Xcel’s use of aircraft not a bad decision

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Elected public officials who watch out for the pocketbooks of their constituents should be praised. North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer is in that category. Conservative by political nature, Cramer was quick to jump on a report by a Twin Cities newspaper that Xcel Energy’s $5.22 million aviation budget includes two leased private jet aircraft. How much of that expenditure, Cramer wanted to know, was impacting Xcel customers in North Dakota?

Not much, it turns out. North Dakota customers paid $123,541 of the $5.22 million this year, the company said. That translates into about 2.4 percent of the aviation budget.

But even if the amount were more significant, the use of jet aircraft by a large, regional energy provider can be justified. Xcel is a huge electric and natural gas utility. It serves seven Western and Midwestern states, from Minnesota to Colorado. The geographical area in which the company does business is immense. Distances between major cities are measured in many hundreds of miles. The distance between Denver and Minneapolis, for example, is nearly 1,000 miles.

Not all corporate jets are equal. Not all companies use their aircraft for junkets to the Bahamas in January. Most companies that maintain aviation departments do so to enhance their corporate mission — to maximize use of resources in order to serve customers and ensure financial health. For example, executives have to balance the costs of road trip time and possibly several days of lodging against a one-day corporate meeting trip on the company plane. The planes themselves often are airborne corporate offices, which actually afford company officials opportunity to work while traveling.

The private jet airplane has become a symbol of corporate misbehavior. It’s easy for politicians, regulators and others to assume a company airplane is an extravagance. But tossing all corporate aviation into the same category is unfair to companies that use aviation as a responsible and cost-effective tool for conducting business.

Cramer concedes Xcel’s airplanes have minimal effect on North Dakotans’ utility bills. He says the planes send a poor message about the company’s stewardship of ratepayers’ money. But the message is not necessarily informed by the facts of responsible use of corporate airplanes.

Tags: opinion, editorial, excel, aircraft, costs, psc