Plane Conversations

The following are excerpts from a March 9 Chicago Tribune article by Jon Hilkevitch.  

Passengers on U.S. airlines will pay relatively small increases in airfares over the next 20 years, but they should expect more flights crowding the nation’s busiest airports, including O’Hare International, the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday.

Travelers hoping to stretch out across an empty seat next to them will likely be out of luck. And, sorry, the small regional jets that are so unpopular among a significant segment of passengers are here to stay, although the commuter airlines will begin retiring their 50-seat jets in favor of somewhat larger aircraft.

The FAA now says it will take until 2023 to hit the 1 billion mark, indicating modest annual growth from the 704 million passengers carried in 2009 by U.S. airlines, on both domestic and international flights. Total passengers will rise to 1.21 billion by 2030, the agency said.

Coming off 2009, when U.S. airlines lost $8.1 billion, the total number of commercial flights is forecast to decrease 2.7 percent this year, the FAA said.  Flight volumes will then grow at an average annual rate of 1.5 percent by 2030, the FAA said.

Jetliners, which are nearly full on most flights today as the carriers try to prop up airfares, will stay that way, leveling out at 82 percent of all seats occupied on flights over the next 20 years, the FAA said.

While most passengers will continue to fly on the big, mainline airlines, that segment of the industry will grow the slowest over the forecast period, officials said. The biggest percentage gains will occur on international flights, followed by regional commuter airlines that operate smaller aircraft. Those regional airlines bucked the negative industry trend by turning a profit in 2009, FAA officials noted.

Twenty-nine large hub airports, including O’Hare and Midway, are projected to handle the bulk of the increased flights, growing at an average of 3 percent a year in landings and takeoffs through 2030, the FAA said.  It means that to prevent aviation gridlock, the FAA must complete its ambitious transformation of the nation’s air-traffic system, dubbed NextGen, to a satellite-based system that replaces the current ground-based radar.

So what does all of this mean for Private/ Business Aviation?

The airlines are going to crowd more people on aircraft by constraining supply in an effort to raise prices; they are going to use more regional airliners; they are going to focus more on the 29 major airports in the U.S., and focus more on international flights.  This looks like mass transit to me.

None of these trends provide better solutions for business travelers in small and mid size markets.

What it does spell is more delays, crowded flights, less tolerance on bad weather days at crowded hubs (I am feeling that right now sitting at ATL on a busy travel day and bad weather).

In all of this I see opportunity like never before for the general aviation and business aviation sectors to step up to fill the voids and ease the pain.  There are 5500 airports and the airlines are going to focus growth on the top 29? They only fly to around 500 airports in total so that leaves a lot of room for private aviation to provide point-to-point solutions between the rest of the nation’s airports.  

Air travel is supposed to be about time efficiency and if the FAA is correct in their forecast, the time to travel by air mass-transit is going to slow down even more, which widens the gap in time gained by flying private and helps close the gap in costs when you value your time.

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4 in a 4 part Series:

In the previous posts in this series, we discussed the gaps in Price and Time between Private Aviation and Air Mass Transit travel.  This time we are going to look at the gap in customer experience.

It is easy to measure price in terms of actual dollars and in terms of the value of our time, which we can use as an offset of the price gap. The more difficult gap to measure is the difference in the experience of the two forms of travel. To date, I am not sure if anyone has been able to accurately quantify the difference in the traveler’s experience. The ability to measure the traveler’s experience on either a private aircraft or an airline and compare that to the alternate experience, would give us a more meaningful comparison between the two.  That comparison could then be quantified and translated into a monetary measurement, which would go towards offsetting the price gap.  I believe that offset would be a valuable tool in selling private aviation services.

Here is what we know for sure!

Those who have experienced private aviation as a form of travel often justify the high price by speaking of the better experience as opposed to traveling by air mass-transit.  Call it the Hassle Factor of the airlines: the anti-social behavior of the passengers we share space with in an airliner, the rude treatment we sometimes receive, the lack of control over where we go and how we have to get there, the uncomfortable feeling of being compressed into a space that is measured in inches of seat pitch, the food served (or mostly not served) on the planes, the baggage abuse (bags don’t have feelings but I don’t like my stuff being abused) and on and on……

You get the point.

Stack that against the experience of private aviation.

Not one single person I have spoken to in 28 years of being in this business has ever said to me, “I can hardly wait to go back to traveling on the airline since I can’t afford to travel in a private aircraft anymore.” Not one. Every aircraft owner, charter customer or private pilot / aircraft owner pilot cites the better experience of flying by private aircraft as the number one reason to close the price gap. They don’t know how to quantify it but they know what they know. How good would it be for our industry to develop a tool that measures the experience, quantifies it and then translates it into dollars?

As consumers, we purchase experience with our hard earned money every single day. We pay more for an iPhone than for a Blackberry because we like the experience. We ride in a luxury car rather than in a compact car because of the experience. Both serve the same purpose since we arrive at the same time regardless of the type car, but what a different experience to ride in a nice driving, luxury car as opposed to a compact.

If we can ever measure and quantify the experience and then communicate that measurement to the market we might be able to come a long way in bridging the price gap that has prevented the many from experiencing the joy of travel by a mode that the few have become accustomed and maybe even addicted to!

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As the CEO of a Part 135 / 91 aircraft charter and management company, I can not proclaim to be an expert on SMS. There are people in our industry a lot smarter on the subject than I am because they have taken the time and energy to study, learn, listen, share knowledge, and attempt to develop systems that incorporate the best practices of the collective knowledge of our industry.

What I can proclaim is that Safety is critical to our company. The fact is that Safety is the most critical issue we face. We cannot afford to do anything that does not allow us to operate at the highest level of safety. The group of people I have worked with over the years will tell you that I support them in operating at that level. I have often said, and I truly mean it when I say it, that if we cannot make a profit and operate at the highest level of safety, then I will get out of this business and do something else to make a living.

So, I have taken the time to listen and learn SMS and, as a company, we have invested money developing the processes and taking the time to put a true SMS in place – and, more importantly, to actually use the system. 

Our industry and the consumers that use us have not always rewarded those who adhere to the highest level of safety. Some users of our services have either assumed that the FAA keeps our industry “safe enough” or they just don’t care, concerning themselves only with price.

Safety Requires Thought and Time Investment! Safety Costs Money!

The debate has gotten heated over the requirement to have a Safety Management System in place, even in operations that do not hold themselves out for hire. The NBAA Avmgr Forum has hundreds of emails over the past few weeks from flight department managers and consultants to the industry on the subject of SMS.  

There are two sides to the debate and some merit exists even on the side that I do not sit on.

Here are comments from the side that says we don’t need SMS in our world of flying aircraft:

• Common sense, good, real training and operational policies that make sense (not policies on what to do when the pencil holder fails) are what we need to improve safety.
• I have only been flying for 38 years and never needed a SMS manual to be safe. It might be a useful tool for larger operations but for a 2-5 pilot ops is simply a waste of time, money and trees.
• Having me write a SMS manual for my three pilot one aircraft operation is a waste of my time, but reviewing a good document on aviation safety and best practices could be a good read on occasion.  Such an approach could generate discussion among pilots, promoting teamwork and better understanding of safe decision making…  The bureaucratic approach to safety will yield lots of paper documents but I suspect it will do little to actually advance safe operations.

 And from the pro-SMS side: 

• Many in our industry are making IS-BAO a lot more complex than it needs to be. The discipline of having an outside perspective (auditor) is a generally accepted business practice.  It is designed to give you credibility as a leader, not talk behind your back.  ”Because I said so….” Is not an effective tool.  We do this in the cockpit and call it CRM, line checks, etc.  Why not with our overall operations?
• Yes, common sense is king. Commons sense is missing from allot [sic]of issues, in and out of aviation. Sure, he who flies with the most paper is not the winner. But neither is he who flies with the least paper the most competent and safe. It all requires balancing common sense, necessity, need and what really works.
• The concept of risk identification and mitigation is embraced in many industries…. We often like to think we are ahead of the pact[sic], but the reality is most of the world has left us (Aviation) in the dust when it comes to codification of best practices and risk mitigation.

From Dwayne McMurry, our Director of Operations, with whom I have worked side by side for over 20 years, the following observation:

 “If I were the owner of an operation that had a flight department with 2 or 3 pilots, I would suggest that the Chief Pilot is not guaranteed to be at my company forever and the airplane, pilots and flight department as a whole would most likely survive him/her.  I would certainly want an Operations Manual or SOP of some type and a Safety Management System in place to pass down established policy, procedure and history of my flight department to the next pilot(s) for the future of my flight department.

Sometimes pilots and flight department managers forget they work for somebody and feel they only have to answer to themselves.  If you wrote the check for the plane and fly it yourself, that’s one thing.  When someone hires you to do a job … most likely, some day, for some reason, someone will replace you and a legacy should be passed on.  What better way to do it?”

This is a complex debate that cannot be fully covered in one blog post or article. What I will say is this: that I would not want our company to operate on pure common sense alone and would also not want to operate strictly from the manual without common sense. What about a combination of good common sense and experience combined with a system that establishes processes, procedures and ways to measure safety? Could it be that we need both?!

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Part 3 in a 4 part Series

There is a huge gap between the time it takes to get from origin to destination by Private Aviation and the time it takes on the Airlines. In some cases, even a small, single-engine, propeller aircraft can get you there quicker than the airlines. In all cases, a business jet aircraft can get you there quicker and here is why:

• Your schedule:  You start by setting your own schedule when you use private aviation. If it makes sense to leave at 7am, then you leave at 7am. You set the time of departure based on when you want to arrive on the other end. Have a meeting at 10am?  Then you set your departure time to arrive in time to make your 10 am meeting. Easy enough. No traveling the night before.
• Closer airports: With over 5500 airports in this country and only 500 of them having any commercial service at all you have an additional 5000 airports to choose from when you take a trip via private aircraft; so, in all cases you can get closer to your real destination. Instead of going into the large commercial airport closest to where you want to go, most of the time there is a smaller airport that saves a lot of driving once you get there. That also works on the departure end. In larger cities there are several airports located on different sides of town, allowing you to pick the one closest to your home or office and leave from there. If you live in a small town, then you no longer have that sometimes one to two-hour drive to a big city to catch an airline flight. In our home state of Tennessee, we have more than 80 airports; so, no matter where you live in our state, you are no more than 30 minutes from a public airport. Smaller airports are less congested, giving you the added benefit of less time holding in the air or on the ground due to busy airport traffic jams.
• Direct Flights: You always go direct with private aviation; so, you waste no time going though a hub airport with one to four-hour layovers and multiple boarding processes just to get to your destination.
• No standing around: Flying in private aircraft, you can show up between five and ten minutes prior to the departure time you set, park close to the private aviation terminal and, in some cases, pull up next to the aircraft to unload bags. You are greeted by the pilots and you board immediately. You can skip the time wasted riding the shuttle to the terminal from long-term or off airport parking, queuing up for baggage checks, security screening and then waiting at the gate for 45 minutes.  There is no way you can plan on getting to the gate just five minutes before scheduled departure – the air mass-transit’s Contract of Carriage forbids it.

When you compare the two methods of air travel, the savings of time by flying private aircraft can be hours per trip and, in many cases, even days.  When we get people to their meetings and back on the same day, they tell us that the airlines would have taken two days with a limited meeting schedule or three days if they wanted a full day of meetings.

Everyone has a value on their time and it is especially important to quantify that value when you think in terms of productivity in business. Those who charge directly for their time like accountants or lawyers can easily quantify their time and compare the options to see if they can gain productivity by using a more efficient means to travel. Most travelers don’t think about it because they assume that they don’t have an option. What if we gave them a tool to measure the productivity of alternate means of travel? Could that close the gap?

What is your time worth?

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In an attempt to regulate the airlines on the issue of leaving passengers sitting on aircraft on the tarmac for extended periods of time it appears that the DOT may end up making things worse.

Michael Fabey of the Travel Weekly online magazine says in a recent article:

As a result of new federal rules limiting tarmac delays, airline officials and analysts predicted that in coming months, airlines are certain to cancel an increasing number of flights for bad weather or for a host of other reasons, rather than face heavy new federal fines for holding passengers too long on a tarmac.

The new Transportation Department regulations, which take effect April 29, subject U.S. airlines to fines of up to $27,500 per passenger in instances where the airlines fail to allow passengers to deplane after three hours on the tarmac or fail to provide those aboard with food, drink and other comforts.

“For us, that could be as much as $4.4 million for one flight,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. “No one’s going to play with that. There will be many more cancellations as a result. Everyone is gearing up for this.”

So did the “experts” in congress and the DOT solve the problem or create a new one that is worse than the old one?

Being more of a free-market capitalist, it seems to me that this is one they could have left alone. I mean, if the airlines mess things up badly enough, often enough for long enough, it costs them money and customers. They don’t want that with or without any intervention from the federal government.

A veteran airline dispatcher commented to the article by stating:

“The new regulations will demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences, and I say this as a 35+ year airline dispatcher. There have been a few past irregular ops events (NWA/DTW, JBU/JFK, CoEx/RST, and AAL/AUS) that generated huge delays (7+ hours) and were all admittedly intolerable and handled poorly. The lunacy of the new regs is that in the effort to preclude such rare 7+ hour delay events (apples), an “all delays are equally evil” tact has been taken, with the “solution” to now apply with more common 2-4 hr. delays (oranges) one sees when weather, and airport/airspace constraints occur. Pre-emptive cancellation for snow are one thing, but thunderstorm season is another, and no airline is going to let a flight blow the 3-hour limit and incur a $3M+ fine for each flight. Cancellations? Count on them, but don’t blame the airlines–all the non-airline “experts” drove them.”

I wonder if anyone at the DOT or in Congress asked any of the dispatchers and operations people at the airlines what they thought about the solution(s) to the problem prior to making a new rule. Probably not! What?  Go ask the people who deal with this every day? Heaven forbid! They probably had a hearing and heard from the senior management of the airlines (whom they don’t trust), then from a panel of experts (whom they do trust in spite of the fact that the experts may have no practical operational experience).  After hearing from both groups, but without talking to the people who make it happen day after day, Congress drafted and enacted a new rule.  

It was a parade-inducing headline for proponents of the measure, but the people in the operational trenches don’t see any parades in the practical applications.

All of this was done in an effort to appease the public who is fed up with the broken air mass-transit system.  So, instead of actually fixing the problem in cases of the rare, extreme delay, they’ve created the problem of cancelled flights in the case of the common delay.

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2 in a 4 Part Series

In this discussion, we will focus on the gap of pricing between Private Aviation and Airline Travel. Is there a way for us to partially bridge the gap? And, if so, how much do we need to bridge it to make it worth the time savings and better experience?

A round-trip airline ticket from Nashville, Tennessee, to New York City (BNA to LGA) costs between $525 (with one stop) and $1100 (non-stop).  Expedia publishes a travel time of 3:45 for the one stop and 2:00 for the non-stop, a difference of an hour and 45 minutes.

Flying the same route in an eight-passenger private jet costs approximately $10,000.  That price is the same whether you fly by yourself or if you take seven friends or business associates with you. You save at least two hours of terminal time avoiding the airline and your experience will be better.

Most of us have difficulty justifying this price since we seldom need to take seven friends or business associates with us; so, the price per person is $10,000 or maybe, at best, $2500 if there are four of us going.  That’s often still a tough sell.

As I see it, there are only two ways to bridge the gap between the two modes of travel:

• Bring the total price of the private aircraft charter down relative to the mass-transit price
• Fill the aircraft with eight travelers

The first solution can work from both sides.  The gap shrinks if either airline fares go up or air charter prices go down.  If both things happen, the gap shrinks even more.   While I don’t believe the gap will ever be totally closed, every incremental movement works to the advantage of our industry, taking into account private air travel advantages in the other two gaps – passenger experience and time savings.

Private air travel can bring the price down when fleet utilization goes up. Many of the costs of traveling by private jet are fixed; so,  you can lower the overall operating costs with higher utilization, which allows you to spread the fixed costs over a wider base AND which allows the traveler to buy at a lower price point.

Private air travel can also bring the costs down by utilizing new technology aircraft that are more fuel efficient and cost less to maintain, thereby driving down the variable operating costs to deliver the service.

These two ways of driving down costs have been used by the airlines to deliver a consistent service at lower price points. Southwest and JetBlue are the best current examples of this in the US air mass-transit system.

That leaves us with the problem of filling the seats. How do we fill enough of the seats on private charter flights to drive the costs down for each person traveling? Can we solve this problem? Would travelers migrate to a private jet flight if they could buy the seat for $1250 round trip ($10,000 divided by eight) when they could pay $1100 on the airlines?

A 10% pricing gap put into the overall matrix of price, time, and experience is a game-changer.  With that narrow of a gap, those who are used to the airline experience, but who tolerate it only because there is no real alternative, are likely to move to private aviation. Those who are already used to the price of private aviation might not sacrifice aircraft exclusivity; but, realistically, they aren’t the ones walking the bridge we just made from air mass-transit to private aviation anyway.  While some of them make take advantage of the shared aircraft, they aren’t really our target market.  We want the passengers using air-mass transit only because they have no alternative.  We want the passengers who have given up flying altogether due to the negative experience and wasted time.  We want the passengers who are in search of the better mousetrap because we believe that private aviation is it.

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Part 1 in a 4 Part Series

There are three distinct gaps between flying by Private Aircraft and Air Mass-Transit:

• Price: In most cases, flying by private aircraft is more expensive than flying by airlines. The best way to understand it is to compare the price differences between taking a taxi or limousine and taking the bus or metro train. It is difficult to get the price gap to close when one form moves masses of people between points on a schedule and the other form moves a few or even only one person on-demand. How can the limo ever be as cheap as the bus?

• Efficiency of Time: In most cases, flying by private aircraft will be more time efficient since you set the destination airport and schedule, rather than flying on the route structure and schedule the air mass-transit service sets. Air mass-transit routes may not include the airport closest to your origin and/or destination and the flight paths may not even be the most direct routes between the two airports. The nature of mass transit requires the traveler to show up early at a terminal that may or may not be close to their true origin and then queue up to get through the systems of ticketing, boarding and security,  all adding time to the total travel. Private aircraft, for the most part, avoid all of these time killers. Measuring the time difference is easy enough for most of us and putting a value on our time should also be easy. Once our time value is quantified, we can measure the time gap and put a value on it. Quantifying that time gap in dollar terms helps close the price gap.

• Experience: The passenger experience gap existing between the two forms of travel is one which no one can yet precisely quantify, but is one that we know to be vast just from our own experiences. Those who use private air travel often talk about the experience and rationalize that the experience itself justifies the price gap. When those passengers cannot totally make the time-price gaps meet, they make the final closure based on the quality of the experience. Traveling in a private aircraft is as pleasant and social as taking a road trip with friends or family – or perhaps even more so. Traveling on the airlines is as pleasant and social as taking a road trip with the Griswolds – or perhaps even less so.

How can we quantify all of the gaps between private or business aviation and air mass-transit so that we can accurately measure them?  Once we quantify and measure the gaps, how do we close them so that more travelers will be drawn to the superior mode of travel we have to offer?

Closing or shrinking the gaps will make it possible for more people to use private aviation as an alternative to airlines and, in some cases, even other forms of travel. Could it be that people who have chosen not to travel at all due to the negative experience and wasted time factors of mass-transit travel may choose to travel again?

Does this make sense?

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It looks like Congress may finally get back around to figuring out how to pass a bill that will fund the Next Generation Air Traffic System (NexGen). Hopefully, I will see this happen in my career, I still have 15 years left if all goes good.

It is frustrating to me that the lawmakers want to wrap up controversial provisions into a bill thats primary purpose is not controversial. Everyone in aviation agrees that the traffic control system needs to be modernized. It will save fuel and time in the air which is both green and more productive for our economy. It will also increase the margins of safety with better traffic management. Both general aviation and the airline industry support the development of NexGen.

So, what is the hold up?

Somehow congress can not seem to simplify things and get something done.

They have to add in provisions that we can’t all agree on so things get stalled and nothing happens. What can we not agree on?

• Who pays for it? GA versus Airlines
• Should we be auditing European Repair Stations? A Union Protectionist Issue
• Should we make it easier for FedEx employees to unionize? Another union issue. Big company against the union
• Passenger Rights? The People versus the Airlines
• Pilot Work Rules and the Oversight of the Airlines: Pilots versus the Airline Management and additional regulations 

In that list that I just mentioned, which of those issues, if any,has the first thing or, for that matter, anything at all to do with modernizing our air transportation system through the deployment of new technology? With the exception of who pays for it, none! And I will bet you that we can come to some solution on who pays for it.

Maybe I am simple-minded, but why can’t these guys in D.C. simplify this and pass a clean bill that funds what we all agree needs to happen and fight it out over the rest in separate bills? Is there some legislative rule against simplicity? If there is, then we need to change the rules.  Or maybe we just need to fire the rule-makers and vote in some new ones who understand how to get things done.

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A Saturday, February 27th article in the Columbus Dispatch, by  Marla Matzer Rose covers the story on NetJets and Warrens Buffett’s letter to the stockholders regarding the company’s performance.

I posted on November 17 about the announcement of NetJets pilot layoff. At that point, revenues were off 41% and new aircraft sales were off 79%. Since that post, more layoffs have happened and in this article, the following is stated by Warren Buffett about the financial situation at NetJets:

“In the eleven years that we have owned the company (NetJets), it has recorded an aggregate pre-tax loss of $157,” Buffett said in his letter. “Moreover, the company’s debt has soared from $102 million at the time of purchase to $1.9 billion in April of last year. Without Berkshire’s guarantee of this debt, Net Jets would have been out of business. It’s clear that I have failed you in letting NetJets descend into this condition.”

Buffett said he had been “bailed out” by David Sokol, whom he appointed CEO of NetJets in August after the abrupt resignation of longtime CEO Richard Santulli.

Buffett praised Santulli for instituting “top-of-the-line standards for safety and service” at the company that are being continued, but said that the leadership of Sokol, who is chairman of Berkshire-owned MidAmerican Energy, and considered one of Buffett’s likely successors has been “transforming: Debt has already been reduced to $1.4 billion, and, after suffering a staggering loss of $711 million in 2009, the company is now solidly profitable.”

Buffett echoed what Sokol has said about NetJets, that it is “likely to operate at a profit in 2010, assuming there is no further deterioration in the U.S. economy or negative actions directed at the ownership of private aircraft.” For 2009, NetJets posted a $711 million loss. The losses were largely due to write-downs on the value of aircraft, with a smaller amount attributable to the cost of laying off workers.

Much like the financial performance of the airline industry, NetJets has not made a profit in aggregate for the past 11 years.

Something is wrong with a business model that has an aggregate loss over the long haul and we are plagued with it in both the airline and private aviation industries. More money has been lost than has been made, and because the industry is glamorous, more money will pour into bad business models in the future.

According to Mr. Buffett, the company is now solidly profitable since all of the cuts in both pilots and overhead. So what has changed about the business model to fix it? Do they shrink their way to profitability?

What created the situation in the first place? Was the model broken to start with and just needed a deep recession to make it obvious? How do you lose more in one year that you can make in 10 years? 

On this site we talk about the airlines and their broken system but private aviation has its fair share of issues and financial problems. Something has to change if we are to sustain long term viability as an integral part of the national transportation system.

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With the dawn of industrialization came mass production, and mass production lead to mass marketing.  Mass marketing lead to the growth of mass media including Newspaper, Radio and TV.

Everything was driven by costs and profit and pushing stuff out to the consumer who also happened to be part of the mass of producers and marketers.  If you make it cheap enough and market it to the masses, they will consume it.

With everything geared towards the masses, mass transit developed in the cities to move people to and from their jobs as workers in the large corporate factories that mass produced.

Mass transit started with the rail system and then added buses and eventually the airlines developed into the mass transit system of the air.

Mass transit is all about price and when price is the driving factor, the needs of individuals are sacrificed for the needs of the masses. Load everyone up like cattle, route them through the hubs, off load and reload on to the next flight that gets you somewhere near your destination, maybe not so quickly or in the most comfortable or sociable environment, but do it cheaply.  It feels more and more like riding the metro rail?

So the airlines developed terms for describing productivity and efficiency that sound much like production manufacturing terms:

• CASM: Cost per available seat mile.  A seat mile is one seat covering one mile.
• RASM: Revenue per available seat mile. The amount of revenue generated for every seat available covering a mile.
• RPM: Revenue per passenger mile.  The revenue generated per passenger flown flying one mile.

All of this sounds like mass production.  Are airlines in the business of providing transportation to the flying public or are they in the business of producing ASM’s and selling them at a profit generating RASM?

Is there a point where driving the CASM down to make a profit overrides best safety practices?  That is a question being asked in the Frontline Documentary entitled “Cheap Flights”.  I will leave that answer up to the safety experts for now.

Does the public merely want to get from origin to destination and back again for the lowest possible cost?

Will the public pay for something better than mass transit delivered at the lowest cost?

In the economy of the future, people will be more aware of the value of their time and they will have the tools to quantify its value.  They will also value the experience of travel and quantify that experience in a social cost or benefit.

Just as people are longing for the personal touch and experience of buying their food at the farmers’ market versus buying mass produced food, they will long for and seek out solutions to every facet of their lives, including travel that gives back quality, experience and relationships.

And let’s not forget that people want their time back, spending it how they choose, and not how the systems of mass production forces them to spend it.

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