June 06, 2008

Airport

I am going to post this every day until someone actually brings it up at Council:

  1. Downgrade to a General Aviation Airport yesterday and no longer be Part 139 certified.
  2. Post the information that Avports wants right on the website and utilize some of the DOT monies and maybe use the $250,000 in savings to market the airport to other airport mgmt companies, other airport authorities and who knows who else?

Jahn did you see Dorrie Hargrove's reason why we should not consider privatization of custodial services, they are "part of the family."? Imagine someone in management makeing a business decision using this line of reasoning.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand:

"Downgrade to a General Aviation Airport"

Isn't Worcester already a GA only airport?

"no longer be Part 139 certified"

How much is the fee for the certificate? Are there other savings?

"Post the information that Avports wants right on the website"

Why not just mail it to them?

Bill Randell said...

Anonymous:

Worcester is a Part 139 Certified airport, which means you can do GA also.

From what I can tell Part 139 Certified menas we can accept commercial service. By decertifying we would then only be able to do GA.

How much will this save? I do not know that is what we need to find out... Are there other savings? I don't know.

Post the information that AvPorts wants so that any potential person, who may be interested in ORH can readily have the information. By the way everything AvPorts is public information and you and I should be able to see it.

Bill

Anonymous said...

Bill, that exact phrase was used in the past at school committee meetings when discussing outsourcing. I have mentioned it in the past on here and had always attributed it to Caradonio...........maybe I was wrong in who I attributed it to...............or maybe another committee person is lifting it from Cardonios verbiage.

Either way, it just furthers my perspective that the city employees are able able to indirectly vote themselves money from the public treasury via the ballot box. This cannot go on forever and will eventually push the city over a financial precipice and into the finacial abyss below. Please reference the city of Springfield......which is in financial hotwater and their reported outsourcing of school custodail services to a company called Educlean.

Many weather systems in the northeast move from west to east...........stay tuned for the financial storm that will hit Worcester..................and June 9th 1953 will pale in comparison to what's on the horizon.

Anonymous said...

(2) questions

1. Does downgrading to a General Aviation status provide enough revenue to cover operating expenses at the airport?

2. I've heard the city councilors mention 60,000 operations at the airport. Is this a current number?

my two cents (after inflation)

Bill Randell said...

Anonymous:

I have no idea exactly what the budget will be if we stop being Part 139 Certified. This is for sure, we would cut the operating deficit alot.

In this climate, taking into account the airline industry and the city finances, why are spendiing money to remain Part 139 certified when we have no chance of getting commercial service with the current mgmt, who let Allegiant slip through their fingers and can not get Cape Air to fly a shuttle to Logan while we sit on 300K of DOT grant monies.

Time to call a spade a spade. Downgrade, to GA, cut losses and market the airport for long-term lease or sale.

Bill

Anonymous said...

LMAO !!!!! Check this out!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_fe_st/philadelphia_newspapers_fake_ads


Newspapers run ads about fake airline Derrie-Air By DEBORAH YAO, AP Business Writer
1 hour, 41 minutes ago



Derrie-Air has been exposed. Readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News opened their papers Friday to see ads for a new airline called Derrie-Air, which purportedly charges passengers by the pound.

But the new carrier will never get off the ground. It's a one-day advertising campaign about a fake airline by Philadelphia Media Holdings, the papers' owner, and Gyro ad agency.

In light blue banners throughout the papers — as well as on their Web site, Philly.com — Derrie-Air cheerily trumpets its policy: The more you weigh, the more you pay. The ads direct readers to the Web site http://www.flyderrie-air.com.

Philadelphia Media Holdings spokesman Jay Devine said the goal is to "demonstrate the power of our brands in generating awareness and generating traffic for our advertisers, and put a smile on people's faces."

The company will track traffic to the Derrie-Air site. Devine said there's already buzz about the campaign on online blogs.

Visitors to the airline site learn that Derrie-Air is the world's only carbon-neutral luxury airline, and it justifies its fare policy by saying that it takes more fuel to move heavier objects. The carrier pledges to plant trees to offset every pound of carbon its planes release into the atmosphere.

Derrie-Air's sample rates range from $1.40 per pound to fly from Philadelphia to Chicago to $2.25 per pound to fly from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

Those who scroll to the bottom of the home page find out the truth behind Derrie-Air.

A disclaimer labels the ad campaign "fictitious" and says it is designed "to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens."

"In other words," it says, "smile, we're pulling your leg."




Harry Tembenis
Worcester, MA

PS

PAULIE, wherefor art though ?!?!?!?!?

Anonymous said...

Don't forget to pay a visit to the Greek Festival this weekend:

http://spyridoncathedral.org/grecianfestival/gfhome.asp

Harry Tembenis
Worcester, MA

Anonymous said...

I was on Park Ae at Elm park this afternonnon (Sat.) and I swear ...looking across Elm park I saw a political type ....4 x 8 sign ....At Grecian festival that said ... NIDDRIE on it???.... I even think in smaller letters it said "elect"

???????????...........

Anonymous said...

Saw a replay of the June 3rd meeting.

Bill you were right, one of the councilors did put up a motion to stop debt service payment.
Several of the councilors looked to be leaning towards that motion in some form in the future if Massport or some other entity doesn't take over the airport by December 2009.
One of the councilors even mentioned that the city manager had several years limit to close a deal with Massport.

The councilors should take a tour of the airport together as a whole to see exactly what is up there. I heard the asst city manager state there are over 100 planes based at the airport. A lot of the planes doing charters . If this is true, then they should keep the airport,downgrade to general aviation and make sure there is an accounting of all business to determine if revenue collected by the city offsets the debt service.
Otherwise, determine fair value of the land, sell it to a developer and pay off the 19 million debt with the proceeds

my two cents (after inflation)

Anonymous said...

Finally a plan that makes sense.

Good job two cents