Vol. 10 No. 95                                                                                                           Tuesday September 27, 2011

Boeing Delivers ANA 787

     The Umbrellas Of Seattle . . . If Mother Nature thought a little rain would stop Boeing from finally delivering its first B787 Dreamliner (Monday, September 26) in Seattle, she clearly doesn’t know Boeing.
     Although spectator seats went empty and the signing and official handover were conducted under umbrellas, a B787 in revenue operation is now a reality after several years of delay and untold millions in cost overruns.

     Maybe the rain was good luck, because now Boeing can finally get down to building and delivering airplanes.
     At handover of the world’s most advanced aircraft Jim Albaugh, President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and ANA President and CEO, Shinichiro Ito, signed paperwork that was fluttering in the rain - it actually looked a bit dated.
     The deal probably could have been concluded with a scanner on an iPad, which would have been in closer touch with the “gee whiz” high tech jetliner for sure.

 Today as All Nippon Airways and Boeing celebrate delivery of the first B787 we are thinking about our late friend and colleague REG “Ron” Davies who passed away this past July in UK at age 90.
     Ron served for over 40 years as Curator of Air Transport at Smithsonian National Air Space & Air Museum.
     During his tenure he sank many a beer with the likes of JD Tata and met with nearly all the top airline executives on the planet whilst creating a library of 25 books on every aspect of the airline business including histories of almost every major airline.
     Last time we met, Ron talked in earnest about what he thought of B787 harkening back to his days as a major factor at Douglas Aircraft and ahead to his years of having studied the airlines in and out from his special vantage point in Washington, D.C.
     “The widebody ‘jumbo’ jets today are twice as big as the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8.
     “The same general principal still applies, even though the 500-seat A380 is only half as big again as the Boeing 747.
     “Five airlines are currently operating more than 40 A380s, and this will rise to close to 100 by the end of 2012.
     “By any criterion, this is the beginning of a new generation.
     “The Boeing 787 will be a good replacement for the Boeing 767 or the Airbus A330, and good for domestic routes, but it will not be a major element globally.
     “Statistics show that 75 percent of the world’s international traffic is served by only 25 major airports. This is the market for the next generation. The A380 will meet the traffic demand for this 75 percent, and it has no competitor in the same class.
     “The 787 Dreamliner will be left to cope with the remaining 25 percent. Today, airliners remain in service for 30 years or more.
     “The half-life of the A380 will be at around the year 2020. Already, a French airline has ordered two 820-seat all-economy A380s.
     “There is talk of a stretched A380,” Ron Davies said.
Geoffrey

 

     Pan Am Airways, which has been grounded for the past twenty years, took off Sunday as a new and much ballyhooed Hollywood series on ABC television in America.
     The program about the greatest international airline in the world, which existed from 1927 until December 1991, focuses on the 1960s era and will be aired Sundays weekly.
     At first blush, Pan Am looks and feels like the old days when the big blue meatball was the best-known American logo in the world (alongside with Coca Cola).
     But everyone in the airline and air cargo game should watch this one because, among other things, Pan Am will be the first dramatized series about an airline.
     Just when the public at large seems fed up about everything connected to air travel, here comes Pan Am, full of style and fun, to save the day.
     Now a whole new generation of people will discover the glamour and fun of the airline business the way it existed once upon a time.
     Pan Am the television show is fun and with all due respect, we say it’s about time that this great airline is remembered for something other than the Lockerbie terrorist attack or untimely demise.
     The one single fact that should never be overlooked about Pan Am is that the carrier lived and was the preeminent global airline for most of the days of the 20th century.
     Pan Am was first and set many records in flight, but none more remarkable than reaching the zenith of commercial aviation as a private company carrying the U.S. flag, competing against financially subsidized airlines from all over the world that were government owned.
     In a poignant and lovely column last week in the New York Post, Cindy Adams recalled:
     “In the Far East, Pan Am was my lifeline. Want a package out? They did it. Need a letter in? The crew hand-carried it. Non-English speaking locals’ first learned words were ‘Pan Am.’
     “Several times a year I circled the globe on its two daily round-the-world PA001 and PA002 Clippers.
     “One headed east, the other west. Halfway stop, always Istanbul,” Cindy Adams recalled.
     We spoke yesterday to Jeff Kriendler, who was Pan Am World Airways last Vice President of Corporate Communications.
     Today Kriendler is still busy, although his activities have been elsewhere in the airline business since Pan Am closed in December 1991.
     But much to his credit, right now Kriendler is putting the finishing touches on a 300 plus-page word and picture book titled:
     Pan American World Airways: Aviation History through the Words of its People, due out in November and published by Blue Water Press.
     “The idea here was to take a written history from more than 75 people all over the former global Pan Am System, and present a unique document remembering the airline.”
     Mr. Kriendler notes that his contribution to the book includes recollections about the Tenerife accident and the impact on the airline, and other employee essays about such subjects as being with JFK in Dallas on November 22, 1963; flying the Beatles to the USA; R & R flights from Vietnam; Desert Storm and the Gulf War.
     But he also remembers some easier stuff, telling Cindy Adams:
     “Pan Am was Mother Teresa’s favorite ride. She never paid. She had free travel. She was so embarrassed to fly First Class,” he recalls.
     “And stewardesses always went through the cabin with a hat collecting money for her. They’d throw their own in, too,” Kriendler said.

Pan Am & The Press

     When it came to handling the “Fourth Estate,” Pan Am wrote the book.
     Here are the first round-the-world flight passengers on June 19, 1947.
     After the Pan American World Airways B377 “Clipper America” arrived in London from LaGuardia Airport’s Marine Air Terminal in New York, the passengers, the majority of whom were prominent publishers and editors, whirled through a jammed schedule of social events which included tea with Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
     They are shown in front of 10 Downing Street.
     In the picture are J. Loy Maloney, managing editor of Chicago Tribune; James H. Smith, Jr., vice president of Pan American; Gardner Cowles, publisher of Des Moines Register; David Ingalls, Pan American executive; Frank Gannett, publisher of Gannett Newspapers; Juan Trippe, founder Pan American Airways; Maurice T. Moore, chairman of the board of Time, Inc.; Paul Bellamy, publisher of Cleveland Plain Dealer; Mrs. Ogden Reid, president of New York Herald Tribune and others.

     Meanwhile, Pan Am, the TV series has brought back some real former flight attendants who recall that the fantasy of the television show is not all that far removed from some realities of their former career aloft.
     "It was the greatest time in my life," Tee Couch told The Houston Chronicle while hosting a reunion of former Pan Am flight attendants in her River Oaks, Texas living room last week.
     "We weren't bimbos. We were all college-educated and bilingual, and we wanted to see the world."
     Maria Gonzalez described serving actor Marlon Brando.
     She put her hand on her chest and made a thumping sound as she described the encounter with one of her cinematic heroes.
     "He asked, 'Do you ever take a rest?'
     “My heart was going like this (pound, pound, pound).
     “He gave me his telephone number if I was ever in L.A."
     The Houston Chronicle reported:
     “For almost two hours the old friends swapped stories that included mention of the infamous Mile High Club, the slang term for individuals who have sex while on board an aircraft in flight.
     Everyone wanted to belong, the women nodded in agreement.
     Quipped one former flight attendant,
     "We'd just put blankets over them."

     For many of us who loved and admired Pan Am the same can be said of the airline as well.
     And now with an unfolding TV series set aboard a Pan Am jet, we have some glimpse of what many of us remembered to share with the world.
     Thinking a bit wider in 2011, Pan Am the TV series sure beats a poke in the eye, which the airline business gets almost everywhere else these days.
Geoffrey/Flossie

 

     Pan Am the TV show is just the ticket to beautiful, 1960s airline nostalgia, with crisp uniforms, warm, inviting pre-terror airport terminals and airplanes, plus lots of beautiful people in the same place at the same time.
     Pan Am is also the first major series about an airline that has ever been made.
     However, while watching the first episode we were reminded that at its heart, Pan Am is a procedural, made-for-TV drama that attempts to reach out for as much audience as possible and winds up being a bit silly as a result.
     While all the friendships between stewardesses (yes, it was ok to call flight attendants stewardesses in the 1960s) and styling was working like crazy, right down to the crystal martini glass complete with stirrer and olive served to a passenger up on the flight deck, the pilots came off as a bit too pretty with nothing much to say, and when they did speak the show sounded kind of lame.
     If anybody knew the legendary pilots of Pan Am, as a group they were quite distinguished and never trivial like this TV bunch.
     I kept wondering if the pilots were supposed to be lighthearted, at least the writing could have better.
     The late Peter Graves by contrast did the distinguished-looking albeit laugh out loud pilot perfectly as example.

 

What’s My Vector, Victor? Peter Graves (pictured here with Julie Hagarty) played the distinguished. yet hilarious airline pilot best in the Zucker Brothers movie “Airplane!”

     Also, while we were waiting for someone to roll out a side of beef and start carving it up for the travellers on the Pan Am Episode One flight, instead the writers concocted a silly spy sub plot that was just stupid and made no sense.
     Too bad, because on many levels, this show works.
     Pam Am allows the viewer one overriding truth, and that is the contrast of what air travel once was and is today. It also gives a window into an era that the public is currently obsessed with, both in fashion and television: the 60s. We expect the merchandising for Pan Am-labeled items is about to go through the roof, and don’t be surprised if you see a lot of blueberry Pan Am stewardesses sashaying through Halloween.
     Particularly moving were the scenes recreating the lovely and delicate oval terminal Pan Am built at Idlewild (JFK) Airport during the 1950s.
     That building is still in use today by Delta Airlines and should be seen before it disappears as it is scheduled to be razed to make way for a new terminal within the next few months, if not sooner.
     We will continue to watch to see the marvelous style and outright beauty of Pan Am coming through via the stewardesses, and hopefully that will spread to the flight deck and down on the ground as well.
Geoffrey


     For all its high-budget glamour and painstaking attention to details, Pan Am the TV show cast a purposeful blind eye towards the unseemly side of the era it depicted. While yes, the 50s - 60s were known for strawberry matte lipstick, whale bone girdles and the perfect pin curls, all of which were present in the premier, it was also a time period known for seedier stuff, and that stuff was glaringly absent throughout the show.
     There were two things I was looking for when watching the show, and neither of them were delivered. I expected that a show that revolved around Pan Am stewardesses and pilots would involve at least one rear-end grab, whistle, or sly remark, but it never occurred.
      How can ABC make a show about this time period and ignore a societal condition that influenced everything that came after? There surely would have been a women's movement eventually, but I think part of what pushed it to the forefront in the 70s was the mixture of repression and freedom that women of the 40s-60s felt as a result of going to work during the war, and the afterbleed that occurred when women continued working and feeling useful in society.
      The end result of women working alongside men in a capacity that allowed them to dress a certain way and, in fact, exploited their looks to promote a brand, inevitably led to sexism and sexual harassment, much of which was accepted. So where was the harassment for all the gorgeous, tightly dressed, perfectly coiffed gals in blue?
     The other elephant in the room, or rather, the flight cabin, was the lack of smoking. Not a single person on the show smoked a cigarette. Oh wait, the Russian smoked . . . you know, the guy we're all supposed to hate?      He smoked in-flight, and was alone in doing it. I didn't live through the time period, but I know enough from hearing from my parents and my friend's parents that everyone, and I mean everyone, smoked in the 60s. They smoked in hotel lobbies, airport lounges, cafes, flight cabins, doctor's offices - pilots would steer Clippers with a Lucky Strike in hand, and nobody thought anything of it. How can it be that the only person we have smoking throughout an hour-long period show is a Russian agent (who turns out to be British)?
     Frankly, I found these absences offputting. I expected to see sexism and cigarettes as part of the story, and without them there, it felt like a fraud and a farce. I understand - it's ABC, the television colossus owned by the Walt Disney Company, sometimes called "The Mickey Mouse Network", and Mickey Mouse wants you to treat women equally, preserve your lungs and avoid cancer, but that's not the reality of what was happening during the time period depicted in Pan Am.
      For a show that airs at 10:00 p.m., past the kiddies’ bedtime, exactly who are you protecting? Why are you whitewashing history? And not just whitewashing it - you allow one character to smoke, but it's the character we're supposed to hate. If you're only going to include smoking to send subliminal messages about how we should feel about smokers - mainly, that they're evil - don't bother including the cigarettes.
      And if you really want to tell a story based on events, people, and an airline that actually existed in a well-known and fairly recent time period, don't pick and choose those elements you judge are worthy of being included. I'm not a huge fan of George W. Bush, but I would be a fool to leave him out if I were telling a story about America between the years 2001-2009. Let us be the judge - show us everything, and let us decide how we want to feel about it. It seems Mickey did all the deciding for us.
Flossie


     Emirates sent its first scheduled A380 into Hamburg Airport as part of the airport's 100th anniversary celebration.
     Emirates Airline President Tim Clark was aboard the flight and had this to say:
     “This is the first time Emirates, and indeed any airline, has conducted a scheduled A380 service into Hamburg, and is very much a case of our double-decker returning to the home of its final stages of production.
     “Hamburg is immensely important to us, both as a gateway into Germany and for the skilled finishing work conducted on our magnificent A380 fleet."

     HAM Airport was jammed Sunday, September 25, as the gateway celebrated 100 years with an estimated 90,000 spectators attending an exhibit that included 50 aircraft displayed on the tarmac in front of Lufthansa Technik’s big maintenance facilities.
     Since LH Technik is headquartered in HAM they, like the Airbus plant on the other side of the river Elbe, are an integral part of the world’s third largest aviation site, next to Seattle and Toulouse.
     But on this day they opened up their halls and offered visitors a view behind their normally closed gates.
     Not only was the public response remarkable, this centenary caused the airport’s Managing Director, Michael Eggenschwiler, to exclaim:
     “The fact that a great number of neighbors living next to the airport attended the show is extremely pleasing for us since it demonstrates their interest and bond with our site.”
     HAM was built on a bog located outside the city and the airport has never been resettled, making it one of the oldest places in aviation that has remained in the same place.
     However, skies are not all blue over HAM, since co-owner of the facility, Hochtief, is about to sell its 49 percent stake (51 percent is held by the city).
     From the multitude of bidders, including Frankfurt’s Fraport, only two remain: the French construction giant Vinci, which posted a net profit of €814 million euros in the first half 2011, and the Chinese HNA Group.
     HNA engages in aviation (Hainan Airlines), logistics, airport management, retail and tourism.
     The latest financial information disclosed by the state-owned enterprise stems from 2008 posting a net loss of €184 million euros.
     According to people close to the bidding process, both contenders are everything but dream partners for Hamburg airport.
Heiner/Flossie

 


 

     Leading air cargo executives report Chinese air cargo exports remain bearish, but will pick up as the year progresses. However, the recovery will be brief, with rates capped by excess supply. Moreover, long-haul markets will remain fragile in the medium-term.
     Figures from most leading airport handlers of Chinese cargo this year have revealed major year-on-year declines in export volumes during 2011, with double-digit monthly contractions not unusual. Export volumes handled at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) fell by 11 percent year-on-year in August, while the airport’s leading handler, Hong Kong International Airport Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl), has seen cumulative export volumes fall 8.6 percent to 940,067 tons year-on-year.
     The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines also reports that volumes uplifted by its members have fallen sharply this year. Regional and imported lanes have performed well with most of the declines recorded on the dominant export leg.
     Weak demand so far in 2011 has been attributed to any number of contributory factors, from the weakness of the Western economies to the ongoing disruptions to trade caused by the March tsunami and earthquake in Japan.
     “Poor consumer demand is the key factor behind the slump in airfreight from the Far East,” said John Cheetham, (left) Regional Commercial Manager for the Asia Pacific region at British Airways World Cargo. “The market ex China is still very weak.”
     A spokesman for Luthansa Cargo said the rate of growth of Chinese exports was still below the level of last year and below the carrier’s expectations. Apart from weaker demand from the West, he also said the rising cost of labor in China, inflation and the strong Renminbi were contributing to the downturn.
     However, operators are expecting demand to pick up as 2011 progresses. Jan de Vegt, (rifht) Area Manager for Asia at Air France-KLM Cargo, said that so far this year the demand pattern ex-China had followed traditional cycles but with volume levels lower. On that basis, he claimed demand would gradually increase later in the year.
     “Cargo volumes will go up according to the normal trend lines,” he added.
     “The market moves at lower levels, but the normal seasonal pattern is still there. The main reason for the lower level is the lack of demand in the Europe and the U.S.”
     Robert van de Weg, (left) Senior VP for sales at freight operator Cargolux, said that as of mid-September, the pick-up in demand that many analysts predicted had not materialized yet due to economic uncertainties in the European Union and the US. But, he added: “We do believe there will pickups in the second half of September, the second half of October and first half of November.”
     Cheetham expects to see an increase in export demand ex-China during the run up to Christmas, the traditional peak season, but with volumes then falling away next year. “Inventories in Europe and the U.S. are running at very low levels and a small increase in consumer demand will lead to restocking,” he said.      “However, this is unlikely to be for a protracted period so we can expect to see some spikes in demand before the market returns to a depressed state.”
     The Lufthansa Cargo spokesman predicted the market would gradually improve in the long-term. “Long term forecasts are positive as we expect continuous growth of the economy, proceeding industrialization and a growing middle class,” he added. “According to this, a lot of airlines focus on the Chinese market and we are still observing high capacities which forces us—as well as other airlines—to be flexible in shifting capacity and identifying new growth markets.”
     However, for scheduled operators, one bright spot this year has been the lack of charter activity ex-China, which has reduced the level of over-supply.
     Reto Hunziker, Lufthansa Cargo Charter’s Managing Director, said that although an upswing in demand might begin in China’s ‘golden week’ holiday starting October 1, when demand usually spikes in anticipation of a subsequent output slowdown, he said the lack of consumer spending in the U.S. and Europe was dampening demand. “There will be a pre-Christmas increase in demand to make sure the shops in the U.S. and EU have everything in stock,” he added.
     De Vegt said that as demand increased the lack of chartering would boost rates and load factors. “There will be a pick-up in line with the current market levels we experience. It will put some pressure on the load factors of the airlines and on the rates, as contrary to normal, we see hardly any charter activity in this period, which means that apart from a drop in demand, the supply side will also be lower.”
SkyKing

 

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GAC multimodal logistics company named Monica Chaves (above left) as Oil & Gas and Logistics Manager. The company is based in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere, and just opened a new office in Macaé.
Valdecia Pires (above right) has been appointed Key Account Coordinator.


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