pages 9, 10, and 11 to see how the government stepped in after insurance companies raised the premiums after 9/11 to the carriers to the tune of 68 billion to cover the increase in premiums for the carriers, and in 2007 starting issuing the insurance themselves to the carriers. This is all covered in a GAO report. It was supposed to be a temporary fix but has already been extended several times. It has saved the airlines hundreds of millions of dollars. This again is not from wiki. http://www.laane.org/downloads/ShortchangedStudy.pdf

Then we have the pension bailouts. Read pages 12, 13, 14.

Then we have huge subsidies that many states (especially California - state and local totaling 487 million) have granted to the carriers since 9/11.

We can go on, because there is more. I have to have a lie down though.
 
ComplexHiAv8r said:
You know, I've asked as you kept saying the data was wrong, so I wanted to see the reports you were referring too. Guess you don't have actual reports in mind since you just push to wiki and now google.

Wasn't there a whole thread on this and asking people when the provide numbers to show there work?
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To be blunt, we've had this debate before on this forum at least half a dozen times, and I'm just too lazy to go digging around for sources yet again. If you want to claim victory because of that, feel free.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
To be blunt, we've had this debate before on this forum at least half a dozen times, and I'm just too lazy to go digging around for sources yet again. If you want to claim victory because of that, feel free.
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Thanks A Life Aloft. I now have a government document on the money provided to airlines.

Todd, remember this the next time you ask for someone for proof to their argument. I, like others, was just trying to be on the same page in data fur a better discussion.
 
ComplexHiAv8r said:
Thanks A Life Aloft. I now have a government document on the money provided to airlines.

Todd, remember this the next time you ask for someone for proof to their argument. I, like others, was just trying to be on the same page in data fur a better discussion.
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It gets ridiculous because not only are the records of DOT, the GAO, the meetings held in Congress regarding the carriers after 9/11, every other agency involved and each item listed above that was provided in detail for the carriers, etc., to say that they did not receive monies and bail outs in many forms after 9/11 and to state that "The only thing the government did for the airlines was the ATSB, and those weren't grants, they were loans," is simply untrue and very misinformed. And to say that the carriers did not benefit after 9/11 by all the government infusions to them is also just as inane.

No one is more sensitive about 9/11 than I am. I was flying that day and flying out of JFK to LAX no less and wound up diverting to DEN. I lost co-workers, friends, even a neighbor from Long Beach and still suffer some emotional trauma from that horrific day. I have been to services in Grapevine, Shanksville and N.Y. and I have attended a memorial every single year since 9/11, so let's not even go there about being insensitive. We are not discussing 9/11 itself here, we are discussing the billions upon billions of various bailouts and aid that the carriers received afterwards. Even I, can separate the two.

(please note that not feeling well, I meant to say/type above in post #287 : also NOT wiki here: Revenues to the Major carriers had already dropped 41% in the first 6 months of 2001. Legitimate industry analysts (again wiki) projected industry wide annual losses of 2 to 3 Billion long before the attacks in September.

I am also fed up of hearing the b.s. about "well I love it when pilots telling executives how to run an airline?" WTH? How completely and utterly blind can some people be? Anyone, who knows and can read about the history of every single carrier on the planet from it's inception until today and read in detail about every single CEO and Manager and every dime that these Managers have paid themselves in millions and millions of dollars and various compensation packages and golden parachutes worth more millions, while laying off employees, furloughing employees, lying to their employees, forcing pay cuts onto their employees and worse, crying they are broke and running in the red while flying around in their private biz jets and spending another few hundred thousand on new furniture for their offices, is an idiot. What decent, honest and competent carrier manager(s) have there been in the last few decades? None come to mind except maybe Kellerman, Smith and Neeleman . Yet the list of slime Managers and their behaviors towards their employees and mis-management of the carriers, idiotic decisions and the padding of their wallets before they bail, is miles long.
 
A Life Aloft said:
It gets ridiculous because not only are the records of DOT, the GAO, the meetings held in Congress regarding the carriers after 9/11, every other agency involved and each item listed above that was provided in detail for the carriers, etc., to say that they did not receive monies and bail outs in many forms after 9/11 and to state that "The only thing the government did for the airlines was the ATSB, and those weren't grants, they were loans," is simply untrue and very misinformed. And to say that the carriers did not benefit after 9/11 by all the government infusions to them is also just as inane.

No one is more sensitive about 9/11 than I am. I was flying that day and flying out of JFK to LAX no less and wound up diverting to DEN. I lost co-workers, friends, even a neighbor from Long Beach and still suffer some emotional trauma from that horrific day. I have been to services in Grapevine, Shanksville and N.Y. and I have attended a memorial every single year since 9/11, so let's not even go there about being insensitive. We are not discussing 9/11 itself here, we are discussing the billions upon billions of various bailouts and aid that the carriers received afterwards. Even I, can separate the two.

(please note that not feeling well, I meant to say/type above in post #287 : also NOT wiki here: Revenues to the Major carriers had already dropped 41% in the first 6 months of 2001. Legitimate industry analysts (again wiki) projected industry wide annual losses of 2 to 3 Billion long before the attacks in September.

I am also fed up of hearing the b.s. about "well I love it when pilots telling executives how to run an airline?" WTH? How completely and utterly blind can some people be? Anyone, who knows and can read about the history of every single carrier on the planet from it's inception until today and read in detail about every single CEO and Manager and every dime that these Managers have paid themselves in millions and millions of dollars and various compensation packages and golden parachutes worth more millions, while laying off employees, furloughing employees, lying to their employees, forcing pay cuts onto their employees and worse, crying they are broke and running in the red while flying around in their private biz jets and spending another few hundred thousand on new furniture for their offices, is an idiot. What decent, honest and competent carrier manager(s) have there been in the last few decades? None come to mind except maybe Kellerman, Smith and Neeleman . Yet the list of slime Managers and their behaviors towards their employees and mis-management of the carriers, idiotic decisions and the padding of their wallets before they bail, is miles long.
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This is exactly what I have been trying to say, only way more articulate.

Also, A Life Aloft, do you feel my comments were insensitive towards the 9/11 families after going through what you have? Looking for an honest response, I can take it. :)
 
PositionAndHold said:
, do you feel my comments were insensitive towards the 9/11 families after going through what you have? Looking for an honest response, I can take it. :)
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People only call other people insensitive when they are asking for money. But don't wan't to say that. So they point a finger someplace else.

But Toddler's premise is fundamentally flawed. Raising your taxes is fine, but he isn't asking for a tax cut for himself.
 
Remind me again why it's crazy to charge for ATC or other public services based on usage and cost rather than making it some absurd political football for a bunch of dudes on the interwebz to get mad about? It's like the tax code, or really anything governmental in nature...the more complex it is, the more room for corruption. And corruption doesn't take vacation or get sick...it's always working.
 
Regardless of how it is taxed, the aviation trust fund that funds the ATC system is self sustaining as it stands. The missed point is it an across the board cut regardless of if the service can stand on its own two feet so to speak. GA is rarely a burden on me, though I admit I don't know the percentages and who pays what to definitively say one side is unfairly taxed based on my personal and professional opinion.

The missed fact I take from this is a self sustaining government service is being reduced. If it continues, the impact to all aviation operations is going to be severe. GA won't have services to class D towers they may or may not need. Airlines will see reduced runway capacity they may or may not need. All I can say is if you needed the service or capacity, sorry. We're doing our best
 
From my admittedly small perspective, you could close most of the towers they have on the immediate cut list without a significant reduction in "safety" (whatever that is). Now, with that said, I've seen at least one airport on the "second tier" list of cuts where, IMHO, you NEED a tower or it'll get real Keystone Cops real fast. The notion that they would reduce the enroute/approach facilities at all (again without knowing the particulars) strikes me as totally insane.
 
Boris Badenov said:
From my admittedly small perspective, you could close most of the towers they have on the immediate cut list without a significant reduction in "safety" (whatever that is). Now, with that said, I've seen at least one airport on the "second tier" list of cuts where, IMHO, you NEED a tower or it'll get real Keystone Cops real fast. The notion that they would reduce the enroute/approach facilities at all (again without knowing the particulars) strikes me as totally insane.
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I've been to at least one Class C (Peoria, IL) that could control itself, but I generally agree with that assessment.
 
Boris Badenov said:
From my admittedly small perspective, you could close most of the towers they have on the immediate cut list without a significant reduction in "safety" (whatever that is). Now, with that said, I've seen at least one airport on the "second tier" list of cuts where, IMHO, you NEED a tower or it'll get real Keystone Cops real fast. The notion that they would reduce the enroute/approach facilities at all (again without knowing the particulars) strikes me as totally insane.
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Thats part of the problem. Reduce staffing at a radar facility AND ask them to play tower as well. I've played tower with more than one plane three times. Two of them were near catastrophes. The rub is yes those controllers aren't needed 99% of the time, but where does the line start? I'm not needed 20% of the time myself.
 
PositionAndHold said:
This is exactly what I have been trying to say, only way more articulate.

Also, A Life Aloft, do you feel my comments were insensitive towards the 9/11 families after going through what you have? Looking for an honest response, I can take it. :)
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I was not the least bit offended. We are talking about business here. We are talking about how the air carriers operated before 9/11 and after 9/11 and all the benefits that they received from the taxpayers and the government in the wake of 9/11. This has nothing to do, in my mind, with the events of that day nor the victims and rescuers, those killed and wounded nor their families and loved ones and believe me, I am probably more than just a bit over sensitive about 9/11 and I am well aware of that and why, even after all these years. It affected me very deeply and not in a good way.

I understood exactly what you were trying to express and I agree with your posts completely.
 
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