Did United Operate A Flight For The Chairman Of The Port Authority?

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: February 25, 2015

19 comments

Here’s an interesting story from Bloomberg about how a once weekly United flight between Newark and Columbia may have been operated exclusively for the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Via Bloomberg:

For 18 months, a 50-seat regional jet left United Airlines’ Newark hub each Thursday night bound for Columbia, S.C. On Monday mornings, United Express flew back to Newark.

Federal prosecutors want to know if United offered the flight because David Samson, then chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, spent weekends in Aiken, S.C., about 50 miles from the Columbia airport. The Port Authority and United have received subpoenas from U.S. investigators examining Samson’s travel and his communications with United, The Record newspaper in New Jersey reported earlier this month. Samson referred to the Columbia route as the “chairman’s flight,” the newspaper reported, citing a source it did not identify.

United ended the flight on April 1, 2014, three days after Samson resigned from the agency amid the political turmoil that followed the release of e-mails showing that aides to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Port Authority officials had orchestrated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in September 2013, snarling traffic for several days in Fort Lee, N.J.

This would be the first time a flight operated by a 50 seat regional jet with no first class would be considered a “prize.” 😉

It’ll be interesting to see what the investigation finds.

Anyone have an opinion — was the flight operated for the Chairman of the Port Authority, or was it a coincidence?

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UaMM Guest

September 8, 2015, 6:02 pm

Well it looks like the Fed woke up and smelled the coffee and found the smoking guns. It's all Jeff-ed up over there at the new combined company and now it seems some ex Cons (ex Continentals) will really be excons. I think think the short story narrative here is blinded by profits and an unbridled need for more no matter what. After stripping all the benes out of Mileage Plus and bleeding their best flyers, the US Gov must have looked like low hanging fruit. For the company Board to pull the plug on the guy that drove the merger and big profits means Jeff's done here in a few days. The next shoe should drop soon...

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UaMM Guest

February 27, 2015, 10:18 am

This is cute… Jeff S is overly focused on returning shareholder value and dinging his frequent fliers as much as possible and here he is currying favor with government officials. I'm sure there's plenty of email smoking guns over and yield management as they would be screaming at this kind of stupidity. I think if United wants to get into competition with NetJets, they need to get a different operating license to do that. Beyond all that the feds should slap united with a sufficient penalty that united shareholders wake up and smell the coffee. If there's any other smoking guns of corruption further on, people should go to jail. The loss of actual liberty instead of just a speeding ticket economic penalty will make people think twice before they get into these kinds of stupid enterprises. We have the same problem with bankers, other parts of government, defense contractors, and oil and gas. The sooner the feds start to realize they have to start putting people in jail to stop this kind of behavior the better.

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Susan Guest

February 25, 2015, 11:33 pm

Um.... excuse me, Andrew... Aiken has Augusta beat hands down ... and if you don't know why, then you should come for a visit.

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Chris Guest

February 25, 2015, 11:00 pm

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics publishes its TranStats T-100 tables for all commercial routes in the US. From that, I looked up the 2013 figures for ExpressJet (which operated the flight) and found that out of the 72 routes from Newark, the Columbia route had the 21st worst load factor, at 71%. I mean, they were almost definitely running the flight for Samson, but it wasn't like he was the only one flying it. The average 34.5 other Columbians (Columbia-ites?) who were taking that flight were probably none too pleased when Samson was shown the door.

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SkipDaddieCane Guest

February 25, 2015, 6:57 pm

This type of stuff happens with all the airlines, but probably less obvious than the UA example. I worked at a major doing the schedules and had to make sure we had enough F seats into certain markets for "influential" customers. Vague, but you know that I mean. Thx!

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