If you think airlines are totally mismanaged, check out America’s corrupt airports
America’s airlines are in bad company. Some of America’s airports are apparently being run just as poorly — if not worse — than the air carriers that use them.
For example, Detroit’s airport officials are accused of improperly lavishing six-figure salaries and perks on their executives in the six years since control of the airport shifted from Wayne County to an independent authority.
The the number of employees earning more than $100,000 has more than doubled, and while other public officials in Michigan gave up free vehicles to save money, the number of airport executives with car perks grew by 13. The travel budget, meanwhile, is up eightfold, according to a scathing yet oddly entertaining investigative article in the Detroit Free Press.
“The inmates are in charge … with no oversight at all,” Brendan Dunleavy, a former Wayne County auditor general, told the Free Press.
(Folks, this is why newspapers are still relevant and necessary.)
Detroit is hardly alone. Miami International Airport has its very own corruption scandal involving a whistleblower, a construction contract, consultants and characters who did hard time in prison. Just doesn’t get any better than that.
Again, terrific investigative reporting by the Miami Herald.
In fact, in just the last year, there have been corruption scandals reported at airports from Dallas to Honolulu. What in the world is going on here?
As a somewhat cynical observer of the airline industry, only one explanation makes sense: It’s a ripple effect. Incompetent, inefficient airlines are corrupting the very airports they use, in much the same way that criminals destroy a city’s neighborhood block by block.
Hey, I told you I was cynical.
Got a better explanation? Head to the comments, please.
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Not sure where SFO would rank, but the airport keeps hiring incompetent United Airlines management personnel. The last misadventure involved the former UA head of Oakland Airport who was such a heinous personality that he is literally responsible for dozens of transfers of employees from OAK to SFO, was hired to work for the Airport Commission…..at a big increase in salary, of course.. What a joke.