CommunitAir

CommunitAir is the Community corporation in Sober Thought which serves as the publicly owned airline. The common air carrier is concurrently organised as a Chief Directorate in the Vice Ministry of Transport in the Ministry of Community Connections. Do not confuse it with the chief directorate charged with transportation safety in the same vice ministry.

The corporate logo is a variation of the Sober Thought national owl uncharacteristically in flight. Like the conventional bird, it is a profile of the bird with the head turned to face the viewer; but unlike the conventional bird, its wings are spread and its legs are retracted. The corporate name, with its peculiar capitalisation and punny name, is identical in both official languages: in English it echoes Community Air [Line] while in French it echoes communautaire and Air communautaire.

Although constitutionally air transport is entirely within its own jurisdiction, the federal government is certainly not compelled to operate its own civil flagship carrier. However, on sound civilian and military policy grounds it has decided to do so. Sober Thought is a large country filled with mountains, islands, great rivers and other natural barriers. Thus, air travel which can ignore (or ignore more easily than its land and water counterparts) such barriers is an important facilitator of community identity and cohesion. Furthermore, some of these places would or could not be served by a profit-only air carrier.

Military cooperation

On the military side, air transportation is vital in the case of war, so having a fleet of government-owned transport aircraft, a network of airports and a large pool of workers with aviation expertise is indispensable for the Air Service of the Community Defence Forces. In fact, many of the aircraft and ground (but not customer service and sales) staff have served in the military.

Even before war breaks out, civil and military air transport needs converge at the T-60s series transportation aircraft: the T-60 executive jet, the T-61 regional jet, the T-62 jetliner and T-63 jumbo jet. The mechanical, personnel and supply needs of these aircraft are essentially identical, and the different roles are distinguished mainly by decor.

Cooperation is a two-way street, since the existence of a military transportation arm helps create a pool of expert pilots, flight engineers, navigators, flight attendants, aeronautical mechanics and warehousers trained at no cost to either private enterprise or Community corporations.

Even most for-profit airlines operate the T-60s series because they are inherently robust (essential for military uses), well laidout (essential for both uses) and cheap (essential for civilian uses, because the fixed development costs are amortised over a longer joint production run). They are even available for purchase abroad, although the Community government offers neither subsidies nor other negative-return investment incentives in the highly competitive international aerospace market.

Civilian air routes

Like most common carriers, the CommunitAir network links its primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary destinations with a series of direct and nodal routes. In order of decreasing population, the primary destinations are: Schweindorf, Mont Royaume-Kingsmount, Georgetown, Bight and Mit-en-Haut Counties, Zalevfyerma, Nordentor, Kolashek/Saint-Visage-Osseux and Drewburgh. Each of these airports has direct connections with one another, and usually with one or more international destinations as well.

In addition, all provincial capitals regardless of size have daily service to the national capital. Differing rates of traffic are accommodated by the size of the aircraft rather schedule frequency. For instance, Princetown rates a ~50-seat regional jet, Western Province's capital one ~500-seat jumbo jet and Georgetown two ~300-seat jetliners.

Tertiary locations receive less frequent, thrice weekly at best if offered at all, jetliner service from most provincial regional service centres to the closest one or two metropoleis. These places typically also have regional jets shuttling to and from hubs every day or every other day.

Truly isolated settlements, of which there are a few, cannot be served by jets or even schedules for technical and business reasons. Erratic and low traffic volumes coupled with poor visibility and rudimentary airstrips would make regular jet service not only severely uneconomical but also inherently unsafe. Instead, these distant outposts are served by more reliable, more robust and smaller propeller driven airplanes which operate according to demand rather than a set schedule.

Fare structure

While CommunitAir on balance is not expected to make a profit, nor is it expected to show a loss. All operational and most capital costs are covered by the Community corporation itself, although in extraordinary instances it has successfully petitioned the federal government proper for one-time, unforeseeable investments in capital.

Fares are calculated not on the absolute and relative cost of transportation on a particular route, but on a far more complex basis. It starts, strangely enough, with the supposedly unimportant quaternary routes. The Community corporation estimates the reasonable ability to pay of the residents of these isolated settlements and makes that the fare for those routes.

Clearly, the costs of serving such communities are much higher than the fees collected from paying passengers. So the deficit from those routes are added to the operating costs of the tertiary routes, and a similar calculation is made. The only exception is that there is a ceiling price which is identical to that of quaternary passengers, i.e., tertiary passengers will never pay more than their more disadvantaged counterparts.

The deficit from this group is passed up in a similar manner to the secondary route users. When their capped calculation is made, the secondary deficit finally makes its way to the primary route customers. The latter people have nobody else upon whom they may foist the cost, so they just pay the amount, fly another air carrier or stay home.

Government regulation of airlines ensures that private enterprise carriers -- foreign and domestic without discrimination -- are rated according to how well they service each level of routes (not how much they charge, just things like frequency, reliability and type of aircraft). The more private carriers meet the needs of these diverse routes, the less they have to accept price floors. These competing factors ensure that the prices and services to people throughout Sober Thought tend to converge on a comfortable range for most potential air passengers and thus allow for the best equilibrium between price and destination.

Labour-management relations

In this Community corporation, management thinking jumps quickly and sometimes apparently randomly among those characterised by bloodyminded bureaucrats, forward-thinking civil servants, long-haul entrepreneurs and flavour-of-the-month business school clones. Understandably, in this chaotic and crazy-making environment, the corporation's employees have created and nurtured a very strong and active labour union.

Although unions are widely respected and recognised as necessary throughout Sober Thought, even if they are sometimes hated and deemed undesirable, the union at CommunitAir has actually been especially beneficial for three parties. Most obviously and most selfishly, the union has fought to increase the wages, benefits and quality of the workplace. Less obviously but more importantly for the country as a whole, the union helps keep management grounded when it is prone to flights of fancy. And by planing and sanding the rough edges of poorly conceived policy planks, the keep most of splinters from the public's behind.

Even senior management has noted and coopted the union hierarchy's commitment to professionalism and impartial service regardless of the shifting winds of policy change. These useful business qualities were inculcated or encouraged in the Community Defence Forces where many of the aircraft and ground crew received their training, allowing for considerable movement between the union's internal hierarchy and the lower levels of corporate management. Consumer satisfaction rates are also well above industry norms, rarely displaced from first or second, despite the fact that the corporation's fares are often slightly or even significantly higher than its competitors'.