Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Here is an interesting CNN story on the FAA and their take on delays. They are telling the airlines to improve schedules or they will do it for them. And the thing that kills me is this ignorant quote.

A spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents commercial airlines, said the trade group is willing to talk about ways to reduce congestion -- to a point.

"No carrier is going to be willing to reduce its schedule unless we see that industry addresses all of the causes of delay," David Castelveter said.

Wow. The delays are because of scheduling. It is because you put three flights into an airport when you could pull it off with one or two. Of course if the numbers were that small it would be no problem. It actually comes when airlines are scheduling eight flights a day between city pairs when three or four would do the job. It would mean using larger jets but that is their problem and not the problems of taxpayers. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for billions in airport improvements because the likes of Delta, United and American Airlines can show no restraint when it comes to their schedules? I wish the FAA would step in and hack the schedules at ORD, ATL, LGA, etc significantly. This is the only way the problem will get corrected.

While 70ish seat jets are nice they are becoming the problem and not the solution to airline travel. While it is nice that NW serves LGA from IND there is a problem with sending 3x daily on CRJs to that congested airport. This is in addition to the DC9/A319 they send in the morning. What good is four daily flights if one of them is canceled on a daily basis or one or more is delayed? And if NW did the right thing and cut out one flight another airline would do the wrong thing and add another. The FAA just needs to slot restrict every delay prone airport and slash the number of takeoffs and landings by a significant number. Perhaps the airlines would then manage their slots a little better.

/rant

Story Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/...ng/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

Well, it's a real catch-22, though, isn't it? On the one hand, airlines are still largely forced to provide service to certain small airports - basically, if they are the last airline serving a little airport like Quincy, IL, they are required to continue serving it. So what are you going to serve Quincy with? Probably a regional jet, because passengers won't fly props anymore. And if you own a regional jet, are you just going to run it once per day? No, it's an expensive asset and you're going to try to keep it flying as much as possible, which means you'll fly 3 round trips per day at least. And the flying public doesn't want just one or two flights per day, they want a range of choices. And they want nonstop flights. That means small and medium sized airports are going to clog up the large, high-demand airports with flights on small planes.

What has to happen to change this is A.) exactly what you said about slot-restricting busy airports, which is a solution very much like using a blunt object, or B.) more airline mergers. That would essentially consolidate lots of small planes from multiple airlines on a particular route into far fewer, larger planes, on those routes.

Unfortunately, both A and B would raise fares - probably by a lot. If you can fly IND-LGA now for about $250 midweek, imagine what happens if you slot-restrict the crap out of that airport and reduce it to 2 flights daily? The demand for that nonstop route suddenly exceeds the supply of seats (even with larger planes, which an airline can't just turn around and replace smaller planes with, by the way), and the price goes way up. If you merge all the airlines together and go from , say, 6 legacy carriers to 3, then reduced competition causes fares to rise.

Americans want convenient, nonstop flights from every city to every other city, all day long, and they don't want to pay for it. We can't have it all at the same time; something would have to give.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Are you certain they have to keep flying if they are the last airline? If that were the case then why did Lafayette lose service completely?

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

I'm not sure how the rules work exactly. But I do know that there is something in the rules that dates back to the days of regulation. I think it applies to airports that are further than X distance from other airports of a certain FAA category. The rule is in place, basically, to ensure that communities like Grand Island, Nebraska don't become further isolated by losing air service.

The other thing to consider, of course, is the strong political pressure brought to bear on airlines to keep service to small communities. This is why DEC - Decatur, IL still has service. The senators and representatives, plus the state politicos, leverage their role in overseeing and funding various federal programs, and their influence over ORD airport, to keep service to small airports in Illinois. In fact, consider that the state of Illinois has commercial service at ORD, MDW, RFD, MLI, UIN (Quincy), PIA, BMI, CMI, SPI, MWA, and that taxpayer-funded boondoggle, BLV. That's 11 airports with commercial service. Indiana has four - five if you want to throw in Gary. Of course, CVG and SDF serve large portions of the state. So maybe a better comparison Kansas vs. Indiana. KS has K.C., Manhattan, Topeka, Wichita, Dodge City, Garden City, Hays, Liberal, and Salina. That's 9 airports compared to our 4/5, and Indiana has almost twice the population of Kansas. Or take Nebraska - Lincoln, Omaha, Grand Island, Kearney, North Platte, and Scottsbluff - 6 airports in a state with a population slightly smaller than the 9-county Indianapolis Metropolitan Statistical Area. But I'm digressing. The point is, there are lots of reasons why airlines do what they do, many of which are not grounded in logic or economics.