The “Christchurch Earthquake Airport Employee Relief Fund” has raised $16,161, which was transferred to Christchurch Airport in the second half of 2011. The money was distributed to its impacted employees.

The “Japan Earthquake Relief Fund” has raised $32,648 and the fund was transferred to Sendai Airport just before Christmas. The funds were distributed to seven airport employees whose homes were swept away in the tsunami. Thank you letters (both in the original Japanese and English translations) from some of the aid recipients are attached.

The former neighborhood of a Sendai airport employee.

“Thank you once again for your generous support and donations,” wrote Patti Chau, Regional Director, ACI Asia-Pacific, who helped coordinate the distribution. “At the commencement of the New Year, I would like to wish you all a happy, healthy and peaceful 2012 and may natural disasters and perils be away from us all in the years to come.”

Since ACI and AAAE first teamed up to provide assistance after Hurricane Katrina; almost $410,000 has been donated by the airport industry for airport employees in the Gulf States, Haiti, New Zealand and Japan.

In front of Cinderella’s Castle in Walt Disney World, President Obama on Thursday announced his new initiatives to increase travel and tourism.

During his address, President Obama reminded the audience that the U.S. tourism and travel industry is a substantial component of U.S. gross domestic product and employment, representing 2.7 percent of GDP and 7.5 million jobs in 2010.  The President emphasized that these initiatives are a part of the administration’s comprehensive effort to help spur job creation.

Highlights of the initiatives include:

• Increasing non-immigrant visa processing capacity in China and Brazil by 40 percent in 2012.
  • As a part of this initiative, the Departments of State and Homeland Security announced a pilot program to simplify and speed up the non-immigrant visa process for certain applicants, including the ability to waive interviews for some very low-risk applicants, such as persons applying for visa renewals.

• Ensuring that 80 percent of non-immigrant visa applications are interviewed within three weeks of receipt of application.

• Increasing the efforts to expand the Visa Waiver Program and travel by nationals eligible to participate in program.
  • The Secretary of State has formally requested that the Secretary of Homeland Security consider Taiwan for participation in the program.

• Final Rule on the Global Entry program which will make it permanent and expand the program to four additional airports — Minneapolis, Charlotte, Denver and Phoenix.  This expansion would mean expedited clearance would be available to approximately 97 percent of international travelers. ACI-NA submitted comments to the administration in support of making the Global Entry program permanent.

These initiatives by the President are a great start to increasing international visitors to the United States. ACI-NA will continue to work with the administration and Congress to develop strategies which will enhance the security and the efficiency of the international arrivals process and attract international visitors to the United States.

Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) today submitted comments in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Request for Public Comments regarding “U.S.-Canada Action Plan for Perimeter Security and Economic Competiveness”. In the filed comments, ACI-NA applauded the plan announced on December 7, 2011 by President Obama and Prime Minister Harper as “a good first step in improving the facilitation and security of trade, air travel, and the associated economic benefits for both countries”.  The comments also stressed the importance of the U.S. and Canadian Governments coordinating with ACI-NA on the aviation components as the Action Plan is refined and implemented.

“ACI-NA has long urged the Department to take a risk-based approach to security by focusing our limited government and industry resources on those people and goods about which the least is known,” said ACI-NA President Greg Principato. “Therefore, we were pleased that the Declaration by President Obama and Prime Minister Harper on February 4, 2011 stated ‘we expect to use a risk management approach’ and that ‘effective risk management should enable us to accelerate legitimate flows of people and goods into the United States and Canada and across our common border, while enhancing the physical security and economic competitiveness of our countries’.”

ACI-NA’s comments also noted the importance of the process outlined in the Action Plan to phase out the requirement for rescreening connecting checked baggage arriving at U.S. gateway airports. “We view this initiative as providing one of the most important aviation improvements in the Action Plan”, said Principato.

“For years, ACI-NA has been working on potential solutions with TSA, DHS and Congress to eliminate this redundant rescreening process because it unnecessarily drains limited TSA and industry resources and inconveniences passengers without providing meaningful security benefits.  Elimination of rescreening of connecting checked baggage will free up some TSA resources, minimize the operational burden on U.S. airports; decrease flight delays; minimize misconnected checked baggage; and improve the passenger travel experience,” he continued.

View ACI-NA’s full comments.

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that tourism is responsible for $1.3 trillion in economic output in the U.S. and supports 8.2 million jobs. The new caucus, according to its inaugural press release, will “evaluate ways the U.S. Department of State and other agencies can cut red tape to increase the speed of visa applications for foreign travelers in order to help America better compete with other global destinations.”

ACI-NA asks that you contact your Senate delegation and ask them to join the U.S. Senate Travel & Tourism Caucus.  An engaged and united group such as the Caucus can benefit airports by bringing attention to, and getting action on, issues such as cutting State Department red tape surrounding visas applications and appropriate Customs and Border Patrol staffing at airports.

Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA), which represents the owners and operators of airports throughout the United States and Canada, today issued a statement in response to the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death.

Statement of ACI-NA President Greg Principato:

“The death of Osama bin Laden is welcome news for civilized people everywhere.  Today is better than yesterday.  But there remains a need to remain vigilant and smart.  In particular there is a heightened need to share intelligence on the threats we face so that we can take strong, common sense steps to keep our passengers secure while we move them quickly and efficiently to their destinations.”

Principato continued, “This news is not an end but to paraphrase Churchill, perhaps the end of the beginning.  The 9/11 attacks changed everything about air travel.  It is time to learn the lessons of these past 10 years and make common sense changes to our security regime. Our passengers deserve no less.”

Bill Swelbar believes that change is in the air and several of the drivers will be the global economy, fuel, China, and Middle Eastern carriers. Bill believes that one of the best things to ever happen to the industry was $145/bbl oil since it forced airlines to learn capacity discipline. This helped U.S. carriers weather the recession better than other regions. While IATA has predicted that the industry will be profitable in 2010, 2011 is not looking so good. Swelbar asks, if 2010 is as good as it gets, shouldn’t we be kinda bummed? Swelbar also sees a significant threat from Middle Eastern carriers which may significantly compete against alliance carriers. Just to throw a little fuel on the fire, Bill ended his presentation with a question: “if the airline industry is shrinking, should the airport system that serves it also shrink?”

For the year through July, systemwide in Canada traffic is up 3.9% over the first seven months of 2009. During that period U.S. transborder and overseas numbers surpassed pre-crisis levels with 6.3% and 7.9% growth respectively over the same period in 2009.  Domestic passenger numbers for the first seven months indicate that this segment also has most likely surpassed pre-financial crisis levels.

In international travel, Canadians flying to the U.S. are largely responsible for the strong growth reported but U.S. residents flying into Canada is back in growth mode as well.  Overseas (non-U.S. international) visits to Canada remain flat, but the numbers of Canadians flying abroad have returned to the growth mode enjoyed before the financial crisis.

Among foreign visitors to Canada, the strongest growth numbers in overnight visits for the first seven months of 2010 have been in overnight visits from residents of Japan.  Overnight visits from France, Germany, Australia, the People’s Republic of China and South Korea also are up.

The biggest decline in foreign markets for tourists is in overnight visits from Mexico, which continues to be negatively impacted by a visit requirement introduced in 2009.  Overnight visits from the UK – Canada’s biggest source for overseas tourists – remain flat.

“The second stage agreement builds and improves on the ground-breaking first stage air transport agreement reached in 2007”, said Principato. That agreement, signed in April 2007, allowed airlines in the United States and the EU to provide passenger and cargo service without limitations on the number of flights or destinations. “ACI-NA welcomes the improved regulatory cooperation on security, safety, competition, environment, air traffic management, facilitation and other issues, enhanced liberalization, and strengthening of the U.S./EU aviation relationship and market promoted by the second stage agreement. These improvements will benefit passengers, our airport members and their communities.”

ACI-NA commends the U.S. and EU government officials of their respective delegations for their tireless efforts during eight rounds of negotiations to secure this important second stage agreement.

US VISIT Exit is a bio-metric sampling program mandated by Congress to record the departures of foreign visitors. The theory is that once fingerprints are collected, the government can assume a person is no longer in the country and thus no longer a direct terrorist threat.

In a Dec. 3 presentation at the ACI-NA International Aviation Issues Seminar in Washington, Shonnie Lyon, the acting deputy director for the US VISIT program, outlined the lessons learned at two pilot programs last summer. One test involved Customs Border Protection agents collecting fingerprints in Detroit as departing foreign residents boarded selected international flights. The second test was performed by Transportation Security Agency screeners in Atlanta before foreign residents proceeded to the security screening area.

Lyon indicated that nearly 35,000 individuals had their fingerprints scanned and only one person refused to be tested.

Last month, Homeland Security indicated that it planned to move ahead with the program but it has not indicated how it would be performing the bio-metric tests. The government had earlier proposed that the airlines perform the task.  The airlines and ACI-NA opposed that plan. Congress requested a pilot test using an airline, but no airline has stepped forward to participate in the test.

Lyon indicated that in Detroit the scans did not delay any flight and were handled within the 35 minutes carriers used to board the planes. The scans in the gateway areas did not create any new bottlenecks.

In the Detroit test, flights were randomly selected when CBP agents were available for the extra task.

In Atlanta, the TSA document checker would refer travelers with non-US passports to a bio-metric screening location. Once the hand print was screened, the traveler would then be routed back for the traditional TSA screening. Lyon said this process added about 2 minutes onto the time spent in line for those who needed to be bio-metrically screened.

To handle all flights, Lyon said CBP would need to hire additional staff. Using the CBP-gateway mode, he said a new system would only impact international airports. If the TSA had to scan the foreign passengers, as in the Atlanta test, then each and every airport would need to be involved so as to scan all those traveling on connecting flights to reach their international flights.

No matter which route is selected, airports will face a “massive wiring job” as the government will be collecting “about 800 percent” more data than it does now, said Kenneth Dunlap, director of security, North America, for International Air Transportation Association.

It is important for U.S. airports to realize that their international competition is not bound by FAA rules when crafting incentive programs. It is impetrative to tap local resources in order to craft “out of the box” incentive programs, she said.      Landing fee waivers are taken from granted. Considering a trans-Atlantic flight represents more than a $100 million investment, Cassotis said a $2 million incentive package “may not move their needle that much.”

However, Portland’s $4 million incentive plan got Delta’s attention.

In the “dark days of last winter,” David Zielke, from Portland International Airport, said his community came close to loosing its three international flights: Delta to Tokyo, Delta to Amsterdam and Lufthansa to Frankfurt. The hometown of Nike and Columbia Sportswear, he said, needed its non-stop international flights to support its growing international business community. The airport’s parent, the Port of Portland, entered in a $4 million “risk-sharing” deal with Delta to maintain its two routes for another year. The airport is waiving $500,000 in landing fees and the port has tapped into its general fund to provide a $3.5 million revenue guarantee. He noted that the port has that flexibility under FAA rules.

While it was negotiating the Delta deal, Zielke said Lufthansa dropped its route.

A key element in the Portland strategy is its International Air Service Committee, which is a public-private partnership designed to retain international flights. The committee was able to tap it vast network of business associations and provided Delta with thousands of names as leads for sales calls.

Among the recent issues in international aviation are:

• Airlines’ continuing effects of expanding their network of alliances makes attracting service outside an alliance increasingly difficult
• Aviation is operating in a “back to the basics” mode, making niche and experimental services less likely to happen in the current business environment
• International passenger traffic has been on the decline; however, the decline is beginning to stabilize.

What’s driving international air service? Among the factors:

• Exports of goods and services
• Capacity/utilization
• Imports of goods and services
• Rate of civilian unemployment

Among the bright spots:  Some destinations are experiencing growth, including Spain, South Korea and Australia, just to name a few.