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A R C H I V E S

P R O F I L E

AN AIRLINE OF THEIR OWN

Ramashree Singh (left) and sister, Chandramatie Harpaul (right) create a world class airline for Guyana.

     Every day for as long as it took to call it a career in maintenance, Sudarshan Singh got out of bed, dressed, kissed his wife and kids good-bye and drove out to work inside the cavernous Pan American World Airways maintenance hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
     As the airline business continues, its first steps into the 21st Century, what happened to Mr. Singh, who today is President of newly-launched New York/Guyana Universal Airlines, is the stuff of the lore of aviation.
     Often we hear that new ideas in the airline and air cargo business are all used up.
     Maybe that view depends on where you are in both age and spirit, not to mention imagination.
     Now a big, beautiful Boeing B767-300 with the flag of the island nation of Guyana emblazoned upon its tail and empennage, wings its way southward every day to a small green island in the West Indies where just about a year ago this kind of air service did not exist.
     How did that happen?
     When was the last time you heard the phrase—what goes around, comes around, or what was old, is new again?
     Return with us now to the dawn of commercial aviation, long before there was much of anything carrying people in the air, let alone an operating airline to Latin America.
     A young pilot and an ex-World War I fighter ace named Ralph O’Neill took a job with a mostly unknown Seattle manufacturer of a single-seat combat aircraft designated F2B, The Boeing Airplane Company.
     O’Neill’s job was to sell these fighter planes to the various dictators in South America.
     Actually Boeing didn’t ‘front’ the O’Neill sales campaign single-handedly.
     The fighter ace also worked for Pratt & Whitney.
     The power plant that pulled the aircraft aloft was a P & W 425hp radial air-cooled engine.
     During a period in 1928 with a Boeing aircraft powered by P&W, O’Neill (who would even later marry Bill Boeing’s secretary Jane Galbraith) traveled all over Latin America drumming up aircraft sales.
     But as O’Neill moved up and down the populous East coast of South America, (Pan Am was thinking about launching service and later did— the Panagra Line down the less populated West coast), he became impressed with how long it took by river ferries and inland waterways to get from place to place.
     So in 1929, Ralph O’Neill chucked the Boeing job and founded the first great international, American flag-carrying airline called The New York Rio & Buenos Aires Airline (NYRBA).
     For a couple of years, before the depression and politics caused its demise, when it was folded against O’Neill’s wishes into Pan Am, NYRBA ruled the skies from New York via Miami all the way to Rio de Janeiro.
     Fast forward to the late 1990s.
     Sudarshan Singh is out and about engaged in a sentimental journey back to his homeland accompanied by his wife Ramashree, in Guyana.
     Sudarshan and Ramashree Singh are no slouches.
     Their trip may have emotional overtones but is also a journey to adventure in terms of what might develop businesswise.
     While Sudarshan has coupled his career with other activities, Ramashree is operating a trucking company that serves a host of clients in the New York metropolitan area.
     As the couple takes a break and travels home, nothing specific seems to emerge other than the warmth of the Guyanese sun and its people.
     But the beautiful island nations magnetic draw to its native-born children as they continue their trip is about to reveal something completely unexpected.
     As Sudarshan and Ramashree say their good-byes and return to their Long Island, New York home, it occurs to both that everything about the visit has been perfect except the transfers of coming and going.
     As airline people they cannot fathom the degree of difficulty getting from New York via Miami to Georgetown.
     The transfers, the delays and general hassle coming and going, leave an immediate and lasting impression.
     Ramashree entreats her husband:
     “Can you believe how unnecessarily tough that trip was?”
     About that time Ramashree and her sister, Chandramatie Harpaul decide they will attempt to create a world-class airline for Guyana.
     “My husband worked for the legendary airline of Latin America, but Pan Am had been gone from the scene for better than a dozen years.
     I always have thought how could Guyana ever step into the future, without a dedicated airline that both carried the flag but even more, did the job right.”
     “Now that we are in business with daily flights to and from Guyana from New York, the almost 14 years of effort seems almost like a dream.
     “Every time our B767-300ER docks up at the IAT Terminal Four at JFK, I think I must pinch myself to believe that we did it.
     “Our dream has come true.”
     But dreams, whether created in 1927 or 2001 have to thrive and prosper in the hard reality of day-to-day business.
     We are sitting in a small office complex just off Jamaica Avenue on 111th Street in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York. This area located almost within sight, and surely sound of JFK International Airport is known as ‘Little Guyana’ for its large and enthusiastic population, stores, restaurants and other cultural landmarks which have transformed what was once a mostly Eastern European area with a mainly Polish population, into a born-again, soulful West Indian neighborhood.
     Interestingly the aircraft Universal Airlines is launching service aboard, is a LOT Polish B767-300.
     “We are the first customer for LOT’s program to provide ACMI services although we supply all passenger and cabin personnel who are trained as part of an ongoing program in Guyana.”
     As the busy office hums through midday and people come and go picking up tickets as phones ring and future flights are booked, Mrs. Singh observes:
     “A big part of this airline is being up front, walk-in available right in the community. We decided from the start to be visible to our customers. A big part of our success as the first new carrier to commence operations from New York JFK after 9/11, is to be at arm’s length, to answer our customers’ every question.
     “My sister directs and is hands on about every aspect of the airline in Guyana. I am here. We talk every day, sometimes more than once.
     Nothing is left to chance.”
     Jim Erickson has moved to Universal as the carrier’s first director of sales and marketing for air cargo. Jim has spent several lifetimes in cargo service—at Air India, where he apprenticed in cargo to George Paetow; at British Caledonian with the Tartans during the early 1980’s, later at British Airways and finally aboard Kuwait Airways where he guided all the airline’s cargo business in North America before joining Universal last year.
     He is a complete professional. What he doesn’t know about air cargo isn’t worth remembering.
     Jim likes what he is doing at the start-up carrier. “The B767 is a great cargo aircraft, right-sized and very reliable for the market. We are carrying U.S. Postal Service mails plus a variety of containerized and palletized cargo.
     “Right away Universal has offered connections that didn’t exist in any reliable scheduled manner before for heavy freight, counter to counter small packages, human remains, you name it we can move it. “
     Just as important, the record has shown better than 95% flown as booked since we launched service.
     “Maybe the best thing is our dedication to service. I stay on top of our select group of two dozen plus agents that supply our cargo traffic.
     The best surprise is no surprise. We want everybody we do business with to know exactly what to expect.”
     We keep looking at Jim Erickson, as professional American football kicks off its Fall 2002 campaign. If he played the game, Erickson who is built solid from the ground up, would undoubtedly be a center.
     Apropos of this new venture, Jim Erickson is right in the middle of where he wants to be.
     Shippers to Guyana, Port o’ Prince, Suriname and to what certainly will be a growing list of destinations and alliances are finally getting a break they have needed.
     But will this new airline make it?
     You sure would think so.
     Bright, good looking, ready, eager and willing, are all appropriate words to describe this bunch.
     There is an old saying that resonates in New York: “If wishes were knishes,” the saying begins—you get the idea.
     There seems to be a compact group of talented people behind Universal that speaks to not allowing wishes or anything else, to rule the future of this airline dream.
     Hratch Azadian is executive vice president network management.
     Mr. Azadian is a top flight airline executive who is well known as former director North America for Gulf Air.
     Later Mr. Azadian led Baltic Airlines out of the wilderness in a yeoman effort.
     The addition of Mr. Azadian at the top of the management team of Universal , bespeaks a carrier that will add destinations, service partners and aircraft.
     “We are a niche player with a strong home market identity.
     “Universal began services just last December 12th. Despite an otherwise soft business climate, our numbers tell us that we are right-sized and ready to move on to new combinations.”