GREENVILLE, Wis. (WBAY) – Spring officially begins this week and that’s welcome news after a rough winter full of snow and cold. Many school districts in our area have spring breaks this week and next, and families are filling up planes headed to warmer destinations.
TSA workers screen flyers through Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport (WBAY photo)
Appleton International Airport is bustling more now than any other time of the year.
According to Abe Weber, airport director at Appleton International, “It’s been our busiest spring break we’ve ever seen. We have 1,500 people a day coming through the airport and heading out to warm weather destinations.”
With the demand for air travel at an all-time high in Northeast Wisconsin, Allegiant, which usually flies twice a week to both Orlando and Arizona out of Outagamie County, has added an additional five flights a week: three more to Florida and two extra to Arizona.
“They put a big focus on spring break understanding that we had some really rough winter weather. They’re up over 30 percent in seats through our airport,” says Weber.
Other carriers at Appleton and Austin Straubel in Green Bay are either adding flights or flying larger planes to accommodate the additional travelers.
And despite the increase in demand, passengers say fares have stayed the same.
“I thought they were pretty fair, about the same as usual, so I was surprised. I thought it would be a little more expensive this time of year, but it wasn’t bad,” says traveler Jackie Quade.
Traveler Shawn Esslinger adds, “Pricing was good. And Allegiant we’ve flown them many times so, it’s direct and that’s the main consideration.”
In addition to more flights and easier access to destinations, Appleton International has sweetened the deal by adding valet parking.
“It was just very convenient, very convenient,” says Esslinger.
And that’s the goal, as airports try to appease all of those vacation-bound travelers.
Weber adds, “Our goal was really just to elevate the customer experience that much more and be the most convenient airport in Northeast Wisconsin.”
HOUSTON (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Federal authorities say a United Airlines flight declared an emergency when an engine shut down as the plane descended at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Flight 1168 was carrying 174 passengers and six crew members late Sunday when the engine trouble began near Houston. The Boeing 737-900 was traveling from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.
One passenger told Houston media outlets that he heard a loud bang, felt a strong vibration and saw a flash of light.
Another passenger says he saw flames coming from the engine, but a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman says emergency responders found no evidence of fire or smoke.
Passengers evacuated down emergency slides and onto the tarmac and were later taken by bus to the United Club inside the airport.
FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford says crews are investigating the aircraft Monday.
United spokeswoman Rachael Rivas says some people suffered minor injuries while evacuating the plane.
A 24-year-old Australian woman is facing up to 21 years behind bars after being convicted of federal charges in an assault on a flight attendant during a trip from Melbourne to Los Angeles earlier this year, prosecutors said Monday.
Adau Akui Atem Mornyang, of Victoria, appeared to be intoxicated and was verbally and physically abusive to both staff and other passengers aboard a United Airlines flight on Jan. 21, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a news release.
Evidence presented at trial indicated that, after being in the air several hours, other passengers complained to a flight attendant about Mornyang, who was flailing her arms and shouting obscenities and racial slurs, officials said.
When the attendant then approached Mornyang to check on her, the defendant allegedly yelled at him then slapped him across the face.
The flight attendant tried to restrain Mornyang until federal air marshals could respond. The marshals then had to stay with Mornyang in the plane’s rear galley for the rest of the trip, prosecutors said.
Last Thursday, a jury found Mornyang guilty of one felony count of interference with a flight crew and one misdemeanor count of assault.
She is scheduled to be sentenced June 24, when she’ll face a maximum possible penalty of 21 years in federal prison.
Mortenson used innovative construction technologies and Lean practices to build three major new ground facilities totaling 180,000 square feet for United Airlines at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in less than a year. Mortenson fast-tracked the project because United Airlines needed to vacate its previous ground facilities to make way for runway construction at O’Hare.
Completion of the United project is a critical milestone in O’Hare’s massive modernization of its runways, which includes adding and extending some while closing others. The runway work complements the planned $8.5 billion investment to upgrade terminals and other amenities and add the first new gates at the airport in nearly 25 years. “This is a game changer for the city of Chicago,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to a Chicago Tribune story. “I made a pledge that the city of Chicago, O’Hare, will not be measured by the busiest, but by being the best.”
Mortenson broke ground on the $105 million United project, which also included 1.2 million square feet of airside paving, in the last week of December, 2017. The airline received its occupancy certifications for the new Ground Equipment Maintenance and Facilities Maintenance Stores in November, 2018. United uses the buildings for equipment maintenance and storage and to house its facility maintenance personnel, bussing operation, aircraft move team, and aircraft provisioning/cleaning operations.
Ghafari Associates served as architect, Ardmore Roderick as the lead project manager on the apron paving, Thornton Tomasetti as structural engineer, DB Sterlin as the civil engineer for the buildings, Burns McDonnell as civil engineer for the aprons and Jones Lang LaSalle as owner’s representative.
“I am extremely proud of the Mortenson team that successfully delivered the North Airfield project,” said MacAdam Glinn, Mortenson general manager of aviation. “It is a testament to our skill and dedication that we were able to complete these high-quality facilities in such an accelerated time frame. Just as importantly, we are honored that we were chosen to partner with industry leader United Airlines on this transformational project.”
Given the project’s tight turnaround and complexity, Mortenson and its partners relied on a range of Lean and other innovative tools and processes:
Simultaneous drawings for structural steel: The team eschewed the traditional linear process for structural steel, which would have involved Thornton Tomasetti developing designs, then Mortenson’s structural steel subcontractor creating the next level of detail with shop drawings, then waiting for Thornton Tomasetti to review and sign off on them. Instead, the two companies developed their versions of the drawings nearly simultaneously using a shared software platform from Thornton Tomasetti. This approach cut as much as eight weeks from the schedule vs. the standard approach.
Pull planning: This Lean approach optimized coordination and productivity of the many subcontractors. For each phase of the project, such as the exterior work or underground work, a Mortenson project engineer would meet with all the subcontractors to agree on the sequences and duration of each company’s work and resolve any clashes.
Prefabrication: To ensure quality and save time, Mortenson worked with subcontractors to build the doors and hardware as well as all of the process piping offsite.
Staggered permitting: By securing city permits in sequence and for sections of work rather than seeking permits for the entire project at once, Mortenson minimized any schedule impacts while waiting for permits and FAA clearances.
“Mortenson ran this project with an emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and flexibility, which was vital to coordinating and managing the detailed design and buildout under a very compressed time schedule. The new ground facilities have expanded United’s maintenance capacity and capabilities so it can service a wider array of equipment,” said Weston Parker, Vice President who heads up Ardmore Roderick’s Aviation Group.
The O’Hare ground facilities and apron work are the latest in a series of Mortenson projects for United Airlines. It built a massive data center for the airline and renovated its B18 club for frequent flyers at O’Hare. Mortenson also constructed a new flight training facility in Denver.
The just-completed O’Hare project consisted of:
Ground maintenance equipment facility
The two-story, 140,000 square foot building features single-story 38-foot bays, with 11 overhead bridge cranes, four different kinds of vehicle lifts, and 54 overhead doors. The building is equipped with paint booth, loading dock, battery storage area, an automated storage and retrieval system and pallet racks with an automated handling system. The GEM also houses two oil water separators, a fuel island for fuel tank storage, a fuel and hydraulic fluid distribution system and air compressor system. It includes administrative offices, conference and training rooms, and employee locker rooms and lounges.
Facilities Maintenance and Stores building
This single-story, 40,000 square foot facility provides storage space and maintenance shops for United’s facility maintenance teams. It includes five overhead doors, a loading dock, pallet rack storage system and secure cage. It also has conference and training rooms and employee break rooms and locker rooms.
Airport Operations Services building
This single story, 40,000 square foot building houses the airline’s operating services, move and positioning crews. It reaches 30 feet at its highest point to accommodate extensive storage for the provisioning teams. The pre-engineered building is equipped with 12 overhead doors, secure cage, and two semi-loading docks. It also has training rooms, break rooms and locker rooms.
Apron work
This significant civil and infrastructure project resulted in 1.2 million square feet of concrete paving including new taxi lanes, concrete aprons and plane and employee parking. The paving is multi-layered, including 15” Portland Cement Concrete Pavement (PCCP), 3/8” choke stone, 5” cement treated permeable base (CTPB), geotextile fabric, 8” P-154M blended aggregate, 12” lime stabilized subgrade and millings produced onsite using recycled materials from the airfield. THE PCCP and CTPB were produced at an onsite batch plant. The work included a new storm and sanitary system as well as electrical switchgear, transformers and switchboards. The team also installed a new duct bank to power new high-mast lighting and power planes on the apron for testing and maintenance.
Weighing factors like airfares, baggage fees, and the possibilities of cancellations or delays, The Points Guy, a website for travelers, put together its latest “best and worst airlines’ report.”
The delays, the lost bags, the long lines for coffee—any day at the airport can mean a frustration or two. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a friendly face during a trudge down the concourse? Make that a friendly furry face, and suddenly a hectic travel day feels a little bit easier.
That’s the idea behind Denver International Airport’s Canine Airport Therapy Squad’s (CATS) program, the largest organization of its kind, among airports in more than 30 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Charlotte, where similar programs have proven wildly popular.
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
With 121 therapy pups and, yes, one actual cat, DEN trotted out the CATS effort three years ago as a way to “provide passengers with an elevated experience,” says Lisa Dittberner, who manages the airport’s volunteer programs. “Seeing a dog immediately takes them out of their current state of mind, thinking about seat assignments or whether their bags are going to make it,” Dittberner says. “Seeing an animal that you can actually pet in an airport is something special.”
On a recent connection through Denver, frequent flier Callie Langton of Omaha, Nebraska, paused briefly to love on CATS dog Shelby, a golden retriever. It was the perfect pick-me-up as Langton boarded a flight for a business meeting, happily “covered in dog hair” afterward.
“I spend a lot of time in airports for work, and the therapy dogs are such a bright spot in a day where almost everyone you encounter is, at best, grumpy,” she says.
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
Staffed by volunteers and their certified therapy pets, CATS handlers and their loyal companions work in two-hour shifts, wearing matching vests and circulating at various gates, making new friends and passing out trading cards featuring fun facts about each pet. More than 50 breeds, including Newfoundlands, Jack Russell terriers, dachshunds, German shepherds, poodles and border collies, make up the CATS roster.
There’s Cody, a carrot-loving goldendoodle; Shogun, a Bernese mountain dog who enjoys both hiking and napping; and Violet, a plucky French bulldog who can’t stand squirrels. Each animal delivers a happy little dose of personality while prompting smiles and sniffing out the people who need them most. Whether it’s someone returning home from a funeral, a passenger fearful of flying or a traveler who just said goodbye to a friend, these intuitive pets often know right where to go.
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
“They just sense it,” says Jim Stimson, 70, who volunteers twice a month at DEN with Martha, his 5-year-old cream golden retriever. He acknowledges that during some visits, the CATS members simply lift spirits among harried travelers, but on certain days, the therapy animals work a remarkable sort of magic.
Stimson recalls Martha meeting a passenger who, he later learned, was flying through Denver for the first time since losing two friends in the 2017 shooting tragedy in Las Vegas.
“She gave us ‘the eye,’” Stimson says of the distinct glance that signals a passenger’s interest in meeting a CATS animal. “We talked to her, and pretty soon she was sitting on the floor, and Martha’s head was in her lap. She said, ‘This dog really senses me.’”
“It’s amazing to me how dogs can detect pain,” Stimson says. “And they’re just naturally good at easing it.”
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
While the CATS partners do sometimes encounter exceptional situations that call for a little extra care, they’re always good at distracting travelers from the typical hassles of a day at the airport.
Carol O’Saben, a psychologist in Flagstaff, Arizona, says the stressful and unpredictable airport atmosphere benefits significantly from the comfort of CATS and programs like it.
“Therapy animals in an airport setting can be beneficial for travelers with emotional and mental health concerns, as well as the broader population, because travel is anxiety-provoking,” she says. “Having therapy animals available is one way to divert a person’s focus from the chaos of the environment to the interaction with an animal and help the traveler better manage their own anxiety.”
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
And the simple act of petting an animal, O’Saben says, has proven therapeutic advantages, including lowered heart rate, slowed breathing and reduced blood pressure—all physiological responses that can minimize tension.
“Airports also can be a place of heightened emotions because of the stress created by traveling,” she says. “It is possible that having therapy animals available to interact with travelers can help to lower some of those emotions and create a more friendly and amicable airport environment.”
Dittberner says that’s one reason volunteers are encouraged to study departure information and head to gates where flights are delayed—particularly in areas where families are traveling with children.
(Courtesy Denver International Airport)
“It’s a huge thing—you’ve just found out your flight isn’t leaving when you thought it would, but you look over and see a dog, and maybe you forget about that for a minute,” says Dittberner.
For Stimson, watching those interactions, large and small, between his Martha and airport travelers is always rewarding.
“It’s like when your kid comes home with straight A’s or hits the winning homerun,” he says. “You just feel so proud and amazed to see them do the things they can do.”
United Airlines launched services between Denver and Santa Rosa on 8 March, with the Californian airport hosting a small gate celebration to herald the new service. The Star Alliance member will serve the route daily.
United Airlines launched its newest route from Denver (DEN) on 8 March, with the carrier initiating a daily service to Santa Rosa (STS) in California. The Star Alliance member will serve the 1,566-kilometre airport pair daily using its fleet of CRJ 200s. No other airline presently operates between the two US airports. This becomes United’s second route to Santa Rosa, with it already serving the airport from San Francisco. In 2018, a reported 440,644 passengers travelled through Santa Rosa Airport, with this representing an 11% increase versus 2017 when 397,787 people used the facility. In total, the airport has non-stop service to 10 destinations by four airlines, with the other three serving operators being Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and Sun Country Airlines. An 11th destination will be added in June, with American starting flights from Dallas/Fort Worth.
Have you ever wondered how an airline decides when to start a new route and why it might choose to compete on some routes but not others?
In a note to employees picked up by the Crain’s Chicago Business, which I’ve also had a chance to review, United Airlines has provided more insight on the process.
It all starts with hours upon hours of research. The Domestic and International Network Planning groups continually analyze passenger load and fare data for routes we don’t currently support before determining where opportunities for new service lie.
They’ll take 100 city combinations, for example, then slowly whittle that list down until they reach 10-15 that are viable for us based on customer demand and profitability forecasts. Then they measure the impact of introducing new service versus adding more flights between cities we already serve. It’s a constant negotiation between dozens of variables, and there’s a lot of consideration that goes into those decisions, since we never want to launch a route that ultimately fails.
There are practical matters as well—
Do we have existing capacity in the fleet to support it? If not, can we move equipment from an underperforming route? Or, would it be better served by United Express.
United is not a “point-to-point” airlines but a hub-and-spoke carrier. New routes are examined not simply on the basis of the new flight itself, but how that flight will feed connecting traffic throughout the network.
Before building a segment into the schedule, Network Planning estimates customer demand by evaluating connection options, the route’s popularity and what the competition offers, among other things. Finally, planners look at different aircraft capabilities, things like number of seats, range, and takeoff and landing limitations, then decide if the route should be flown with mainline or regional equipment.
The Contentious Part
But what about the high-demand leisure and business routes that United has simply abandoned? I’m talking about routes like Los Angeles (LAX) to Portland (PDX) or Dallas (DFW). LAX-PDX is a huge market for Alaska and Delta. LAX-DFW is a huge route for American and is also served by Delta. Why not at least a couple daily flights between these important cities?
The simple answer is, we can’t be everything to everyone, everywhere. No, we don’t have LAX-PDX (Portland, Oregon) like Delta (DL), for instance, but we do great with our LAX to IAH, IAD and ORD routes, which is why DL doesn’t offer those flights. As mentioned above, we operate within constraints. A new segment requires assets, like airport gates and airplanes, not to mention paying customers. We’re not going to cannibalize assets being used for more profitable routes just to compete with a competitor in places where we would be operating at a deficit.
And while I hear United President Scott Kirby loud and clear in that explanation, I wonder if he has fully learned the lesson of JFK. Kirby is often quick to point out that by pulling out of JFK, United lost several lucrative corporate contracts that primarily flew to other destinations. The hint, and the understandable rationale, is that United should have kept certain routes that were “losers” because they helped to make other routes much better “winners”.
That seems easy enough to follow, yet it seems almost mind-boggling that United doesn’t serve Oakland, San Jose, Portland, or Dallas (effective in a few weeks) from its hub in Los Angeles.
United’s only retort is that Delta doesn’t offer nonstop flights between Los Angeles and Houston, Chicago, or Washington Dulles.
CONCLUSION
Our overall strategy is about leveraging the network in the right ways to ensure United’s long-term success.
Of course. And I’m not here to be the armchair CEO (too much). But wouldn’t United want to lose a little money on the LA to Dallas route simply to keep loyal customers on other United routes?
The petition cites incidents where they claim religious men and even a single mother and baby were insulted, and in some cases were asked to deplane for “security reasons.”
As of Wednesday, a little more than 100 people had signed the petition.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here
