Letters to the Editor
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Obvious Solution
The obvious solution would be to cap all airports to their actual capacity. This could be figured out by finding the number of aircraft that could takeoff and land in a typical day without any delays. For Newark, you'd probably have to cut back traffic by 30%. This would do several things:
- It would raise the price of airfare. That won't be pleasant, but I'm willing to pay 20% more in order to be on time and not be treated like cattle.
- Higher prices will give carriers more cash, so they can put back some of the perks they once had
- It would encourage carriers to use larger aircraft since there are fewer slots. Larger crafts are more efficient per passenger.
- It would greatly cut back on the delays.
- It would discourage super-hubs where 90% of the congestion takes place. You'll have more point to point flights
- It would encourage the growth of regional alternative transportation. I don't think the U.S needs a highspeed national train network, but there are places in the U.S. where a high speed bullet train would work quite well: The Northeast Corridor, the Texas Triangle (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio), the California coast.
Flying has become so unpleasant that I now refuse jobs based simply to avoid airports.
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Its not R****n airport
No self-respecting airline pilot would call DCA anything other than National, would they?
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There is no solution
Air travel will continue to crumble until it becomes the domain of either people too rich to give a shit or people who simply don't have much other choice. It's like living in Manhattan or India: either a Hobbesian hell or the crystal palace floating among the clouds.
There is no solution to to air travel. Why just last month I had a flight canceled on me for the obligatory weather/computer/we don't know sir reason. Their recovery was to offer me a flight the next day. One would normally shrug and say - fneh. But I was going to a wedding and couldn't really change the plans of 250 other people. Did I mention that the original flight was 90 minutes and that the door to door time for their make up was 10 hrs? Ten hours, a day later. That's customer service from American Airlines. Anyway, when I asked to speak to someone else about this their response was to pick up the phone and call airport security who then happily volunteered to escort me out of the airport. Wound up renting a car and driving 9 hrs. AA wound up taking my 50,000 ff miles and the $18 whatever 'processing fee though'.
There is no solution to air travel and we should just let it die and degrade into the Bus to Bangalore, or, the Pleasure Palace in the sky. I sincerely hope it dies.
And honestly, the next person who points a blue rubber gloved finger in my face is getting it broken off and jabbed in their fucking eyes.
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When it all comes Unglued
More Frequent Flights, Smaller Planes, Lower Wages, More Outsourcing, but what happens when it all comes unglued as it did for us going from Austin to Minneapolis on the evening of June 29th?
It's been raining down in Texas big time (we have all your water Georgia!)and as it rains and flights get cancelled and other flights get maxed out where does it all end? We were flying the big airline that hubs thru Dallas/Fort Worth, start of the 4th of July week. Weather had us holding on the ground and in the air such that we missed our connection in Dallas. The last flight out was cancelled (without notification on the concourse flight status boards) Has anyone else noticed that they never post cancelled on the boards any more? Has the accuracy of these boards collapsed? We hit several glaring errors. When we went to get reticketed, the very helpful agent literally spent 30 minutes trying to find some next day connection from Dallas to Minneapolis. He could not do it! The system was totally saturated! He suggested we get our name on the standby list for the first flight out. So after a trip from hell to the hotel and a towering 4.5 hours of sleep, we were back early enough to be placed number 37 on the standby list. We got out on the 4th flight at 3PM. We would have never made it if half the list had not simply bailed out and gave up. O, and the last leg.... our 16 year old son (!) was literally in tears from exhaustion and having to sit next to a 2 year old that literally screamed, not just cried, all the way from Dallas to Minneapolis. It took 2 days for us to recover. We really need to rethink this vacation stuff. Is it worth it?
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Flying-the good and the bad
My wife is in Minnesota, which is an easy trip from Idaho Falls now, because of the "regional" jets. Two and a half hours from IDA to MSP, no plane changes. It used to require either driving to SLC, or paying an exorbitant sum to Delta to fly there. Then the long time waiting for the plane from SLC to MSP.
My company is making a couple of deals that will require me to take frequent trips to Las Vegas and San Diego. I've almost decided to buy a Dynamic WT-9, a carbon fiber two-seater made in the Slovak Republic. It uses a Rotax 100 HP engine (same engine as in the Predator) to cruise at 165 MPH at 10,000 feet, burning 4 GPH. I will get to Las Vegas about as fast as a jet, because I will not have to put up with the plane changes and the bullshit at the airport. If I go IFR I guess I will add to the congestion.
You noted that the regional jets are not made in the US. Is anything? The light plane business will also move overseas, because the US manufacturers have lost the ability to innovate. There is no market for gas hogs that burn 10-15 GPH to go 130 MPH.
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The Halo Effect
Patrick, it seems you're suffering from the halo effect. Now that you're back with the majors, you're blaming regionals and fractionals and "little" airplanes for the nation's air travel woes. Your "if I were czar" strategy of consolidation deals with only one factor contributing to airline delays. What about increasing the capacity of the ATC system? What about building new runways, or making it possible for existing runways to handle more traffic?
I'm not sure what digging on the relative inexperience of regional airline pilots has to do with airline schedules, either. Certainly, the average age of regional pilots is younger than pilots at the majors. But they're hardworking, motivated, well-trained pilots who fly more legs in a day than many seasoned major airline captains do in a month. And I assure you, while regional captains aren't getting rich, they do earn much more than the parking lot attendant, and probably have just a skosh more training, too. And let's not forget that the hallowed majors have at times, even in recent history, hired wildly inexperienced first officers.
I think being czar has gone to your head.