Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all on Chicagoboyz. As ever, my resolution is to be a little more active here in 2013. There will be some interesting developments, I suspect.

Farewell to America’s Only Passenger Dirigible

Zepp

I’ve long been intrigued by airships, and was pleased when several years ago it was announced that the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH had developed an advanced-technology dirigible design…the Zeppelin NT…and was offering it for sale. I was even more pleased when one of these aircraft, named Eureka, was acquired by an American startup, Airship Ventures, with the intent  of putting it in commercial service for sightseeing rides. And a bit later, I discovered that Airship Ventures was offering a zeppelin pilot experience program, which allowed  licensed pilots to attend a 2-day training program culminating in actually flying the zeppelin (with an instructor, of course.)

I participated in this program earlier this year: it was a lot of fun and I’d been intending to write a blog post about it. But I got a lump of coal in my Christmas stocking when I was flipping through an aviation magazine and learned that Airship Ventures has suspended operations for financial reasons. The problems are (a) the general economy, (b) lack of economies of scale, as AV is operating only one ship, and (c) the greatly increased price of helium. (The Zeppelin NT is designed to minimize helium loss, but some such loss in unavoidable.)  Attempts to locate a major sponsor who would provide enough funding to keep the airship in business were unsuccessful, and Eureka (which was apparently acquired by AV under a lease arrangement) has been dismantled and is on its way back to the manufacturer in Germany,

I’d have thought that there would have been a number of firms that could creatively take advantage of the uniqueness and great visibility offered by the zep, and am really surprised that no sponsor surfaced: AV CEO Brian Hall put the cost of sponsoring the airship for a year at about the same figure as the cost of a one-minute Superbowl ad.

In response to my inquiry about the ship’s status, the company did indicate that if a major sponsor should appear at this point they would be able to restart operations, albeit obviously with delays and higher costs than would have been the case had they been able to maintain continuous operations of Eureka.

Three Zeppelin NTs are being acquired by Goodyear as replacements for their blimp fleet, so Americans will still be able to enjoy the sight of zeppelins in our skies…but it is unlikely that rides will be offered to people not closely connected to the Goodyear company.

Very sad. Hopefully, at some point an improving economy, combined with adequate sponsorship and an ability to achieve sustainable scale, will allow AV to bring passenger zeppelins back to the United States.

In the meantime, Zeppelin NT rides are still available in Germany…I see that 11 different routes are now available.

Some additional links:

Mercury News articles here and here

LosGatosPatch

Eureka photos at Mashable

Some nice pictures of Eureka over the Sonoma coast

Airship Ventures site

Mistakes Right Before Your Eyes

When I was a first year staff person a couple of decades ago there was a presentation to a major multi-national company and I was the lowest ranking person on the team by a country mile. The account team prepared a map of the world with the client’s locations listed.

I looked at the map for about 2 seconds and just shouted out

You have Scandinavia on there twice

When they printed the map, for some reason they had Norway there one time and then again out in the Atlantic. I noticed it immediately because, well, it was very obvious (to me).

The account team was cursing because there was no time to change anything and they alternatively were mad at me and just laughing that someone who was a kid just hit their major presentation that hard. I think the presentation went well (I wasn’t at the meeting) and probably the client hardly noticed, anyways.

As I walked down the street in River North I noticed a custom clothing store that took up their main window space with this advertisement. This is pretty important because they get a lot of sidewalk traffic.

In 2 seconds I noted that $2,550 – $1,550 doesn’t equal a $383 discount – that sounds like $1000 to me. How they even got to $383 is a question in and of itself.

Cross posted at LITGM

Unacceptable Performance by the Veterans Affairs Department

Here’s a Rudyard Kipling poem which isn’t as well known as some of his other ones:

There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four !

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, “Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites.”

(read the whole poem here)

What reminded me of this poem?

This story.

Apparently, in 2012 the average time to complete a VA disability or pension claim was 262 days, up from 188 days in the prior year and far above the official target of 125 days. More at Nextgov.

I’m not very impressed with the excuses offered by the VA for this situation:

VA officials attribute the backlog, defined as claims in the system for more than 125 days, in part to higher demand by veterans returning from 10 years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with severe and complex injuries.

A Texas Veterans Commission official noted that the agency is caught in a “perfect storm” of claims from veterans of recent wars and those from aging Vietnam and Korea veterans whose disabilities are worsening.

But wasn’t this all predictable? Obviously wars cause injuries, and better battlefield medical attention means that more wounded soldiers will survive and hence need extended care. And wasn’t the higher claims rate “from aging Vietnam and Korea veterans” largely predictable from simple demographic analysis? I’m reminded of the saying about a British railroad from several decades ago:  “Despite its frequency and general regularity, Sunday morning seems to consistently catch this railroad by surprise.”

The above remark about the railroad notwithstanding, private enterprises generally seem to be able to deal with fluctuating demand and other problems quite well. There is almost always food in the supermarkets, despite droughts, crop failures, logistical problems, strikes, etc etc. The electricity is almost always on despite storms and electrical failures. And while businesses generally do a better problem than government at dealing with daunting arrays of problems, some government agencies do manage to deal with demand increases and fluctuations far better than the VA seems able to do with these disability claims. Somehow the FAA manages to conduct air traffic control safely and effectively despite the increased demand that occurs in holiday seasons and the varied and often nefarious effects of the weather. The military itself often manages to quickly deploy forces and equipment to far-distant locations. Why has the VA been unable to modify its processes to provide resolution of disability claims in a timely manner?

Sad and disturbing.