Interesting Article on Air Traffic Delays

I ran across this interview earlier this week, and thought it might be good for discussion on the Fast Lane...we need a new approach to reducing air traffic delays, and there are some interesting thoughts in this piece...

-Secretary Peters

Comments

[Fahim Mohamed]

Cancelled flights create more problems than flights delayed more than 15 minutes.

The cancleed flight should be reported on On time Arrival and Departure data, as well as cancelled data.

Simple argument, if its cancelled-then its not on time.

[mrbview]

I believe more supply is the best way to deal with growing demand.

Our population is growing and our economy has grown throughout history.

More supply can meet growing demand. A ration-based approach of cutting back flights should fail.

[Thomas Sullivan]

This is an excellent article. It is yet again, bad airline behavior that is causing much of the delay problem. By clogging up the airspace and slots with increasingly smaller planes (even to large markets like LA and Miami) as well as over-scheduling the prime slots, the airlines are the prime cause of delays. The comment above on capacity is nice to talk about but very difficult to accomplish due to the physical limitations at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark. There is simply no more space for additional runways. Once the FAA, gets control of the slot situation, you will see measurable improvements in the delay area. Also, the FAA needs to scrap the unsafe NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. The marginal promised savings are illusory at best and not worth the risks.

[Richard Kilgore]

I have time to find and participate in this blog because I am stuck in a filthy Chicago hotel room due to a delayed flight which led to a missed international connection for our group of 11 students, faculty and friends. So instead of touring Hong Kong tomorrow with our students, we will be subjected to another day of dehumanizing indifference by individuals who have been desensitized by repeated horror that they can no longer even say "sorry" with any real empathy required to make the word useful. The airline involved knew our connection was delayed and knew we had arrived and were in route to the gate - but rather than wait 5 minutes and remove stand-bys they had seated, they closed the doors and refused to board our group even though they had boarded two other people from our delayed flight who sprinted ahead of us who could not sprint. The gate personnel then morphed into an obscene attitude of feigning understanding of our anger over a situation they themselves created and we became "managed rejects" who had no recourse. We were actually left unattended while these gate personnel as they returned to their lounge after telling us they were needed at another gate. Blogs and self-promoting websites will not solve the problem. In any other industry, this is actionable fraud and failure to perform to contract. Please lead and govern and work on a fix (see EU) rather than working so hard on creating the appearances of working on a fix. I will know which you have chosen by your decision to approve posting of this comment.