Wayward Airline Attempts to Indoctrinate Clients, Blaming Travel Woes On Everyone But Themselves

News/Commentary/Analysis By Jim Campbell, ANN CEO/Editor-In-Chief

Well... while this shouldn't surprise anyone, a number of ANN readers who have used the services of SouthWest Airlines to try to get from Point to Point B (but reportedly rarely on schedule and without headache), have been spammed by the airline with messages seeking their support of the airline's campaign to seek Privatization of the ATC System (image shown has been edited only to protect the ID of the recipient)... despite all the evidence that seems to contradict the airline's errant over simplification of the need for such reforms.

Blaming delays on an out-of-date ATC system and its alleged inefficiencies, the airline is using its customer base to solicit support by inviting them to click on links that leave them at a wholly biased and often inaccurate platform that advocates for the Privatization that nearly everyone in aviation BUT the airlines (who seek to control the board that will oversee this concept) seems to fear. Rather than admit than many of the most prevalent airline delays are the result of bad airline management, crew mis-scheduling, poor maintenance and other airline-specific issues, the site tries to lay most of the blame, on the current ATC system... which is still the largest and safest in the world... and still growing at an astounding rate that the FAA has been hard-pressed to keep up with... especially when our elected officials have failed to properly fund the development of Next-Gen and stick to a time-table that can meet the needs of the future.

ANN Readers who contacted us over receiving this message as part of the company's usual commercial come-ons have expressed outrage over the airline's attempts to seek support while telling only a part of the story... and errantly at that. Several have indicated a desire to quit doing business with the airline... and as a matter of fact, as ANN saw the evidence of the stunt that SWA was trying to pull, we deliberately booked most of our own Oshkosh travel arrangements for the upcoming AirVenture event on alternate airlines (mostly Delta, who has mostly eschewed the ATC Privatization rhetoric), thereby depriving SWA of thousands of our dollars.

We must note that while this year's fight for AC Privatization is not likely to see success, it is the next few years that concern us, especially after a key defection like that we saw from Congressman Sam Graves (who allegedly hopes to win favor with this move, while seeking advancement for the future), and the vast amount of money and other resources that the airlines will be devoting to seeing this through in the future... especially against a foe (the GA community) that is not nearly as organized as it needs to be.

ANN will have more on this issue as circumstances permit... 

FMI: www.eaa.org, www.aopa.org, www.nbaa.org, www.southwest.com