Commuter Hell: Business travelers hate small commuter planes

February 25, 2009 at 12:42 pm

(Source:  CondeNast Portfolio.com)

Turbo-prop planes and regional jets are a crucial part of the airlines’ route strategies and are often the only way a business traveler can easily get to a destination, but road warriors hate flying them.

Within minutes of Continental Connection Flight 3407’s fatal crash on the night of February 12, frequent fliers were emailing each other, cursing commuter airlines, and vowing never to board smaller commercial aircraft again.

“I HATE THOSE TINY OLD RJS,” one otherwise rational business traveler I know shouted in his email. “NOBODY SHOULD FLY THEM. THEY’RE NOT SAFE.”

No matter that the aircraft involved in Flight 3407’s fiery end six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport was not an “RJ,” industry shorthand for regional jet. (It was a Q400, a twin-engine turboprop plane manufactured by Bombardier of Canada.) No matter that the 74-seat Q400 isn’t particularly tiny. (At 107 feet long with a 93-foot wingspan, it is about the size of several early versions of Boeing’s workhorse B737 jet and 20 feet longer than Bombardier’s 50-seat regional jet.) And no matter that the Q400 isn’t old. (The Q400 series didn’t enter service until 2000 and the plane that crashed in Buffalo was less than a year old.)

Safe? That is most definitely in the eye of the beholder—and most business travelers eye commuter airlines with extreme trepidation. They don’t like flying them. They don’t like that the commuter lines wrap themselves in the colors and livery of the major airlines. And they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that commuter carriers simply aren’t as safe as the major airlines they mimic.

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NTOC Talks Newsletter: February 25, 2009

February 25, 2009 at 12:27 pm

[ipaper id=12814845]

Pilots Among Nine Killed In Plane Crash

February 25, 2009 at 12:16 pm

(Source: Sky News)

The pilots of a Turkish Airlines plane which crashed while trying to land at Amsterdam’s main airport were among nine people killed in the tragedy.

Scene of the crash

Plane crashed at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport

The aircraft, carrying 127 passengers and seven crew, broke into three pieces when it hit the ground next to the runway at Schiphol Airport.

Three crew who were in the cockpit were among those who lost their lives and more than 80 other people were injured, authorities said.

Earlier, Turkey’s Transport Minister Binali Yildirim and Turkish Airlines chief executive Temel Kotil were reported to have said no-one died.

The Boeing 737-800 was on a flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam when it came down in a field outside the airport perimeter.

Six people were critically injured and 25 others seriously injured.

 

A passenger, wearing a thermo blanket, walks away from the wreckage

Female passenger walks away after crash

TV images showed the aircraft on the ground, with the tail section of the fuselage broken off, and a wide crack in the fuselage just behind the cockpit.

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Purolator USA White Paper: Cut Cross Border Logistics Costs

February 25, 2009 at 11:59 am

(Source: Outsourced Logistics)

There are six discussions of ways to better manage transportation and delivery costs in “Creativity and Flexibility are Keys to Managing Rising Logistics Costs,” a white paper from Purolator USA. With particular focus on cross border freight traffic between the US and Canada, as well as shipments moving within the US, here are a few suggestions from Purolator to aid in controlling costs while not sacrificing service or standards.

Rethink Shipping Options. For example, reserve air transport only for those shipments that are extremely time sensitive and must be delivered by a specific date. Weigh the costs and time window since there are available ground shipment options that might get the job done.

Take Advantage of Governmental Trade Program Incentives. There are programs beyond NAFTA offered by both the US and Canadian governments to help shippers widen their customer bases. They include the Non-Resident Importer and Duty Drawback programs, among others. These and other governmental matters are discussed in the white paper.

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IBM Joins Denmark’s EDISON Project to Build Smart Grid for Electric Cars

February 25, 2009 at 11:53 am

(Source: MCADCAFE)

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its membership in the EDISON research consortium, a Denmark-based collaborative aimed at developing an intelligent infrastructure that will make possible the large scale adoption of electric vehicles powered by sustainable energy.

The EDISON effort (Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks) consists of IBM, Denmark’s largest energy company DONG Energy, the regional energy company of Oestkraft, Technical University of Denmark, Siemens, Eurisco and the Danish Energy Association. Due to the environmental benefits of the electric vehicle technologies, the research will be partly funded by the Danish government.

Market introduction and investment plans in Denmark will result in upwards of 10% of the country’s vehicles being all electric or hybrid electric during the coming years. In order to minimize CO2-emissions linked to electrified transport, global attention on vehicles and infrastructure that will maximize the use of renewable energy for mobility has increased. To achieve this on a large scale, electric vehicles require smart technologies to control charging and billing and to ensure the stability of the overall energy system.

“Denmark, the host of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change conference and the most energy efficient country in the EU, further underscores its ambitions here with the Edison project announcement,” said Guido Bartels, General Manager of IBM’s Global Energy & Utilities industry. “There is already broad consensus that both wind energy and electric vehicles have enormous potential for a sustainable energy future — bringing the two together promises to be a winning combination.”

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Austrian drivers cover 194m kms every day

February 25, 2009 at 11:38 am

(Source: Austrian Times)

New research has shown that Austrian drivers cover 194 million kilometres in their cars every day.

The Austrian Traffic Club (VCÖ) reported the figures today (Weds). It added that Austria’s 4.28 million registered cars carried an average of 1.3 occupants each day and emitted 28,000 tonnes of CO2, consuming 11.2 million litres of fuel daily.

VCÖ official Martin Blum reminded the public about the consequences of taking excessively-short car trips.

One in every 10 car trips, he said, covered a distance of less than one kilometre. “Fuel consumption is extremely high over the first kilometre. Consumption over the first kilometre averages the same as consumption of 20-to-25 litres of fuel over 100 kilometres. A breakfast roll obtained by a car trip to a bakery is very expensive,” he added.

Austrian churches are trying to lower the cost of travel by car by encouraging Austrians to engage in less of it during Lent, which begins today.

Austria’s Roman Catholic and Evangelical Churches are calling on Austrians to drive less during Lent, which lasts from 25 February to 11 April this year.

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Rail groups ordered to cut fares for commuters

February 25, 2009 at 11:32 am

(Source: Times Online, UK)

Operators will lose millions from 2010

Rail companies may demand compensation for the change to the terms of their contracts

Rail companies may demand compensation for the change to the terms of their contracts

The Government has rejected pleas from the operators to ignore pricing rules as deflation looms.

Although the decision will be welcomed by commuters, it is likely to result in operators cutting services and jobs and raising prices on other fares. Those operators that are already struggling financially could be forced to surrender their franchises and large chunks of the railway could be nationalised temporarily.

The companies had argued that the formula — which says that fares will rise by 1 per cent above the retail prices index each January — was not designed to cope with deflation. Each stands to lose millions of pounds from January 2010 when commuters renew their season tickets.

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London Underground Chief of Rail Upgrade Resigns

February 25, 2009 at 11:25 am

(Source: Bloomberg)

Tim O’Toole, who ran the London Underground for six years and oversaw the railway’s multibillion- pound upgrade, plans to step down.

O’Toole, 54, a lawyer from Pittsburgh and former chief executive ofConsolidated Rail Corp., will leave Transport for London in April and return to the U.S., the agency said in an e- mailed statement today. A successor hasn’t been picked.

O’Toole supervised the largest investment since World War II in the 146-year-old railway, the aftermath of terrorist attacks on city trains in 2005 and the collapse of the railway’s biggest contractor, Metronet. The railway, which struggled to keep pace with increasing demand, has improved performance since 2005.

“After six years in London it is time to go home,” O’Toole said in the statement. “I am particularly proud that London Underground employees have achieved record operating results and all-time high levels of customer satisfaction in this past year.”

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FedEx Chairman Fred Smith Favors Carbon Tax Over Cap-And-Trade

February 25, 2009 at 11:20 am
(Source: CNN)

 Congress should consider imposing a “carbon tax” to curb pollution and use the proceeds to reduce U.S. payroll taxes, FedEx Corp. ( FDX) Chairman and Chief Executive Fred Smithsaid Monday.

A carbon tax would be a much more efficient way to reduce pollution than a cap-and-trade system that would cap the emission of air pollutants and permit trading in pollution credits by firms that stay below the cap, Smith said in response to questions after a speech to the National Press Club.

Smith said a cap-and-trade approach can be gamed and hasn’t worked well in Europe, and that he favors alternatives such as a carbon tax, provided most of the revenue is used to lower payroll taxes. Proposals for a new tax based on vehicle miles traveled also are “ill-advised,” in his view, because they would unfairly penalize those with long commutes without getting at the heart of the problem.

Smith founded the Memphis-based shipping company in 1971 and now serves on the Energy Security Leadership Council, which issued recommendations last year to reduce U.S. dependence on imported energy.

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Moving America: Transport Infrastructure at a Crossroads

February 25, 2009 at 11:15 am

(Source: Backgrounder, Council on Foreign Relations

 

Author: 
Robert McMahon, Deputy Editor

Introduction : 

Transportation experts view the call for dramatic federal government action in response to the economic crisis as an opportunity to overhaul the U.S. system of highways, bridges, railways, and mass transit. A series of sobering report cards from the American Society of Civil Engineers documents the inadequacy of this system. President Barack Obama took office pledging to act; his February 2009 stimulus package provides nearly $50 billion for transportation infrastructure. But many experts look beyond the stimulus and call for shifts in longer-term policy that will fundamentally alter the approach to planning and funding infrastructure and bolster U.S. competitiveness, quality of life, and security. In the past, the United States has revamped its transportationinfrastructure to build canals, transcontinental railways, and a federal highway system, in each case helping usher in periods of economic growth.

A State of Disrepair

A January 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers on infrastructure, much of it involving the transportation sector, concluded: “all signs point to an infrastructure that is poorly maintained, unable to meet current and future demands, and in some cases, unsafe.” It found that aviation, transit, and roads, already rated abysmal four years ago, had declined even further. Lost time from road congestion, the report estimated, was costing the economy more than $78 billion dollars a year while nearly half of U.S. households still had no access to bus or rail transit.

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