Posts Tagged ‘airline ticket’
Airline traffic is growing again in spite of the customer frustration!
Photograph by: Chris Ware, Getty
Bloomberg and Associated Press report that June 2010 airline traffic rose 2.3% over June last year with US airlines carrying 65 million passengers. Annualized that comes to 780 million passengers. DOT projections say we will hit the 1 billion annual passenger level in the US in about 10 years.
In spite of low customer satisfaction with airline service, people keep coming back for more. If you listen to all the grumbling you would think that, surely, travelers have had enough.
The need or desire to travel must outweigh the pain of going to the airport and flying by airline.
People don’t like to fly the airlines but they keep doing it and the numbers are growing.
People love to fly in their own aircraft, ride in the back of a business jet or even a prop aircraft on their own schedule, and without the hassle of airline system, but our industry languishes in this economy.
What is wrong with this picture?
It seems that price outweighs most considerations for the masses when it comes to travel.
Wouldn’t we all rather ride in a private jet if we could do so for the price of a Southwest Airline ticket?
How do we move a very small percentage of the market of travelers over to our side of the game?
It would only take a very small percentage of those 780 million annual passengers to radically change the fortunes of business and private aviation from manufacturers to service providers to the operators of the aircraft.
Move a few percent of the market share of travel to business and general aviation and, suddenly, the world looks a lot brighter for those of us in this industry.
I see a lot of effort being put forth; but, mostly, the efforts are in their own silos. I don’t see a lot of effort as an industry working together to solve the problem. There seems to be a general acceptance that it is what it is and that the situation on a macro level is not going to change quickly anytime soon.
It is worth thinking about to see if we can come up with solutions, isn’t it?
We’re Listening: Fighting Terrorism With Social Currency
On January 25, Dan Robles suggested that Social Currency might be used to fight terrorism. Some of our friends on Linkedin joined the conversation.
Greg Johnson, President, CEO and founder of OneSky Jets, says:
“I think there are a few interesting points of discussion in Dan’s latest post. The first relates to where we catch terrorists… Trying to stop them at the airport checkpoint is an effort in futility. Terrorists are a determined lot and as Dan states, they only have to succeed once. The answer lies in knowing more about everyone who elects to fly as personally invasive as that may sound.
The U.S. and other countries are already starting to collect more data from passengers…birthdate and place of birth in addition to name, even on domestic flights. There has been an ongoing debate about a federal ID card although my opinion is that an additional card would be redundant. The databases exist today to to give law enforcement a pretty decent ability to profile passengers and I only see that capability expanding.
The typical terrorist’s desire to keep a low profile works against them when they are attempting to blend in to an increasingly data-driven society. The absence of data or abnormal patterns will stand out.
I don’t believe that “social currency” on its own is enough. There are billions of peaceful people on the planet that are not actively engaged in social networking today. The fact that my Mother isn’t on Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace shouldn’t (on its own) subject her to an additional level of security screening, however a college student today without an online presence might throw a red flag or two.
Also, don’t think that law enforcement isn’t already leveraging social networks. I have an associate who has been involved in government facial recognition projects. When the government needed a database of names and photos to test this new technology, where do you think they went? The publicly available pages of Facebook!
So the net/net here in my opinion is that the publicly available data in social networks can and will be used by governments of the world as one facet in a multi-dimensional campaign to know who is flying before they get anywhere near the airport and in the big picture, that’s a good thing.”
Mike Osborne, Operations AME at Honeywell, shares this concern:
“How do you propose to ascertain their networks and claims? Either or both seem easy enough to falsify.”
My reply is:
“I believe that the idea is to go for a “preponderance of evidence.” Just as the lack of a credit report, utility bills or bank records casts doubt on the authenticity of an identity, the lack of social credit and social activity history casts doubt on the social interaction and perhaps even identity of the passenger. Certainly, just as false credit reports, etc. can be created to support an alias, false social backgrounds could be created to support it as well. I think the point that Dan Robles is making is that to create monetary history and social history that coincide is difficult and would make it more difficult for terrorists to support several believeable aliases.”
Kenneth J. Goldstein, President at KJG International Consulting, responds:
“No as left to their own devices, most would not provide a sufficient background to grant the rest of us security.”
What do you think?
Fighting Terrorism with Social Currency?
(Author’s note: The following is meant to engage new ideas rather than promote any specific scheme or ideology)
Given the events of the last few months weeks, it’s time to for the aviation industry to get serious with Social Media. This article demonstrates how an alternate currency can be used to severely reduce or eliminate terrorist risk in commercial aviation. Think I’m kidding, read on.
Obviously an airline will not let you board an airplane if you don’t have the financial currency sufficient to buy ticket. Why should an airline let you board an airplane if you do not have social currency sufficient to fulfill your social obligations while in the air?
People with extreme social currency deficiencies are routinely stripped of their rights by a jury of peers and isolated from society for a period of time (where they would not board an airplane anyway). While there are many systems in place to manage the various degrees of social currency deficiency, none appear to be able to identify a terrorist without also violating the rights of non-terrorists.
Human Writes
However, many people are willing to share information about themselves to associates with whom an economic benefit is shared or exchanged. This happens a billion times per week on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter – why not among fellow passengers? After all everyone is already connected by six degrees.
What would a terrorist’s Facebook profile say about them? Do they have a lot of referrals on Linkedin? Do they post great work on Flikr? Is their community orchestra featured on My Space? Are their posts popular on twitter?
Should a social currency credit score become imperative to social transactions as the financial credit score is for financial transactions?
Banks and Insurance companies already rely on a highly invasive “Credit Score” to establish financial risk profile as a means of protecting themselves and their other clients. Why wouldn’t an airline use a social credit score to establish a social risk profile as a means of protecting themselves and the lives of their other clients?
Ruse and lose
Sure, the bad guys can adapt to social media as they have adapted to all other measures. The problem is that the greater the size and scope of their social media ruse, the more difficult it is to maintain the ruse. A threshold score could be set to nearly eliminate this possibility. Those folks can then simply opt into the full body scan.
The Paradigm Shift
As the saying goes, the attacker needs to be successful only once, while the defender needs to be successful every time. The concept of a Social media credit score flips this paradigm on it’s head. The attacker’s social credit score needs to be successful every time. The defender needs to be successful only once.