Posts Tagged ‘hub’
Technologies to Revolutionize Everything
A visualization of Human Edits to Wikipedia where each color represents a different page
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal January 30, 2012 online edition: The Coming Tech-led Boom, identifies three technologies that will have as profound an impact on the world as electrification, telephony, and the dawn of the automobile age.
Even as we all see these technologies approaching, much like our 20th century contemporaries, most people cannot even begin to grasp the implications. One thing is certain, industries that are unable to adapt, will not survive in their current state.
Social Flights is Flying into the next century with eyes wide open
In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. All find their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution.
Big Data and Wireless Technology
Big Data is at the core of some of what have become the most disruptive innovations of our time. Processing power, data storage, and data transmission are almost free. The handheld device has more computing power than the supercomputers the 1970s. The internet is moving into the cloud and away from the so called desk-top. All data is converging to a single place where it can be accessed and combined in countless ways. Every second of every day creates an astonishing amount of empirical data that creates an unimaginable diversity of information and new knowledge.
At thge top of the food chain is Social media creating data – data does not create social media. Data is made by people; data does not make people. People create, data does not, etc. Likewise for most services in the next century; people will determine where airplanes fly – airplanes will no longer determine where people will can go.
A hub airport does little more than sort people and planes. At Social Flights we use data to sort people and planes. What if we could replace infrastructure with data? All this would take is for communities to “perform a simple calculation” among themselves. Nothing is stopping this from happening today.
The implications of the radical collapse in the cost of wireless connectivity are as big as those following the dawn of telegraphy/telephony. Coupled with the cloud, the wireless world provides cheap connectivity, information and processing power to nearly everyone, everywhere. This introduces both rapid change [and great opportunity].
Many people don’t understand how this could happen but Social Flights sees the possibility everyday, for example: A handheld device will become the hub, the scheduling agent, the point of purchase, and the boarding pass – all with a swipe across the “reality augmented” sky. The data already exists that can determine how many people from any point on earth intend to travel to any other point on earth and when. Putting these data sets together creates a remarkably different landscape for air travel … and commerce in general.
Social Flights in new. Social Flights is visionary – anyone who joins us on this voyage will be joining a revolution much greater than simply a ride sharing service. The point should be crystal clear - Social media creates data, data does not create social media.
Understand this, and you will understand Social Flights.
When Business Follows The Airlines Out of Town
Ok, now this airline game is becoming serious business. It is bad enough when small communities that never had air service options have given up trying to grow (where new opportunities fail to materialize and young knowledge workers move away). It’s a whole different matter when companies pick up and leave a community because the airlines pull the plug on air service.
[via When Airlines Depart Cities, Businesses May Follow : NPR]
Last month when Chiquita announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from Ohio to North Carolina, it said it was lured there in part by the number of flights in and out of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Cincinnati came out on the losing end of the deal because like so many other cities, it faces a shrinking airline hub, which can affect the city’s business climate.
US Cities are vulnerable to decreased economic development due to Airline Service loss
Regressive Economics
When a company leaves town, it takes with it the self-identity of the people who worked their entire careers to make that company great. When people are forced to migrate to find new work, they impose a cost on their families and futures. While corporations maintain economic freedom to make decisions in their own best interest, the public does not have the economic freedom to respond in their own best interest.
Daily Departures
Cincinnati; At peak, 2005: 673 daily (5 international); Current: 200 daily (1 international)
Pittsburgh; At peak, 2001: 579 daily (3 international); Current: 145 daily, (1 international)
St. Louis; peak 2001: 595 daily; Current: 250 daily
And, this is ONLY THREE Cities.
Looking at the above statistics; well over 1000 flights per day have been eliminated from these three not-so-small cities. That is 365,000 flights denying economic equality to over 50 million travelers in a single year. The scale of entrepreneur career-years alone squandered due to lack of air service is absolutely catastrophic for the American Economy. The irony is that people who move away need to travel more to stay connected to families. The economic friction imposed on communities is staggering.
“I remember coming here a few years ago and it was a hub of activity, you know, with all three concourses,” he says. “Now there’s only … one concourse left, if that, and it’s just really amazing to see this huge infrastructure supporting very little flights.”
Van der Horst with the Cincinnati chamber says she doesn’t expect Delta to go back to 673 flights a day at CVG, but she knows that for Cincinnati to attract and retain more business, it will mean landing more flights.
Social Flights is working overtime to create a Community Air Service Program that allows communities to access modern jet aircraft to fulfill their own travel needs whether they need direct flights, hub flights, corporate shuttle flights, or charter jet operations. Social Flights has the operational experience to teach communities how to manage their own air transportation operations through their own airports, FBOs, and responding to their own social priorities with modern aircraft.
Economic Freedom belongs to everyone. This is the cornerstone of the Social Flights business model – Social Flights is the people’s airline. Let us know where you want to go, before someone else does that for you….
Productivity App for Business Aviation?
An economy is defined by, or limited by, time and productivity. Value is created in an economy when an improved use of the resource of time creates gain in productivity.
The purpose of travel by aircraft is to gain time over other means of travel, time that can be used to create new value.
Inside the experience of travel the journey itself can either add to or subtract from productivity. If I can be productive while traveling I gain value during the travel in addition to the gains on both ends of the journey.
Every day, those of us in business aviation, witness the gains in productivity both in time saved and in the positive experience of travel by private and business aircraft.
Business travelers who have experienced this form of travel know what I am talking about.
Business travelers who use the airlines will testify to the negative impact on productivity from the time drain and wear and tear of airline travel.
The airlines, and the system they have created around the hub and spoke, have done a lot to try and ease the journey by creating nice terminals with food, shopping, and wifi connections to the Internet. However, am I more productive sitting at the Airport Starbucks on my laptop for three hours waiting on the connecting flight, or being at my destination three hours earlier?
What about the time en-route?
If I can conduct a meeting in the air with clients, vendors or fellow workers what’s it worth?
When is the last time you had a business meeting while traveling on an airline in coach class or even in business class?
Business aviation wins hands down both in time saved in the journey and productivity experienced during the journey.
So why doesn’t everyone travel using a business aircraft?
Price and perceived value!
Business aviation is expensive when compared to the perceived value.
If our industry created a true cost-productivity calculator application that took into consideration not only the value of the time savings, but just importantly the productivity gains experienced during the journey, would it change the perception of the value of business aviation?
The technology is here today to do this.
I would challenge our friends in the tech sector to come up with an application that calculates the “true costs” of the various modes of air travel.
What would an application like that be worth to those of us in Business Aviation?
Do you have to incentivize your employees to travel?
If you do then something is wrong with the airline system or your employees.
I will vote for a broken airline system.
Thinking about a recent NY Times article by Lisa Galst entitled “Rewarded for Flying Coach” makes me smile as I write this.
What is the world coming to when you have to pay your employees extra for the misery of riding in the back of the aircraft in the cheap seats as opposed to booking the more comfy seats up front? Sounds like hazardous duty pay to me.
I have never heard any of our clients having to incentivize their employees to take a flight on a private aircraft. In fact it is sometimes the other way around. Last week when talking to one of our good clients he was telling me that he uses the flights he books to see his clients as a morale booster for his employees. Those who travel with him are excited about the experience and when they get back to the office everyone else hears about how cool it was.
With all that is happening in the airline industry:
- reduced capacity resulting in high load factors which equals crowded airplanes
- oversold flights and increases in denied boarding
- cancellations due to the new tarmac rules
- a la carte fees for everything the ticket no longer buys you
Is it any surprise that people just don’t want to do this anymore?
And the federal government has the idea that they can step in and solve the problem with legislation to make it against the law to provide bad service.
Private aviation and business aviation are sitting on a gold mine of opportunity.
What if these companies took the money they are spending to incentivize their employees to fly coach and used it to fly more in private aircraft? They would get happier employees and gain a lot of productivity by not sending them through a hub that is cheaper to save a buck. Besides, with business aviation there is no such thing as routing through a hub. Its all point to point.