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A R C H I V E S

E D I T O R I A L

"JUST LIKE JABBA THE HUT"
by Geoffrey Arend

     Santa Claus arrives for his annual all-night air cargo flight around the world. As the old gentleman begins boarding his sleigh, he encounters a man with a shotgun. He asks: “Why are you here?” The man replies:
     “I’m from the FAA and this is an unscheduled 135 inspection. I’ll ride in the right seat.”
     Santa, somewhat puzzled, replies:
     “Look I have made this flight for 700 years, but if you must do a 135 now, then climb aboard.”
     Just after takeoff, Santa notices that the FAA inspector is holding the shotgun in his lap with a finger on the trigger.
     Santa asks: “What’s the shotgun for?” The FAA inspector mutters:
     “Any minute now you are going to lose two.”
     If you think something perhaps a bit less strenuous than that gallows humor cannot happen with a U.S. government agency, you are not paying attention.
     Right now the U.S. government is strangling the U.S. carriers that it says that it is trying to save with federal bailouts, and seriously impairing the entire combination air cargo industry worldwide as well.
     Air Transport Association (ATA) reported that traffic was brisk in October driven by Asia/Pacific trade with cargo ton miles topping 2.5 million, the biggest numbers since mid 1999.
     Year to date, as compared to year 2000, the last full “normal” year however, these 2002 numbers are flat to minus, as if you didn’t already know that.
     FedEx stays fat, dumb and happy and more than a little annoying, reporting big profits moving mail and express which belongs to American, United, Continental, Northwest, US Airways and everybody else.
     Somebody has got to take the U.S. government by the throat and give the combination carriers back their U.S. Mail, or all the money—no strings attached, that these airlines lost because of these ongoing bans on mail and express traffic.
     The U.S. airline industry was built on government contracts for mail and express, for crying out loud.
     To say that American, United and the rest can’t move or do not know how to move the first-class mail and parcels, is just plain stupid and untrue. Any one of the above mentioned carriers is fully capable of carrying both passengers and cargo at any time, with systems and security practices that are the best in the world.
     Now the government, in typical knee-jerk action takes away a needed and depended upon revenue stream and turns around to lend the struggling airlines money under Draconian terms.
     Nobody wants to see the U.S. Government in the airline business. The last U.S. airline that thought it was “the chosen instrument” of the U.S. Government, Pan Am, died eleven years ago, while the politicians who let the company build air trails across every great ocean in the world, looked in another direction.
     What’s up with this Transportation Safety Administration (TSA)?
     Here is this sprawling, plutocratic mess of an agency with some old Admiral of the Coast Guard in charge.
     Is this Dr. Strangelove meets the future of airline security?
     A somewhat broader view is taken by Dave Brooks president American Airlines Cargo:
     “Everyone’s frustrated with security. TSA leadership at the top is hamstrung by an emotional and uninformed Congress that doesn’t allow TSA time to set vision, strategy and standards.
     Without these, funding is/will be a problem. So it’s a chicken/egg thing. The tempo is set by what Congressmen read in that morning’s USA Today.”
     What has really happened, is that in TSA, the U.S. Government has federalized the morons.
     As Walt Kelly once penned in his Pogo comic strip:
     “We have met the enemy and it’s us.”
     Get the military the hell out of the civilian airline business.
     Remember that you read it here.
     As it stands right now, TSA has the potential to be the biggest screw-up agency in the history of commercial aviation.
     TSA is like that big fat Jabba, The Hut character in Star Wars, as it goes around making up idiotic rules and sucking up the taxpayer’s money.
     As we see it, TSA to most means “Thousands Stiffed Always” both inside the agency, and worse, at airports and cargo areas around the world that depend on U.S. air trade.
     Nobody doubts the need for a “new normal” in a world which includes ongoing terror.
     Terror is a worldwide challenge.
     The TSA mandates have every part of air cargo from San Diego to Singapore to Berlin to Amsterdam in an uproar.
     Go ask KLM’s Michael Wisburn what he thinks of the U.S. position. Go ask the boys at Singapore Airlines Cargo what they think of TSA dictates.
     Moreover, typical reaction to TSA mandates ranges from charges of U.S. protectionism to outrage at the apparent lack of consultation with our trading partners, most of whom carry much more belly freight than the U.S. carriers. Said one transportation executive:
     “The U.S. security pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. The rest of the world has found a balance with very stringent security regulations. Why not learn from others and quit trying to reinvent the wheel.”
     This Pax-Americana view of treating the U.S. differently than the rest of the aviation world better stop for the good of everybody.
     Maybe The United Nations should convene a group of aviation experts to find some middle ground here. Working together toward a common goal, the world aviation community can experience a new kind of 21st Century cooperation, driven by the overall desire to close out the bad guys and get this business back to where it belongs.
     Nothing about what we all lived through on September 11, 2001, and have reeled against since that terrible day, is normal. This is like no other time in aviation history.
     We must insist that the United States stop making up laws just to see if they will work.
     Take local politics out of it. International aviation is a world issue. Together we can figure anything out.