$4621.70

[Bob Owens]

I recently read an article about how Pittsburg Airport decided to jack up their fees by 35%. That got me wondering "How much does it cost AA to land a B777 at JFK?". So I looked it up. The PA charges $4.70 for each 1000lbs of max gross weight and $4.50 for each Passenger.

So at a gross weight of 631,000 lbs and capacity of 368 it costs as much as $4621.70 to land a B777 at JFK.

There are approximately 223 000 landings a year at JFK, thats a lot of landing fees.
http://www.aci.aero/cda/aci_common/display...5-54-57_666_2__

Is it any wonder why airline profit margins are so slim? Everybody except airline workers are making a killing off the airlines. Nobody else is shy about grabbing as much as they can, why should we be?


JFK is credited with creating $30.1 billion in economic activity and 229,000 jobs, 35000 at the airport.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kenne..._and_statistics

$30.1 billion a year just from one airport. So each worker at JFK helps generate $860,000 a year in economic activity. Imagine if we had unions that knew how much power we really have? All we hear is doom and gloom and how we are lucky we have a job, well I say the other 194,000 people who have jobs thanks to the 35,000 of us who show up to work on the airport are the ones who are lucky, along with the airlines, the oil companies, the State of New York, the Federal government and the Port Authority since they all benifit from the $30.1 billion of taxable economic activity thats generated around our labor. They all make a lot more off our labor than we do.

$860,000 a year.

Why not "Restore and More?

 

[Boomer]

During the 2003 Home Invasion by AMR and the TWU, numerous aspects of "competitive advantage" were examined: among the greatest excess was the policy by Airport Operating Authorities of charging Max Landing Weight instead of Actual Landing Weight for all arrivals based on type certification of the aircraft type.

Despite the fact that AMR can provide Actual versus Max Landing Weights, there is no Federal Legislation which would require that such billing be adjusted based on the carriers' ability to provide such information; thus, the local operating authority is free to structure their fee basis on the lowest common denominator.

When AMR M&E Management was approached about pushing the issue, the answer was to the effect that resolution of the issue would equally benefit all air carriers and as such could not be considered a competitive advantage.

To date: there has been no discussion of the relative costs per ASM per the TVS statement issued to each and every employee of American Airlines. I would be very interested in seeing how those numbers stack up year over year since the inception of the TVS.

 

[whatkindoffreshhell]

url]

Everybody except airline workers are making a killing off the airlines.

Why not "Restore and More?

Not true. Airline workers were overpaid for years and your unions overplayed their hand. Remember 'choke the last golden egg out of the goose'?

Go ahead and strike. Or why not simply change employers in search of a higher wage? Those pesky seniority work rules should not hold a good man/woman down...

 

[eolesen]

I think your numbers are a little off, Bob. The -200IGW has a max landing weight of 480K, and the -300IGW has a MLW of 554K. Average pax count per Boeing is 301 for the -200 and 350 for the -300.

That brings the cost down a bit.

Approx $2300 for the weight of a -200IGW and $1350 for the PFC's, total of $3850 at max capacity.


To put that in perspective a bit, the average business class ticket sold out of JFK internationally on a 777 is higher than the landing fee.

JFK-GRU is around $4000 before taxes and fuel surcharges.

JFK-LHR runs between $3500 and $5000 in J; $8300 in F

JFK-NRT is over $6800 in J, and $10400 in F

JFK-LAX for full business is between $1600 and $2200, and F is around $2600

So, the landing fees, high as they may be, can wind up being paid for by just one full fare international passenger in the J cabin, or two discounted J fares on a transcon.

There's a good reason AA keeps a decent premium cabin product.


Put another way, the landing fees account for at most about $12.50 per passenger on a 300 seat aircraft.

And before you go off saying that AA can always add $xx per ticket to give us a raise, that $12.50 or so cost is the same whether you arrive on an AA, BA, AF, DL, or JL B777.... Likewise for comparing the cost of the AA MD80 to a B6 A320. That's not true when you're talking about a labor surcharge. Whatever AA choses to pay labor above the cost of those other carriers has to be recouped thru a revenue premium.

 

[BoeingBoy]

JFK may be an exception, but airports don't generally charge a per person fee as part of the landing fee. The per person fee is just the airport's revenue divided by the number of enplaning passengers at that airport, so is an average. Each individual carrier's per passenger cost depends on how much space is leased (the carrier's facilities cost) and how many passengers that carrier enplanes, and is usually not available outside of the carrier.

Jim

 

[Bob Owens]

And before you go off saying that AA can always add $xx per ticket to give us a raise, that $12.50 or so cost is the same whether you arrive on an AA, BA, AF, DL, or JL B777....

So what you are saying is it doesnt matter how much AA pays because everyone else is paying it. Lowering landing fees dont appeal to you because everyone would get the same advantage. Funny, I always thought the name of the game in any business was making a profit, not neccissarily beating the competition.

Thats the problem with todays executive class, for them its more about competition, winning the game , than making money. So whether it comes to seeing how much they can strip away from their workers or beat the competition in cost cutting its more about bragging rights than running a business. They can afford to play because the realities of earning a living have been taken out of the equation for them, no matter how much money they lose, no matter how much suffering they cause, they are still get the prize of excessive compensation. They can simply focus on achieving bragging rights "I cut costs more than you".

 

[eolesen]

So what you are saying is it doesnt matter how much AA pays because everyone else is paying it. Lowering landing fees dont appeal to you because everyone would get the same advantage. Funny, I always thought the name of the game in any business was making a profit, not neccessarily beating the competition.

Bob, if anyone is capable of twisting words into something that wasn't said, it's you.

Of course lowering landing fees is appealing and airlines do try to negotiate on that a lot more often than you'd ever give them credit for. The guys in Billings, MT are even willing to waive fees if it means they'll get new service. But that's the old argument you hate to hear --- supply and demand. When you have high demand and low supply, the supplier is foolish not to extract as much of a premium as they can. When you have low demand and high supply, the buyer has all the pricing control.

If you didn't notice, there's a monopoly in NYC for airport ownership, and with demand for space at all three airports outstripping the supply, there's no incentive for the Port Authority to try and have LGA or JFK compete with EWR or SWF. ISP and HPN can (and do), but that doesn't do much good for the international carriers....

So, as much as they might try, AA, DL, or CO have an uphill battle, and won't be able to make the case that if they don't lower fees at XXX, they're going to move their operations to YYY.

It's the same problem in California, where LAWA controls all the major airfields in the county (BUR, ONT, LAX, VNY, and PMD), and in Paris where ADP controls both ORY and CDG. Go a couple hundred miles north of LA, and you'll find there's competition between OAK, SFO, and SJC to get traffic. Likewise between FLL, PBI and MIA.

The UK already realised this problem, and now BAA is being forced to divest of LGW & STN (they're keeping LHR). It's entirely possible if LGW and STN are able to offer lower landing fees, and there will be carriers who move from LHR to those airports as a result. Likewise, BAA is being required to divest of either EDI or GLA, so that those two airports will be able to compete for airlines vs. being a monopoly provider to for that region.

Break up the Port Authority's stranglehold on airports in NYC, and you might see JFK's landing fees, rents, etc. become competitive.

 

[Bob Owens]

The UK already realised this problem, and now BAA is being forced to divest of LGW & STN (they're keeping LHR).

So the workers over there arent being told that they should work for less so these state run monopolies can rake in more money?

That was the point of the post, airline workers enable all these other parties to make a killing, even if the airlines never show a profit theres too much money being made to let the industry shut down. For to long we have allowed ourselves to be the last on line.

 

[FWAAA]

JFK may be an exception, but airports don't generally charge a per person fee as part of the landing fee. The per person fee is just the airport's revenue divided by the number of enplaning passengers at that airport, so is an average. Each individual carrier's per passenger cost depends on how much space is leased (the carrier's facilities cost) and how many passengers that carrier enplanes, and is usually not available outside of the carrier.

Jim

The $4.50/pass. charge mentioned by Bob is, of course, the Passenger Facility Charge, applicable to every passenger enplaned at JFK (and nearly every other airport in the country these days). As you know (but Bob probably doesn't), it's only charged on enplaned passengers, not on the maximum pass capacity of the airplane.

As you have explained numerous times, airports generally compute their landing fees by dividing their budget by the annual weight. In PIT, as you know, fewer pounds landed necessarily equals higher landing fees, up until the airport reduces its overhead costs.

eolesen: PANYNJ charges based on maximum gross weight, not net landed weight. But as you've probably already figured out, it doesn't matter, since if the PA used landed weights, the fee per pound would simply increase (as mentioned in the previous paragraph).

Boomer and Bob are forgetting how an airport arrives at its fees. Divide annual budget not covered by terminal rent, parking and concession income by the annual weight of the airplanes and you have the landing fees.

Here's the .pdf of JFK fees:

http://www.panynj.gov/COMMUTINGTRAVEL/airp...charges-jfk.pdf

PFCs on page 10 of the .pdf

 

[eolesen]

That was the point of the post, airline workers enable all these other parties to make a killing, even if the airlines never show a profit theres too much money being made to let the industry shut down.

First of all, you're assuming that every dollar in the marketing figure is directly attributable to the airline. It's a little like saying that Exxon, BP, etc. are really responsible for every dollar of GDP, since without oil products, nobody in the US would be able to fly anywhere, operate a car to get to work, and the trains outside the electrified corridors wouldn't have any way of delivering all those goods ultimately destined for the shelves at BigBoxMart.


You're also assuming that airlines don't make a profit.

Your airline doesn't make a profit. There are others who do, and it's not because of the landing fees. It's all the other stuff that goes into the equation that's causing that.

The guys I know who work for Jetblue and Southwest think they're paid fairly, so maybe you need to focus on why AA isn't as profitable.

Oh, wait, that's not your job. You just sell services to them.....

 

[Bob Owens]

The $4.50/pass. charge mentioned by Bob is, of course, the Passenger Facility Charge, applicable to every passenger enplaned at JFK (and nearly every other airport in the country these days). As you know (but Bob probably doesn't), it's only charged on enplaned passengers, not on the maximum pass capacity of the airplane.

Sorry to disapoint you but I can read and was aware of that, thus "and capacity of 368 it costs as much as "


But like I said the point remains that all these entities make their living off our labor and we should no longer accept being the last in line.

 

[Boomer]

With respect to the general discussion: the two primary lines of revenue generated to the Airport Operating Authority are the PFC, Passenger Facility Charge, mentioned by FWAA; and, the Landing Fee most Airport Operating Authorities charge based on the max landing wieght of scheduled operations.

The PFC is a Congressionally mandated deal, so no movement is possible until Congress imposes some type of negotiated variablility based on services consumed versus revenue generated.

The Landing Fee, based on max landing weight, should be actual landing weight but it appears that the ATA is more interested in busting Unions than addressing costs for their membership: they and the TWU seem to have a lot in common.

 

[FWAAA]

The Landing Fee, based on max landing weight, should be actual landing weight but it appears that the ATA is more interested in busting Unions than addressing costs for their membership: they and the TWU seem to have a lot in common.

Doesn't matter which weight the PA uses. If they were forced to use landing weight instead of max gross weight, they'd simply adjust the rate upward. It's like going to the butcher and asking him to not charge you for the bone in your t-bone steak because you don't want to pay $7.99/lb for bone. So to placate you, he rolls his eyes and he says "ok, I'll cut out the bone and instead of $7.99/lb, the new price is $11.99/lb for the boneless steak.

THAT's why management saw it as a non-issue when you first raised it. The PA is going to extract its budget from the airlines regardless of which weight figure is used to compute landing fees. Use lower weights, PA will increase the per pound charge.

Sorry to disapoint you but I can read and was aware of that, thus "and capacity of 368 it costs as much as"

Then why did you bring it up? The PFC has nothing to do with Landing Fees. PFCs are theoretically passed on the passengers on their tickets. For as long as PFCs have existed, my tickets list them separately. My ticket doesn't list "landing fees" as a separate item, so AA has yet to try to pass that along to the passengers ala carte style.

But like I said the point remains that all these entities make their living off our labor and we should no longer accept being the last in line.

Good luck asking for your share of your $860k.

 

[Bob Owens]

Then why did you bring it up? The PFC has nothing to do with Landing Fees. PFCs are theoretically passed on the passengers on their tickets. For as long as PFCs have existed, my tickets list them separately. My ticket doesn't list "landing fees" as a separate item, so AA has yet to try to pass that along to the passengers ala carte style.

Because I was trying to show my coworkers in this industry that despite what they have been conditioned to believe there is a lot of money being exchanged through our activities. Landing fees and PFC charges are easy to find, the airports also make a lot more through other exchanges that are also byproducts of our labor. Many of the parties that benifit from our labor benifit excessively while leaving very little for us. This wasnt meant for airline workers, not consumers, you chose to comment.

Good luck asking for your share of your $860k.

Thanks.