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US Airways landed in a mess at Philadelphia Airport
Sunday, January 30, 2005
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Fred Testa had a feeling that Philadelphia might haunt US Airways.
The former director of the Philadelphia International Airport had witnessed first-hand the delays, bureaucracy, irate passengers and unhappy employees while there in 1999 and 2000. It was only a matter of time, he thought, until the airport's weaknesses punctured the operations of the nation's seventh-largest carrier.
His fears became reality over the Christmas weekend, when a combination of bad weather, sick employees and understaffing led to hundreds of US Airways flight delays, thousands of lost bags and countless angry holiday travelers.
The fiasco has observers wondering if it was a mistake for the airline to shift so many flights to the delay-prone, geographically constrained, city-owned-and-operated airport from Pittsburgh International, a much roomier facility that operates more independently and once was the airline's largest hub.
"US Airways has, by doing what they have done, really asked the Philadelphia hub to perform at levels it has never performed at before," said local airline analyst Bill Lauer.
The strategy of building up Philadelphia at the expense of Pittsburgh over the last few years is a reversal of the strategy US Airways and its predecessors used in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the airline was a niche carrier to towns in the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains and Pittsburgh had more flights than any other city in its system.
The major Philadelphia buildup didn't begin until the mid-to-late '90s under then-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Wolf. He was attracted by the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area that he felt was underserved and by Philadelphia's possibilities as a gateway for the international flights that he wanted to add to the carrier's lineup.
The growth continued under new leadership, which perceived Pittsburgh as the weaker city that generated less traffic, an outpost for a route network that was shifting more toward the Eastern seaboard and Caribbean. US Airways now operates 459 daily flights out of Philadelphia, double the number that it operates in Pittsburgh, and two-thirds of the gates at the Philadelphia airport.
But for all the demographics and strategic reasons that made the Philadelphia move a sensible one, the danger all along has been the airport itself -- a cramped, unpredictable place that was not built for hub operations.
Testa, who now runs the Harrisburg International Airport, along with airline employees and former US Airways executives familiar with Philadelphia's operations all said the Christmas meltdown could happen again -- at any time. US Airways and the city of Philadelphia have known about the danger for years, they say, but have done little to solve the facility's long-term structural problems.
US Airways says that it has been aware of the problems in Philadelphia for a while and has been working to address understaffing issues and to boost operational efficiency by spreading out arrival and departure times so planes do not arrive in clumps. It also was part of a recent redesign of concourses B and C, and is trying to use a small, little-used runway whenever possible to free up congestion.
But a former US Airways executive familiar with the Philadelphia operations said the changes being made are mere pinpricks that will not solve the larger structural issues. "That place has been bursting at the seams for years," the former executive said. "At some point, the straw will break the camel's back."
The Philadelphia airport is serving more passengers and planes than any time in its history. With US Airways increasing its number of daily flights and discount rival Southwest Airlines starting service there last May, Philadelphia International last year shattered its previous passenger record by about 3 million.
The increased flights have been a boon for US Airways in many ways, none more notably than on its balance sheet. Because so much of the traffic at the Philadelphia airport is local, the airport generated $1.25 billion of revenue for the airline the first nine months of last year, nearly twice what was generated in Pittsburgh ($655 million) and about $500 million more than in the Charlotte hub, according to research firm Eclat Consulting.
But the increased flights also have brought increased headaches, particularly in the form of delays, with Philadelphia ranking as the nation's second-worst airport for on-time departures and fifth-worst for on-time arrivals through November of last year.
Built in 1940 on what was a World War I shipyard, Philadelphia International is a clogged facility, with the two main runways too close together to operate simultaneously during inclement weather.
Jet taxiways go in only one direction, jet alleyways are too narrow and many passenger-holding rooms are too small. In bad weather, the airport goes into "cardiac arrest," Testa said.
What's worse, a 5,000-foot commuter runway conceived in the 1980s and finished in 1999 is now unusable by smaller carriers who are trading in their smaller turbo-props for larger regional jets. The RJs need a longer runway to take off and land.
Attempts to extend the runway another 2,000 feet were nixed because of its proximity to the Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard, a project built with $429 million in city, state and federal funds and supported by then-Gov. Tom Ridge and then-Mayor Ed Rendell.
In a perfect world, US Airways would love to have Philadelphia's population feeding into Pittsburgh's wide-open, convenient, efficiently operated airport.
Part of Philadelphia's problem is that it was never designed to be a hub, as Pittsburgh International was. Instead it has been jury-rigged over time.
US Airways began building a hub presence there in the late 1980s, taking over gates from the defunct Eastern Airlines and Midway Airlines.
Wolf, who came to US Airways in early 1996, accelerated the shift, making the airport an trans-Atlantic hub for international flights in 1997 -- the same year Philadelphia surpassed Pittsburgh in passenger traffic for the first time.
A new baggage system was installed, replacing an antiquated get-up that needed duct tape to hold it together, and a $550 million, 13-gate international terminal for US Airways opened in 2003.
But Testa and others say the international terminal only added to the airport's congestion problems because it added capacity for passengers without addressing the more fundamental issue of expanding the runway capacity to handle all the added flights.
Testa came up with a plan that would have reconfigured the runways so they could operate independently, as those in Pittsburgh do, but he was never able to complete that expensive task before being ousted by Mayor John Street a few months after Street took office.
A new master plan is being developed by the current airport director, but is likely to take years to approve -- if at all. Testa said the city's ownership of the airport -- compared with the independent airport authority that controls Pittsburgh International -- slows decision making and contributes to the inertia. "Someone should think beyond their nose," he said.
"That has always been the problem in Philadelphia. They lack the ability to see beyond tomorrow," he said. "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, no matter how much perfume you stick on the sow's ear. A pig is a pig is a pig."
Another problem plaguing US Airways in Philadelphia is a strained relationship between management and labor. Always tense, that relationship has gotten worse in recent years as the company cut costs through two bankruptcies.
Employees who work on the ramp in Philadelphia claim they do not have enough equipment to do their jobs and the company hired too few workers to handle the required tasks, thus forcing some employees to work mandatory overtime.
Airline Vice President Sherry Groff admitted to the shortages in a memo sent out a few days before the Christmas holiday meltdown, and noted that catering might suffer on certain flights because those workers were needed to cover gaps elsewhere in the operation.
The airline was short about 150 to 200 ramp workers needed to maintain normal operations. "We continue to face significant challenges in keeping pace with our growth," Groff wrote in her Dec. 22 memo.
The worker shortages, exacerbated by employees who called in sick and a spell of bad weather, converged on Christmas to produce what airline Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lakefield called an "operational meltdown."
But it's a tough sell. "They can't get people to work there," said Roger Burns, one of the employees who called in sick over Christmas. "The morale is the worst I have seen in 20 years."
Burns, who retired on New Year's Eve, recalled a Saturday night before he left, when 13 Caribbean flights came in over a two-hour period with only 12 people staffed to work the 13 flights.
"There are not enough people to do the work," he said. "People get fed up."
Sunday, January 30, 2005
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Fred Testa had a feeling that Philadelphia might haunt US Airways.
The former director of the Philadelphia International Airport had witnessed first-hand the delays, bureaucracy, irate passengers and unhappy employees while there in 1999 and 2000. It was only a matter of time, he thought, until the airport's weaknesses punctured the operations of the nation's seventh-largest carrier.
His fears became reality over the Christmas weekend, when a combination of bad weather, sick employees and understaffing led to hundreds of US Airways flight delays, thousands of lost bags and countless angry holiday travelers.
The fiasco has observers wondering if it was a mistake for the airline to shift so many flights to the delay-prone, geographically constrained, city-owned-and-operated airport from Pittsburgh International, a much roomier facility that operates more independently and once was the airline's largest hub.
"US Airways has, by doing what they have done, really asked the Philadelphia hub to perform at levels it has never performed at before," said local airline analyst Bill Lauer.
The strategy of building up Philadelphia at the expense of Pittsburgh over the last few years is a reversal of the strategy US Airways and its predecessors used in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the airline was a niche carrier to towns in the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains and Pittsburgh had more flights than any other city in its system.
The major Philadelphia buildup didn't begin until the mid-to-late '90s under then-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Wolf. He was attracted by the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area that he felt was underserved and by Philadelphia's possibilities as a gateway for the international flights that he wanted to add to the carrier's lineup.
The growth continued under new leadership, which perceived Pittsburgh as the weaker city that generated less traffic, an outpost for a route network that was shifting more toward the Eastern seaboard and Caribbean. US Airways now operates 459 daily flights out of Philadelphia, double the number that it operates in Pittsburgh, and two-thirds of the gates at the Philadelphia airport.
But for all the demographics and strategic reasons that made the Philadelphia move a sensible one, the danger all along has been the airport itself -- a cramped, unpredictable place that was not built for hub operations.
Testa, who now runs the Harrisburg International Airport, along with airline employees and former US Airways executives familiar with Philadelphia's operations all said the Christmas meltdown could happen again -- at any time. US Airways and the city of Philadelphia have known about the danger for years, they say, but have done little to solve the facility's long-term structural problems.
US Airways says that it has been aware of the problems in Philadelphia for a while and has been working to address understaffing issues and to boost operational efficiency by spreading out arrival and departure times so planes do not arrive in clumps. It also was part of a recent redesign of concourses B and C, and is trying to use a small, little-used runway whenever possible to free up congestion.
But a former US Airways executive familiar with the Philadelphia operations said the changes being made are mere pinpricks that will not solve the larger structural issues. "That place has been bursting at the seams for years," the former executive said. "At some point, the straw will break the camel's back."
The Philadelphia airport is serving more passengers and planes than any time in its history. With US Airways increasing its number of daily flights and discount rival Southwest Airlines starting service there last May, Philadelphia International last year shattered its previous passenger record by about 3 million.
The increased flights have been a boon for US Airways in many ways, none more notably than on its balance sheet. Because so much of the traffic at the Philadelphia airport is local, the airport generated $1.25 billion of revenue for the airline the first nine months of last year, nearly twice what was generated in Pittsburgh ($655 million) and about $500 million more than in the Charlotte hub, according to research firm Eclat Consulting.
But the increased flights also have brought increased headaches, particularly in the form of delays, with Philadelphia ranking as the nation's second-worst airport for on-time departures and fifth-worst for on-time arrivals through November of last year.
Built in 1940 on what was a World War I shipyard, Philadelphia International is a clogged facility, with the two main runways too close together to operate simultaneously during inclement weather.
Jet taxiways go in only one direction, jet alleyways are too narrow and many passenger-holding rooms are too small. In bad weather, the airport goes into "cardiac arrest," Testa said.
What's worse, a 5,000-foot commuter runway conceived in the 1980s and finished in 1999 is now unusable by smaller carriers who are trading in their smaller turbo-props for larger regional jets. The RJs need a longer runway to take off and land.
Attempts to extend the runway another 2,000 feet were nixed because of its proximity to the Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard, a project built with $429 million in city, state and federal funds and supported by then-Gov. Tom Ridge and then-Mayor Ed Rendell.
In a perfect world, US Airways would love to have Philadelphia's population feeding into Pittsburgh's wide-open, convenient, efficiently operated airport.
Part of Philadelphia's problem is that it was never designed to be a hub, as Pittsburgh International was. Instead it has been jury-rigged over time.
US Airways began building a hub presence there in the late 1980s, taking over gates from the defunct Eastern Airlines and Midway Airlines.
Wolf, who came to US Airways in early 1996, accelerated the shift, making the airport an trans-Atlantic hub for international flights in 1997 -- the same year Philadelphia surpassed Pittsburgh in passenger traffic for the first time.
A new baggage system was installed, replacing an antiquated get-up that needed duct tape to hold it together, and a $550 million, 13-gate international terminal for US Airways opened in 2003.
But Testa and others say the international terminal only added to the airport's congestion problems because it added capacity for passengers without addressing the more fundamental issue of expanding the runway capacity to handle all the added flights.
Testa came up with a plan that would have reconfigured the runways so they could operate independently, as those in Pittsburgh do, but he was never able to complete that expensive task before being ousted by Mayor John Street a few months after Street took office.
A new master plan is being developed by the current airport director, but is likely to take years to approve -- if at all. Testa said the city's ownership of the airport -- compared with the independent airport authority that controls Pittsburgh International -- slows decision making and contributes to the inertia. "Someone should think beyond their nose," he said.
"That has always been the problem in Philadelphia. They lack the ability to see beyond tomorrow," he said. "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, no matter how much perfume you stick on the sow's ear. A pig is a pig is a pig."
Another problem plaguing US Airways in Philadelphia is a strained relationship between management and labor. Always tense, that relationship has gotten worse in recent years as the company cut costs through two bankruptcies.
Employees who work on the ramp in Philadelphia claim they do not have enough equipment to do their jobs and the company hired too few workers to handle the required tasks, thus forcing some employees to work mandatory overtime.
Airline Vice President Sherry Groff admitted to the shortages in a memo sent out a few days before the Christmas holiday meltdown, and noted that catering might suffer on certain flights because those workers were needed to cover gaps elsewhere in the operation.
The airline was short about 150 to 200 ramp workers needed to maintain normal operations. "We continue to face significant challenges in keeping pace with our growth," Groff wrote in her Dec. 22 memo.
The worker shortages, exacerbated by employees who called in sick and a spell of bad weather, converged on Christmas to produce what airline Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lakefield called an "operational meltdown."
But it's a tough sell. "They can't get people to work there," said Roger Burns, one of the employees who called in sick over Christmas. "The morale is the worst I have seen in 20 years."
Burns, who retired on New Year's Eve, recalled a Saturday night before he left, when 13 Caribbean flights came in over a two-hour period with only 12 people staffed to work the 13 flights.
"There are not enough people to do the work," he said. "People get fed up."
PHL is U's demise!! The airport sucks, the operation is in shambles, and I'll say what you were afraid to......there are alot of employees there who just , plain, don't give a damn!!! I'll take the heat for that comment, and that is fine.....but, I lived, and worked in that area awhile back, and PHL people are definately different creatures!!! Glad i am far away from that cesspool!!! Good luck to everyone! GOOD DAY!!!
