Letters to the Editor
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Even if there weren't delays
The level of service is so bad it wouldn't make any difference anyway. It's a lost cause, completely and utterly a failure. Let's say the airlines eliminate 25% of all flights. Do you what will happen? Nothing. Nothing will happen. They will still hold you up at the airport and feel your genitals in line with the other terrorists. They will still cancel flights randomly because somewhere in the Euclidian space of the known globe there's a raincloud. They will still oversell the seats they have. They will still have to call the service mechanic back to replace a lightbulb in the cockpit. It doesn't matter none of it makes the least difference. They had turboprops and they clunked along and then they replaced them regional jets that sit on the tarmac like everyone else. They want to replace those with new turboprops and guess what - that's for their cost equation not your benefit.
It's a Bangalore bus crammed with smelly screaming people, fried food and cheap perfume. It's jetfuel fumed standing in line noisy broken metal detector strip search hellscape. May they all crash, burn, rust and die.
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to drive or to fly...the train takes forever and the buses break down, are uncomfortable
I have an aged mother who is in an "assisted living" facilty near Portland Maine. I live in Manhattan. The last four times I have flown that route - two on Jet Blue in and out of Kennedy and two on Continental out of Newark..the planes have either been delayed hours..or just cancelled at the last minute. In only one case was it weather related.
One of those times I needed to get mother inot a hospital early the next morning..so I had to be there. Continental got me on a plane to Boston and I had to rent a car from there. The drive is only six hours depending on traffic and it is not a pelasant trip and I have to rent the damn car. But this time I'm driving. Of course the last time I drove I swore I'd never do it again... It would be nice to be able to take a boat.
The longest delay I've experienced was after landing in a blizzard a few years ago coming back from England we were on the runway for four and half hours watching Seabiscuit over and over and over..but there was snow..that's different..so we were all just happy to be on the ground.
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Reality beats perception yet again...
Despite the common wisdom that people hate flying because of the delays and cancellations that's obviously not the case because people's actions speak louder than words. Basic economics will dictate when the airlines should modify their schedules and jets to compensate for increasing delays and cancellations, and it sounds like this is exactly what Delta is already doing.
I'm an adamant critic of the airline industry (not airlines, airports, TSA, or any other aspect, the whole industry) for being irresponsible about their duties aside from safety, but it's hard even for me to criticize them for adding more flight options, better direct service, etc. Where I can criticize them is on their performance supplying their basic service under adverse conditions. Given a traffic delay, bad weather, or mechanical problem, most airlines still fail to deal with the situation in a responsible and professional manner. Everyone involved needs to be reminded that the industry isn't about flying (reread that...not about flying) and in fact any airlines that thinks it's sole purpose is flying is just asking for business problems, it's about transportation of people.
Recognizing that the airline industry is about transportation of people, and that airplanes are simply the most visible part of this process, and you suddenly realize that Mr. Smith is correct in pointing out that a lot of these delays are related to ground problems, not airplane/flight problems. Let's raise the flag and get the airline industry to start looking at the whole problem, not just the jets, ATC, etc. I'm confident that every passenger would have an easier time dealing with delays if they saw an efficient process in place from airport parking all the way through baggage claim.
One of the biggest problems I see in the industry is this obsession with one problem at a time, it's the sum of the problems that really gets under people's skin. Thirty minutes to park, 45 minutes to get through security, 30 minutes at the gate, 15 minutes to board and push back, 15 minutes to taxi, 60 minute flight, 10 minute delay to land, 10 minute delay to taxi to the gate, 5 minutes to offload the plane...wow, that's a lot of minutes for a 60 minute flight and we haven't even picked up our bags yet.
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Driving to EDI? and, rail costs higher than you think
I did the National - Newark - Edinburgh round trip a few weeks ago and aside from 45 minutes driving around for a runway slot at Newark, it really wasn't too bad in terms of on-time arrivals and suchlike. The pilot got a collective chuckle about 30 minutes in to our driving tour of Newark when he came on the PA and announced that we were 1.5 miles closer to Edinburgh when we had left the gate... meanwhile I was looking out the window and being amazed at all the long-haul large planes being blocked by regional jets. I think usage restrictions or premium pricing schemes would be a completely appropriate way to shift airline traffic.
As for rail, it's a fine idea but not a trivial investment. I dug this out from a letter I wrote 6 months ago:
As a fan of intercity travel on rail, I took a quick look to get an idea of the cost of implementing high-speed rail as a realistic alternative to air travel. The TGV East project is expected to yield 400 km of track, to support speeds of 320 km/h, at a cost of about Euro 4 billion. Local equivalent would be 250 miles of track, 200 mph, and about $5.32 billion, or about $20 million / mile of track.
Put it another way, at those rates, connecting Chicago and Minneapolis (total metro areas populations about 14 million if Wikipedia is to be believed) would cost $8 billion.
Even if you take a discount on cheaper land and labor - heck, I'll give you 50% off -- that's $4 billion. And we haven't even touched the challenges of building high-speed rail infrastructure that remains consistent in temperature extremes that would cause a French railway engineer to take early retirement.
I just don't see the economics being there, especially since we as a nation can barely maintain the not-exactly-high-end infrastructure that we have. Which is unfortunate, but there you go.
And that doesn't cover the complexity of trying to keep rail infrastructure in good shape in the weather extremes that we get in the US... or the likelihood that the trains would be built somewhere else.