Someone defends the airlines for a change...
12-14-2007, 03:18 PM
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Someone defends the airlines for a change...
From the NY Times:
http://jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/
December 13, 2007, 5:10 pm
All Delays Begin in Washington
By Michael J. Boyd
The Federal Aviation Administration’s most recent annual report proudly stated that upgrades to the national air traffic control system were “on track.” As an example, the report heralded the benefits that we will from one much ballyhooed new program, an air-navigation initiative called the Wide Area Augmentation System.
What the report failed to mention is that the wide-area system is now 13 years behind its original schedule.
Likewise, in July the F.A.A. announced that a new ground-control system had been installed at O’Hare airport in Chicago “two years ahead of schedule.” What the agency left out that time was that the original schedule had called for the system to be in place not only at O’Hare but at several other airports this year. The F.A.A. had conveniently “re-benchmarked” the program to make it look on time.
Now the agency is pushing Congress to pay for its overarching “NextGen” system, which the agency says will be “addressing the impact of air traffic growth by increasing National Air Space capacity and efficiency while simultaneously improving safety, environmental impacts, and user access” by 2025. What it leaves out is that the NextGen program is really “LastGen” — the same set of programs that have been in development for years, and almost all of them are years late and far over cost, and some have been significantly scaled down. Yet F.A.A. officials have the crust to accuse airlines in this frustrating travel year of “deceptive scheduling practices.”
NextGen would just be another example of government bungling, were it not for one thing: the agency’s foibles are artificially constricting the nation’s air transportation system, and the squeeze is being felt mostly in small and mid-size communities. Airlines, trying to meet passenger demand, are finding that the Federal air traffic control system cannot handle it reliably, particularly when bad weather gets involved. The results are delays, cancellations and customer inconvenience. The fallout from these, as we’ve seen over the past year, is a ready-made soapbox for politicians, talk-show hosts and know-nothing consumer gadflies to rail against the airline.
So, with little hope that the government will fix things, airlines are beginning to relieve the pressure by reducing or ending service at some smaller and mid-sized cities. This hurts not only those local economies but also the nation as a whole, because it is in precisely such communities that we’re seeing strong foreign economic investment, particularly from Asia.
Hyundai, the Korean automaker, has invested heavily in its Montgomery, Ala., factory. Columbus, Miss., has an Israeli-owned aircraft factory and a European-backed steel mill. Spartanburg, S.C., is the home of the only BMW factory in the United States. Toyota has just decided to locate at Tupelo, Miss. Yet these are exactly the types of communities threatened by flight reductions, because they are best served with smaller airliners that federal decision-making is forcing out of the system.
The F.A.A., under a succession of administrations, has accomplished very little over the past 20 years. But its poor leadership doesn’t deserve all the blame. Congress and the airline industry have, for their parts, demanded no accountability for failure.
So as Congress debates NextGen financing, it can’t continue to take the agency’s assurances that all is going as planned. Rather, it has to demand more innovation and investment in new traffic systems. If we continue to take the aviation administration at its word, economic growth in whole regions will be constrained, simply because air transportation will be forced into a “highest and best use” approach in allocating to the dwindling amount of capacity the deteriorating system can handle.
The airlines, for their part, must hold Congress’s feet to the fire. The huge investment that the government has made in keeping the industry solvent gives them no small amount of lobbying power. They have to make it clear that it’s the F.A.A. that is threatening continued service to our small cities (and their voters).
America is falling behind the rest of the world in many areas. But not having an adequate air transportation system is an inexcusable one for the country that invented air travel and made it the link of a globalized world.
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http://jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/
December 13, 2007, 5:10 pm
All Delays Begin in Washington
By Michael J. Boyd
The Federal Aviation Administration’s most recent annual report proudly stated that upgrades to the national air traffic control system were “on track.” As an example, the report heralded the benefits that we will from one much ballyhooed new program, an air-navigation initiative called the Wide Area Augmentation System.
What the report failed to mention is that the wide-area system is now 13 years behind its original schedule.
Likewise, in July the F.A.A. announced that a new ground-control system had been installed at O’Hare airport in Chicago “two years ahead of schedule.” What the agency left out that time was that the original schedule had called for the system to be in place not only at O’Hare but at several other airports this year. The F.A.A. had conveniently “re-benchmarked” the program to make it look on time.
Now the agency is pushing Congress to pay for its overarching “NextGen” system, which the agency says will be “addressing the impact of air traffic growth by increasing National Air Space capacity and efficiency while simultaneously improving safety, environmental impacts, and user access” by 2025. What it leaves out is that the NextGen program is really “LastGen” — the same set of programs that have been in development for years, and almost all of them are years late and far over cost, and some have been significantly scaled down. Yet F.A.A. officials have the crust to accuse airlines in this frustrating travel year of “deceptive scheduling practices.”
NextGen would just be another example of government bungling, were it not for one thing: the agency’s foibles are artificially constricting the nation’s air transportation system, and the squeeze is being felt mostly in small and mid-size communities. Airlines, trying to meet passenger demand, are finding that the Federal air traffic control system cannot handle it reliably, particularly when bad weather gets involved. The results are delays, cancellations and customer inconvenience. The fallout from these, as we’ve seen over the past year, is a ready-made soapbox for politicians, talk-show hosts and know-nothing consumer gadflies to rail against the airline.
So, with little hope that the government will fix things, airlines are beginning to relieve the pressure by reducing or ending service at some smaller and mid-sized cities. This hurts not only those local economies but also the nation as a whole, because it is in precisely such communities that we’re seeing strong foreign economic investment, particularly from Asia.
Hyundai, the Korean automaker, has invested heavily in its Montgomery, Ala., factory. Columbus, Miss., has an Israeli-owned aircraft factory and a European-backed steel mill. Spartanburg, S.C., is the home of the only BMW factory in the United States. Toyota has just decided to locate at Tupelo, Miss. Yet these are exactly the types of communities threatened by flight reductions, because they are best served with smaller airliners that federal decision-making is forcing out of the system.
The F.A.A., under a succession of administrations, has accomplished very little over the past 20 years. But its poor leadership doesn’t deserve all the blame. Congress and the airline industry have, for their parts, demanded no accountability for failure.
So as Congress debates NextGen financing, it can’t continue to take the agency’s assurances that all is going as planned. Rather, it has to demand more innovation and investment in new traffic systems. If we continue to take the aviation administration at its word, economic growth in whole regions will be constrained, simply because air transportation will be forced into a “highest and best use” approach in allocating to the dwindling amount of capacity the deteriorating system can handle.
The airlines, for their part, must hold Congress’s feet to the fire. The huge investment that the government has made in keeping the industry solvent gives them no small amount of lobbying power. They have to make it clear that it’s the F.A.A. that is threatening continued service to our small cities (and their voters).
America is falling behind the rest of the world in many areas. But not having an adequate air transportation system is an inexcusable one for the country that invented air travel and made it the link of a globalized world.
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