When They Break Out The Cartoon Airliners, You Know It's Serious

This has to be one of the oddest news items to cross the ANN desk so far this year... if only it weren't true. The Alliance for Aviation Across America slammed the Air Transport Association Tuesday, for what the user fee opposition group says is a misleading advertisement that began running last week on television screens at airports around the country.

According to the Alliance, the computer-animated spot shows large commercial aircraft and small aircraft, apparently stuck on a runway. The ad begins with a "young"-looking cartoon commercial airliner in line with several other, "older" planes, asking "Hey, what's the holdup?" 

Later in the ad, a grandfather-like cartoon commercial airliner (that bears a strong resemblence to a DC-3, and gets our vote as the character most likely to be reproduced as an ATA-approved plush children's toy -- Ed.) complains "that hotshot there is clogging up our skies." -- referring to a small corporate jet nosing its way past the larger planes, saying "Coming through -- I've got a foursome here with an early tee time."

"There is twice as many as them as us nowadays," the DC-3 laments.

One of the talking airliners then points out that "under rules set in the '70s, [corporate planes] are only paying 6% of the taxes to run the air traffic control system."

The ad ends with a cowboy hat-wearing 747 (it's heading to Dallas, after all) admonishing its younger companion "...the way it works is we pay, and they play."

Apart from the likelihood no one on the ATA's marketing team will ever work for Pixar, the Alliance says the message of the ad is also completely and utterly untrue.

• Watch The Ad!

"The visuals and dialogue in the ad clearly and deceptively attempt to mislead the viewer into believing that commercial, passenger aircraft are backed up on the runway because of congestion caused by small aircraft, and that small aircraft somehow get preferential treatment at airports and don’t pay for costs imposed on the system," the Alliance tells ANN. "As the facts... clearly show, that couldn't be farther from the truth."

The Alliance notes at the top 10 busiest airports in the US, small aircraft make up less than four percent of all aircraft operations. The group cites findings by the Department of Transportation, that show almost all flights delays are due to reasons directly attributable to commercial airline business practices -- specifically, over-scheduling.

Not only that, the notion that any plane can "cut" in front of any other is completely false, since the FAA mandates that no aircraft can "cut off" other aircraft on runways or in landing, unless it is due to emergency, notes the Alliance. 

The group isn't the only entity that viewed the ATA ad with incredulity, and rising bile.

The National Business Aviation Association sent a letter last week to CNN, requesting the advertisement be pulled from the news channel's airport network.

"First, the Network's standards require that advertising be "in accordance with the highest industry standards, truthful and not misleading," NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen writes. "The ATA advertisement clearly does not meet that standard; to the contrary, the ad is false and deceptive."

"As DOT's former Inspector General, my office reported numerous times on airline customer service and the worsening problem of airline flight delays, often at the request of Congress and the Secretary of Transportation," says Ken Mead, who resigned from the DOT in January 2006. "Frankly, I found the airlines' new ad disappointing and quite misleading. As they have in the past, the airlines attempt to blame others for their own flight delays.

"This time, they try to blame general aviation which is inaccurate and not borne out by the facts," Mead continues. "The fact is that the airlines created the hub and spoke system; it is the airlines who now use that same system to schedule an impossibly large number of flights to arrive and depart from the same place at roughly the same times of day -- much more than the system can handle all at once, and their schedules generally are based on the assumption of good weather, which often is not the case."

Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, called the ATA's assertion that private planes receive preferential treatment from ATC "ridiculous."

"Corporate traffic is not the reason for system delays," Forney tells ANN. "The airlines, much like the FAA, have gutted their staffing levels and trimmed the margin of error down to an unprecedented low level so that even the slightest hiccup in their plans can set off a massive wave of delays due to 'rush hour' scheduling and a hub-and-spoke operation."

Forney maintains severe weather accounts for over 70 percent of delays, "and the rest is either airline staffing woes, air traffic controller staffing shortages or the airlines' own operations."

A request for comment by Aero-News late Tuesday afternoon was not returned by ATA staff by press time.

ANN E-I-C Note/Opinion: I'm not sure what upsets me more about this most recent airline attack on GA -- that they used such a childish concept to communicate a complex and serious issue... or the outright dishonesty that oozes from this blatantly misleading effort. That this comes from an industry that abused so much of its personnel, and has conducted itself so shamefully, should not surprise anyone. However; the sheer foolishness of this attempt to sway public opinion is not just staggering, but further proof that the brain-trust controlling the airline industry's money/power grab is both intellectually bankrupt as well as morally bankrupt.
Would you trust people this foolish and misleading to be responsible for the safety and well-being of your family and friends?
I, for one, do not. -- Jim Campbell, ANN E-I-C

FMI: www.airlines.org, www.smartskies.org, www.nbaa.org, www.aviationacrossamerica.org