STORY 1 MARCH 2, 2005For Premier Klein and Conservative insiders, a plane is always standing byAfter six months of wrangling and nearly $900 in fees, The Journal on Nov. 24 -- two days after the provincial election -- gained access through Freedom of Information to 17 months of flight logs for the Alberta government's executive fleet of four aircraft. Reporters Charles Rusnell and Karen Kleiss spent six weeks analysing the information. They present their findings in a four-part series.- Today -- Premier Ralph Klein has a penchant for flying. The busy politician says the publicly funded air service is well worth the $3.5 million annual cost.- Thursday -- Nobody is watching to ensure that ministers are using the fleet for government business, so how do the Conservatives know if it is being abused?- Friday -- The Conservatives' drive to privatize public services apparently doesn't extend to the air service, but private airline operators want the government's business.- Saturday -- The air service has been over budget for three years running and the government can't fill its costly empty seats - - or empty flights. Is it really saving taxpayers' money?- - -EDMONTON - At 6:20 p.m. on July 12, 2003, an Alberta government Beechcraft King Air 200 flew empty from Edmonton to Calgary to pick up a single passenger -- Premier Ralph Klein -- for a return flight to the capital.The following evening, the premier again travelled alone in the seven-passenger Beechcraft, this time back to Calgary. The empty plane returned to its hangar in Edmonton.The four flights cost Alberta taxpayers $5,858.80, according to government figures. There are 79 one-way commercial flights each weekday between Calgary and Edmonton's two airports. Had Klein flown last-minute, full- fare on any two of these flights, it would have cost taxpayers no more than $500, less than 10 per cent of the cost of his government flights.The way Klein used the province's Air Transportation Service on those two days in July 2003 was not unusual for him, nor, critics say, would it be unusual for many of his cabinet colleagues.The government's executive fleet of four aircraft, the largest in Canada, costs Alberta taxpayers more than $3.5 million a year to operate. It runs out of the City Centre Airport in Edmonton. The government's use of the fleet has been contentious since it was established in 1985. Critics say it is wasteful, inefficient and prone to abuse because of a lack of accountability and transparency. Klein insists the service is cost-effective and crucial to his ministers' efficiency.Infrastructure Minister Lyle Oberg, who is responsible for the Air Transportation Service, insisted it is an efficient use of taxpayers' money."I think it is operating very well," Oberg said in an interview. "One of the issues, obviously, is we have to continue to ensure that it is running cost-effectively. We have to ensure that the usage is maximized."During the spring sitting of the legislature last year, the Opposition Liberals hammered Klein over his personal use of the government planes, which included a side trip to an exclusive golf course in Nova Scotia.An angry Klein responded by threatening to cut off access to flight records. Ordinary citizens, he said, could have access, but opposition MLAs and reporters on political "fishing trips" would be denied."If they tell us what they are looking for, then maybe we will accommodate them," Klein said last May.But after six months of wrangling, The Journal obtained 17 months of detailed flight logs on Nov. 24 -- two days after the provincial election -- through a freedom of information request.A detailed analysis of these logs and other government documents found that:- Planes flew empty 235 times, enough total kilometres to circle the Earth more than 11/2 times, at a cost of at least $250,000. Klein accounted for 87 of those empty flights, exponentially more than any other minister.- There is virtually no oversight to ensure the fleet is not being used for personal or political reasons. Conservative ministers and backbench MLAs operate on an honour system and provide only vague reasons for their flights.- Neither the government nor the auditor general has ever studied whether the Air Transportation Service is cost-effective compared to commercial or charter flights.The Journal made a standing offer in January to Klein for an interview. He did not respond. But Klein's spokeswoman, Marisa Etmanski, defended his use of the planes, despite the empty flights."Ralph Klein is the premier of Alberta, and in his capacity as the elected leader of this province, he uses these government aircraft to get to meetings, to get to events in the most efficient and timely manner that he can," Etmanski said."I guess what you're discounting is Premier Klein's time. His time is just as important as the government's expenditure on aircrafts."Etmanski said it would be a waste of Klein's time to drive to Edmonton's international airport, clear security and then wait to board a commercial flight. Klein flies commercial whenever it's feasible, she said, but not within Alberta, simply because his schedule is so hectic.Liberal Infrastructure critic Harry Chase said Klein uses the plane more for his personal convenience than to serve the public."Ralph Klein talks about leading the parade. If this is the type of example he is setting for other caucus members, no wonder there is abuse of the service."This is trough mentality," Chase said. It's free lunch. It's arrogance."Why do they think, as elected officials, they have risen to a level so far above their average constituent that they should have the special privilege of limousine air service?"University of Lethbridge political scientist Peter McCormick said the Conservatives' use of the air service is symptomatic of a government in power so long it has forgotten its duty to accountability."This is sheer self-indulgence," McCormick said. "This is a government that has gotten so comfortable with its perks, they honestly can't see why it's a problem."Established in 1985, the government's executive fleet has been contentious since at least 1990, when allegations arose about a lack of transparency and accountability.Those same allegations arose again in the legislature in April and Klein's patience wore thin as the Liberals kept the issue in the news for several more weeks.A furious Klein insisted there had been no abuse of the planes, although he qualified this statement by saying that abuse is subjective.On May 10, while the issue was still boiling in the legislature, a King Air -- Plane 1 -- flew empty from Edmonton at 9:48 a.m., headed to Calgary. Twenty-three minutes later, at 10:11 a.m., a second King Air -- Plane 2 -- left for Calgary with two passengers aboard: former transportation minister Ed Stelmach and his wife.Plane 1, which had flown empty to Calgary, picked up then- solicitor general Heather Forsyth and two other passengers and headed back to Edmonton at 11:20 a.m. Plane 2 dropped off Stelmach in Calgary and turned back empty for Edmonton at 11:27 a.m.The two planes touched down on the tarmac in Edmonton within three minutes of each other. Out of four flights within the same hour, two were empty. The other two carried a total of five passengers, at a cost of more than $5,800. They could have flown last-minute, full-fare on a commercial airline for as little as $1,250.On two occasions while she was finance minister, Pat Nelson flew in a King Air to Calgary, stayed overnight and then flew back the next morning. The flights all occurred when regularly scheduled commercial flights were available. The government paid to park the planes in a hangar, and to feed and house the pilots in a hotel.During sittings of the legislature, the Klein government offers a regularly scheduled shuttle service for Calgary MLAs that routinely flies empty between the two major cities to fetch a small group of Tory cabinet ministers and MLAs.Paul Phee, co-owner of Quikair, a small commuter airline that flies between Edmonton City Centre Airport and Calgary International, was shocked by the waste in the government's air service."In the private sector, we would be out of business in a few weeks," he said of the empty flights. "That is the bottom line."In the private sector, if you don't have a break-even passenger load on average -- and on most aircraft, that is about 50 per cent of paying passengers in available seats -- it's simply not economical and not viable."Oberg said he is trying to keep the "deadheads" -- or empty flights -- to a minimum by instructing ministers to improve co- ordination. But he said empty flights are sometimes unavoidable."There are times when people go to a meeting in Calgary and then they stay. That's a fact of life."Phee said his airline could handle all the government's flight needs between Calgary and Edmonton.Service to other parts of the province should be opened up to charter companies, he said."I would dare say that, from what I know of the charter business, they would probably save themselves millions of dollars and have charter aircraft available 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Phee said.The Klein Revolution of the 1990s privatized everything from child-welfare services to liquor stores. Oberg skirts any discussion of privatizing the government's air service. He said chartering would be no cheaper and the government needs the "flexibility" of its own fleet to serve all Albertans."As ministers, we need to represent the interests of both rural and urban Alberta. A lot of areas in rural Alberta, quite simply, we can't get to," he said.Rather than downsize the service, which Oberg acknowledges is underutilized, he is looking for ways to encourage more civil servants, municipal politicians and other "invited guests" to forgo commercial flights in order to fill more seats on government planes.One of those ways involves an internal marketing campaign, called Take Off Eh!, for its own regularly scheduled "airline service."About 40 per cent of Calgary-based Quikair's passengers are provincial government employees."Put the private sector out of business," Phee said. "That's a great move for this government."McCormick, the Lethbridge political scientist, doubts the Conservatives will ever consider dumping their air service unless an "outsider" becomes the next premier."It will take a shake-up to get rid of this little perk," he said. "If someone in Klein's current cabinet winds up as premier, he will continue on where Klein left off."It will take an outsider, who can see what it looks like to other outsiders, to say 'enough is enough.' "crusnell@thejournal.canwest.comkkleiss@thejournal.canwest.comFLIGHTS OF FANCYThe flight logs for March 8 and 9, 2004 don't explain why Rod Love, a longtime Conservative party insider, friend of Premier Ralph Klein and lobbyist, flew on government airplanes at taxpayer expense. On one flight, he was the lone passenger; on another he accompanied then-finance minister Pat Nelson.Love was not the only Tory insider to fly Air Alberta. A review of 17 months of government flight logs found that:- Calgary communications executive Barry Styles, former Klein spokesman and lobbyist Jim Dau, and ministers' wives, sometimes without their husbands -- flew on the planes.- The majority of flights were taken by a comparatively small number of Conservative cabinet ministers and backbench MLAs. No opposition members use the planes, and few civil servants ever use the planes.- Ministers fly the planes to destinations outside the province at a cost at least four times more than full-fare business class on a commercial flight.DOCUMENTS SHOW THAT:- The planes flew empty nearly 950 times between April 1, 2001, and April 1, 2004. On some days, there were two, three and up to four empty flights.- Nearly half of all the 2,547 flights in the 17 months -- an average of 150 per month -- were between Calgary and Edmonton, one of the most heavily serviced commercial air corridors in Canada.- The government, since October, has been operating its own scheduled "airline service" from the Edmonton City Centre airport and has started a marketing campaign to encourage government employees to forgo commercial flights for the government's airline. Operators of small commuter airlines say the government's subsidized airline is unfairly competing with their private businesses.STORY 2 MARCH 3, 2005EDMONTON - Murray Smith summoned the Alberta government's Beechcraft King Air 350 to Calgary on Jan. 27 last year for a quick, solo jaunt to Edmonton. The round-trip flight cost taxpayers more than $2,200.The reason he gave for the trip, according to the flight log: "Ministerial."That single word was the former energy minister's official justification for spending thousands of taxpayer dollars flying on Alberta's publicly owned planes.On May 5, ministers Ty Lund and Clint Dunford flew to Lethbridge and back with their two executive assistants, a trip that cost taxpayers at least $3,700. Their full stated purpose: "Announcement."And as he sometimes does, Premier Ralph Klein flew alone from Edmonton to Calgary on Jan. 29, 2003. The King Air 200 returned empty to the capital. The cost to taxpayers was just shy of $3,000. Klein didn't say why he needed to take the plane.Critics say these inscrutable reasons are evidence the government's Air Transportation Service operates under a cloak of secrecy that has the potential to foster and to hide abuse of taxpayer dollars.Even the minister responsible for the service admits there is no system for vetting trips.It's all about trust for Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Lyle Oberg."I guess you could say it is an honour system," Oberg said. "Quite simply, we leave it up to the ministers. They are my colleagues, they know the rules."Believe it or not, I believe what my ministers say. I don't consider them liars."Alberta's highest-ranking political leaders have repeatedly assured taxpayers the planes are used for government business.They insist the air service is crucial to ministers' efficiency and that Albertans are getting good value for their money when ministers visit rural areas, as when former economic development minister Mark Norris and his wife, Veronica, made a round trip to Lac La Biche on March 1, 2003. Total cost to Alberta taxpayers: $1,700.Norris's official account to Albertans: "Meetings in Lac La Biche.""There is no abuse going on," Klein told reporters last May. "The abuse is in the minds of the people who think there might be abuse. Abuse is something that is very subjective."The problem, say political observers, is that Klein expects taxpayers to take his government's word for it."In the area of travel, governments have a responsibility to be as transparent as possible ... because there is such potential for abuse," said Peter Aucoin, who specializes in public administration as a political scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax."If you have transparency, if you have good questioning and good audits, you reduce the risk of abuse," said Aucoin.The Alberta government has consistently refused to make its air service more open to the public, despite more than a decade of demands from the opposition."The presence of a fleet of aircraft paid for by taxpayers is fraught with the potential for abuse of public money," said the late Calgary Liberal MLA Sheldon Chumir in the legislature in April 1991. He wanted to see three years' worth of flight logs that the government was refusing to release."The whole concept of control of the public purse is public scrutiny. That's our goal here: to ensure that there is the maximum degree of public scrutiny."Flight logs show the reasons for ministers' trips and the number of empty flights. Once open to the public, they are now available only through a Freedom of Information request.The Journal's request to view 17 months of logs took the government six months to process and cost the newspaper nearly $900. By contrast, the federal government charged The Journal $12 to photocopy and mail two years of federal flight logs, which arrived less than two weeks after the newspaper made its request.The Klein government insists its use of the fleet is open to public scrutiny and points to its quarterly release of "flight manifests" as proof. The manifests -- essentially a computer printout -- can be viewed by anyone at no cost and show the date, destination and passengers for all flights. Unlike the flight logs, however, the manifests do not show what time the planes flew, the reason for the flight and they don't reveal when the planes flew empty.The manifests once disclosed these costly empty flights, but the Klein government scrubbed that information in the late 1990s after a public controversy over the high number of empty flights and the resulting waste of taxpayers' dollars.Albertans shelled out $3.5 million last year to ferry the government's 24 cabinet members around the province. The 280- kilometre, one-way trip from Edmonton to Calgary costs between $1,100 and $1,500.Despite this, Alberta's one-page Guidelines for Use of Government Aircraft don't require ministers to take those high costs into account when booking the planes."Each and every minister, again, is responsible and accountable," Oberg said."What they have to do is look at the cost viability of it to see exactly what the issue is."All requests go through Oberg's department for approval, but he said he does not personally approve all flights. The ministers, he said again, are ultimately accountable.Federal ministers requesting taxpayer-funded flights must acknowledge the national government's policies of fiscal restraint and explain why they cannot take a commercial flight.In Alberta, meanwhile, almost half of all government flights shuttle ministers between Edmonton and Calgary, one of the most heavily serviced air corridors in Canada.The guidelines are also mute on what constitutes a legitimate reason for taking a flight at taxpayers' expense; they state only that aircraft are to be used "for ministerial duties."How does Oberg define government business?"Government business is whatever business government is on," he said. "I am not about to go and investigate whether my colleagues are doing government business or not. If they come and say they are doing government business, then I believe what they are saying."Oberg said he trusts his ministers because he knows they have the same ethics he does. He admits, however, that he once attempted to break the rules by trying to take his children on a plane.He said government guidelines need to be changed to allow more "invited guests" such as wives and children."This comes down to a belief that I have," Oberg said. "I think it's a wastage that there are empty seats. That's my view."Klein also takes a view contrary to the government's guidelines."There are times, admittedly, when a government aircraft is used to do other business, and perhaps some party business will be done at the same time," Klein said in the legislature last May."If it so happens that some party business is mixed with ministerial business, so be it. What is the big deal?"The premier has said he "sometimes" smokes cigarettes on board the publicly-owned aircraft -- a habit he cannot indulge on commercial flights. But spokeswoman Marisa Etmanski said that is not why he takes the planes."The premier admitted he likes to fly the government plane because it's more convenient to smoke on board, but that is irrelevant," she said. "He tries to fulfil as many obligations as he can, and using government aircraft helps him do a better job."Critics say the only way taxpayers will know their money is being spent properly is when the government makes crucial information easily accessible to the public."It is shameful that the Edmonton Journal or anyone else had to pay hundreds of dollars and endure months of delay ... to get access to basic information to which all taxpayers are entitled," John Carpay of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said.Carpay believes the best way to prevent abuse is to post detailed information about ministers' use of the planes on the Internet every day."Then it exposes the decisions to public scrutiny, which is not the case now," he said.The government has initiated a review of the guidelines. A spokesman for Auditor General Fred Dunn said the department is contemplating an audit.But political observers say calls for full transparency and accountability may go unheard."Only fear of election defeat makes governments honest," said Aucoin.THIRD STORY MARCH 4, 2005EDMONTON - When Edmonton's City Centre Airport closes to commercial air service from Calgary on July 31, civil servants travelling south on provincial business won't have to drive to the International airport.Instead, they can fly from the downtown airport on the provincial government's new and soon-to-be expanding scheduled air service.Critics say the government of Premier Ralph Klein, the free- enterprise architects of last decade's Klein Revolution, are directly competing now with private-sector airlines.The service, begun in October, is for ministers, MLAs and civil servants. They are being encouraged through an internal marketing campaign called Take Off, Eh! to forgo commercial flights for the government's "airline service.""Forty per cent of our business comes from the government and we are very disappointed to learn that the government is planning to run their own airline business," said Paul Phee, co-owner of Quikair, a small commuter airline that flies from Calgary International to the City Centre."Our airline business is being shut down by the Edmonton Airport Authority while they look the other way, when the government is running its own airline business."How unfair is that, not just to Quikair, but to the big guys like WestJet and Air Canada?"EMPTY FLIGHTS COST MILLIONSAlberta's fleet of four aircraft, the largest of any province in Canada, cost about $3.5 million to operate in 2003-04, a fiscal year in which the service racked up more than 300 empty flights.Over the past three years, the government's planes have flown empty nearly 950 times. Hundreds of the more than 2,500 flights taken in each of those years had fewer than three passengers.Nearly half of all the service's flights are between Calgary and Edmonton, one of the most heavily serviced commercial air corridors in the country.Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Lyle Oberg said the public fleet is needed because the government is obliged to serve people in all parts of the province, not just the two big cities. The fleet allows ministers and other government officials to spend more time working and less time travelling, plus they can fly on short notice -- anytime, anywhere.Although Oberg conceded his ministry has conducted no formal cost- comparison studies, he is certain that owning a fleet is no more expensive than chartering, even with the hundreds of empty flights which have been a chronic problem since at least 1990.New Democrat Leader Brian Mason accused the Tories of hypocrisy."It's an example of 'Do as I say, not as I do,' " Mason said."The Klein government has always been very keen on privatizing and cutting services for people other than the already privileged. Clearly, they want to maintain a first-class service for themselves, even when it's not economically feasible."Liberal infrastructure critic Harry Chase said the Klein government is selective in its application of conservative fiscal ideology."I think the government has an attitude that in the larger scale of things, with the billions of dollars that it goes through annually, that it's OK to waste millions, that by comparison it's pocket change," Chase said. "That seems to me to be arrogant."In 1994, British Columbia decided to get rid of its executive flights after conducting a review.B.C. FOUND CHARTERS CHEAPERFormer New Democrat leader Mike Harcourt told The Journal his government's Challenger jet cost twice as much to operate as a charter. His air service's propeller planes were four times the cost of a private charter and 10 times that of a regularly scheduled commercial flight."We found you could use scheduled flights and we found that if we needed to charter, it was quick and easy," he said."For example, if we needed to fly people up to a remote area of British Columbia, we could fairly quickly have a standard contract with a charter service."The B.C. government sold all its planes, but Harcourt conceded they should have kept at least one to ferry MLAs from remote areas to Victoria, the capital, located on Vancouver Island."That is a real hardship for them, no question," he said.Oberg's opinion about the necessity of a government fleet apparently isn't shared by Ontario.Although Ontario has four times Alberta's population and is more than one and a half times as large geographically, it downsized its executive fleet to two Beechcraft King Airs and the current Liberal government is now considering selling them as well.Alberta has three Beechcraft King Airs and a 36-passenger Dash 8. According to the government's own statistics, the fleet is used 68 per cent of the time by the 24 members of cabinet and fewer than a dozen Conservative MLAs. Alberta's more than 23,000 civil service employees use the planes less than a third of the time.Apart from the odd flight in which an all-party legislature committee is travelling to a meeting, Liberal and New Democrat MLAs refuse to use the service because they believe that in most cases it's a waste of taxpayer money.CRITIC CONDEMNS 'WASTE'Chase said this waste is exemplified by the special shuttle for Calgary MLAs that operates when the legislature is sitting.Because the government has only one hangar, located at City Centre airport, the shuttle planes repeatedly fly empty, either to pick up Calgary Conservative MLAs or after dropping them off.Oberg acknowledges empty flights and seats are a problem. To address this, he said he will loosen the government's policy to allow more "invited guests," including school board and hospital officials, even wives and children of MLAs, to use the planes.He also will encourage provincial employees to fly on the air services airplanes and the regularly scheduled Dash 8 "airline service" to Calgary rather than on commercial airlines.AIRLINE OWNER WANTS CHANCEPhee, the co-owner of Quikair, has accused the government of undermining his business. He said it is doing so with the tacit approval of the Edmonton Airport Authority.Airport authority spokeswoman Traci Bednard said the authority will talk with the government to understand what sort of air service it is operating before publicly responding.Ken Lucas started QuikPass on Jan. 31. With 10 employees, the fledgling low-cost commuter airline flies two 19-seat airplanes on regularly scheduled service between Calgary and Edmonton International.It offers a pass that allows an unlimited number of flights between the two cities each month for $499 plus taxes.The government's Beechcraft King Airs cost at least $1,100 to fly one way between Edmonton and Calgary, and the Dash 8 costs more than double that.To Lucas, it's obvious that without taxpayer subsidization, the government air service can't compete on price with his airline."The government should be told to get out of the airline business and flip that business onto us, or at a minimum to the charter business," Lucas said."They should be feeding into the private companies that are actually in the business."crusnell@thejournal.canwest.comkkleiss@thejournal.canwest.comOTHER AIR FLEETSProvincial Executive Air Service Fleets:Alberta: Two Beechcraft King Air 200s, one Beechcraft King Air 350 and one de Havilland Dash 8.British Columbia: None. Ministers and MLAs use commercial airlines or charter when warranted.Manitoba: One Cessna Citation 5 jet: used 70 per cent as a backup air ambulance; 30 per cent to ferry passengers, including civil servants, the premier and MLAs.New Brunswick: Leased six-passenger 1992 Beechcraft King Air C90B.Newfoundland: None. Ministers and MLAs use commercial airlines or charter when warranted.Nova Scotia: None. Ministers and MLAs use commercial airlines or charter when warranted.Ontario: Two Beechcraft King Air 350s.Prince Edward Island: None.Quebec: One Challenger Jet.Saskatchewan: 1990 Beechcraft King Air B300, leased King Air B200 and 1975 Cheyenne PA31T.STORY 4 MARCH 5, 2005EDMONTON - Premier Ralph Klein stood in the legislature last year and told Albertans that "government-fleet flights can save taxpayers' dollars."For instance," he said, "not including fixed costs such as salaries and insurance, a full flight on a King Air 200 costs $76.71 per seat, round trip to Calgary. What we try to do is make sure the plane is loaded."But according to the Air Transportation Service's own internal figures, obtained by The Journal, the full cost of that round-trip flight is actually $418 per seat, more than five times the amount stated by Klein.What Klein didn't tell Albertans is that fixed costs such as salaries and insurance comprise more than half the total cost of flying the government planes. He didn't say the planes rarely fly full, which sharply increases the cost per person, or that they in fact flew empty more than 300 times in each of the past three years."There is a great deal of deception going on," Liberal infrastructure and transportation critic Harry Chase said."We don't know the actual costs, and that is part of the problem," Chase said. "And when we try to get access to the actual costs ... we are faced with a blank wall from a supposedly transparent, accountable government."Critics say the government exercises little control over the operating costs for its fleet of four aircraft, the largest in Canada. They point to empty seats and empty flights that waste hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, and to cost overruns for the past three years. They say no private airline could ever operate this way.Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Lyle Oberg is responsible for overseeing the air service's $3.5-million annual budget. He insists the service is cost-effective and that the government works to keep costs as low as possible.EMPTY SEATS EXPENSIVE"One of the bugbears that I have a little bit is empty seats, so we're attempting to utilize them as much as we can," Oberg said, acknowledging that empty flights are expensive.Flying the government's seven-seater King Air 200 round-trip from Edmonton to Calgary costs taxpayers $2,929. If the plane flies full, the cost per seat rivals that of a commercial round-trip ticket, at $418 per seat. But the planes seldom fly full.When just four people make the trip, which is more common, the cost jumps to $732 per person; and when Klein flies alone with his wife, it's nearly $1,500 each.Oberg said his department is trying to fill those empty seats by encouraging government employees to use the planes. He acknowledged, however, that staff don't routinely check to see if a seat on a government plane is available and co-ordinating departures "can sometimes be a logistical nightmare."Travel plans for the premier and his 24 cabinet members take precedence, and ministers have schedules so unpredictable that other users can't effectively plan with them. The government is unlikely to ask its ministers to bring more order to their hectic calendars because the minute-by-minute changes are one of the key reasons for maintaining the fleet in the first place.It's a conundrum. Oberg wants to improve efficiency through better flight co-ordination, but the fleet exists to allow ministers total flexibility -- which the premier seemingly values despite the high cost of empty seats."Whether there is just me or whether it is full, I'm still going to use (the government planes)," Klein told reporters last April.While the government struggles to fill costly empty seats, it is failing to lower the number of even costlier "deadheads" -- empty flights that occur when a plane flies empty to pick up passengers or after dropping them off.DEADHEAD FLIGHT COST $1,950Such flights are expensive. A July 28, 2003, deadhead to pick up then-municipal affairs minister Guy Boutilier in Fort McMurray cost taxpayers $1,950. Boutilier gave no reason for his lone flight in the King Air 200, which, by the time he set foot on the tarmac in Edmonton, had cost Albertans nearly $3,900."It is a problem that we're very cognizant of and we attempt to keep the number of deadheads to a minimum," Oberg said."Basically what we do is we express to all the ministers, anyone who has a plane, to attempt to keep the deadheads to a minimum."But according to the air service's own figures, the number of deadheads has remained unchanged at about 300 in each of the past three fiscal years."There does need to be a little better co-ordination there," Oberg acknowledged, but he did not say how he planned to achieve it.Ty Lund, Oberg's predecessor in Infrastructure, had a plan to tackle a major cause of the problem. Nearly half of all government flights ferry ministers between Calgary and Edmonton. In the 17 months of flight logs reviewed by The Journal, there were 209 deadheads between the two cities -- the equivalent of 11/2 trips around the world. Those empty flights cost taxpayers at least $230,000.Last May, Lund said his ministry would study the feasibility of maintaining a hangar in Calgary. Today, though, Oberg dismisses the idea."If we were to have two hubs, in Calgary and Edmonton, the deadheads would be significantly less, but the costs would be significantly higher because we would have to maintain another aerocentre," he said.While no study was ever done, Oberg said the decision not to open a hangar in Calgary was based on cost. He didn't know how much it would cost, but believes it would be "very, very high."Some things are reasonably common sense. If you take a look at the cost of having hangars ... it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that there's a big difference."Klein and his government have consistently maintained the service is efficient and can be improved by using the planes even more. Aviation industry experts agree more use translates into lower average costs.COST EFFICIENCY PLAN FAILEDBut the government has tried and failed to improve the fleet's cost efficiency -- in fact, it made it worse.In 1995, Klein ordered a review of the service after news reports that $100,000 had been wasted on deadheads. The government's solution was to introduce a Calgary-Edmonton shuttle forMLAs, to boost the hours each plane spent in the air and, in theory, reduce average costs.Only two Tory MLAs showed up for the inaugural shuttle, however, which cost taxpayers $1,400 -- $1,262 more than the two would have paid for a last-minute seat on a commercial flight at the time. The government nevertheless continues to operate the shuttle even though it is responsible for dozens of empty flights and hundreds of empty seats every year.Critics say one reason the government continues the failed shuttle experiment is that it departs from the City Centre Airport, sparing MLAs the 45-minute cab ride from the legislature to the International airport where they could take a commercial flight.Federal ministers, by contrast, are required to explain why they cannot take a commercial airline before they get access to a publicly funded plane. The Alberta government has no such policy, even though a last-minute round trip on one of the 79 daily flights between Calgary and Edmonton, one of the most heavily serviced corridors in Canada, costs no more than $500.For times when commercial service isn't an option, critics argue the government could charter, as the B.C. government has done since it got rid of its fleet more than a decade ago.CHARTER OPTION DISMISSEDBut Oberg dismisses the charter option, too. He said charters are only slightly cheaper than the government's air service, and in fact cost more when extra expenses such as time on the ground are factored in.Occasionally, however, the government has chartered planes similar to the ones it owns and chartering was sometimes cheaper. An internal memo prepared last June by the director of the Air Transportation Service shows a charter company's quote for a Beechcraft 350 at $1.34 per kilometre more than the government's cost to fly the same plane. But that same memo also showed two instances where chartered King Air 200s saved taxpayers at least 37 cents per kilometre, and as much as $1.16.If, as Oberg claims, it is cheaper to own than charter, the Liberals' Chase wonders why the government contracts out its air ambulance service. Nine companies, many of which fly the same Beechcraft planes as the Air Transportation Service, are under contract to Alberta Health.Might chartering be cheaper than maintaining its own fleet? None of Oberg's predecessors had ever sought to find out and the Klein government had no plans either --until earlier this week when The Journal began publishing its series on the flight service that highlighted the government's waste. On Wednesday, Klein said he had asked the auditor general to conduct a value-for-money audit of the Air Transporation Service.Critics say the Klein government had previously refused to do the math because the air service is a perk it is unwilling to part with."They are slaves to the status quo," Chase said. "They are comfortable with this perk and they want to keep it."But for Klein, the cost of running the air service is entirely beside the point."It is impossible," he said in the legislature last year, "to put a price tag on the time required to do government business by all of those in government."