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To refurbish or not to refurbish really depends on the extent of the damage to the cable. If a cable is kinked in the middle and 30 feet has to be scrapped, it's not going to do much good for a lot of airlines. If three feet has to be clipped off the end, it should be fine, but whether or not refurbishing is the way to go is dependant on the airlines' need.

"It's not something brand new or directly being done because of the price of copper going up," Piety says, "but more and more customers are looking at it and a few have even started to try the refurbishment over buying new." Structurally, the refurbished cables are as good as new, Piety testifi es. "We put a really durable rubber cover over the cable so the cable part will last 10-to-20 years and not wear through to the wires. It's not the cable part that normally gets damaged, if anything it's the connector ... (that) is run over by tractors on the ramp."

Human error remains the major cause of the damaged cables. "A ramp is a busy place and the most important thing is that the flight gets out on time. Everybody is trying to accommodate that primary function. People are in a hurry, they have to get things done, they unplug a cable, leave it on the ground intending to come back later and have the hoist pull it up, (but) then something else comes up and they forget about it momentarily," Konkel says.

Both airlines and manufacturers are caught in the crosshairs as a result of increased copper pricing. Airlines are forced to bite the bullet and take a chunk out of the budget with a major GSE purchase or repair. Manufacturers are left working double-time to produce a competitive product for the marketplace. In an industry where instability has become a constant, copper has just become another variable.

Copper prices reached an all-time high in May '06 and have subsequently fallen 25 percent in recent months. Even with the drop, the price remains 75-percent higher than it was a year ago.