Four months ago, Mexico got its air traffic system downgraded from a Category 1 to a Category 2 rating by the US FAA.  This came at the same time that Mexicana was melting down in a great fury and both events were an economic and psychological blow to Mexico.

Well, they just got upgraded back to Category 1 after just four months (nearly unprecedented) and with strong assistance from the FAA in the United States.  In fact, the FAA will continue providing assistance to ensure that Mexico maintains the changes it made and maintains it status, more importantly.

This is great for Mexico and it is a well executed response to this problem.  It’s also great for US airlines because when that status got downgraded, US airlines were suddenly no longer able to codeshare with Mexican airlines and that probably accelerated Mexicana’s demise, to tell the truth.  Now, airlines on both sides can engage in codesharing again (Hello Southwest and Volaris)  and the world airline alliances can get busy in Mexico once more. 

Mexico shouldn’t have let itself get lumped into the ranks of countries like Croatia and Nigeria and their lapse in oversight was a bad thing.  But instead of acting outraged, they got busy and to their credit, they fixed the problems with lightning speed.  Give them credit.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Airline News by ajax
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The Department of Transportation continues to hoot about a reduction in “tarmac delays” and I want to reiterate that we don’t know anything yet.  The DoT claim of little or no additional cancellations is speculative really because . . . wait for it. . . we don’t have data on why a particular flight was cancelled.  Or, more accurately, we’re not specifically tracking flights that were cancelled because of the potential for long delay.  All we can go by is whether overall cancellations were up (in a year to year comparison by month) or down. 

The problem is that there are a number of other environmental and operational factors that will affect cancellations as well.  Did the airplane push back and find itself unable to start an engine when it neared take-off?  Did the flight get cancelled because a massive thunderstorm parked itself over the airport?  Did the airline simply run out of pilots to fly the flights?  Even if there was a cancellation because of a flight nearing a 3 hour limit, the chances are nearly certain that there were other concerns bringing it to that point in the first place.

With all of that said, I will say that it is pleasant to learn that there was just one 3 hour+ delay in August (by 20 minutes) and that no fines have been issued yet.  So much for those running around and talking about just how awful those fines will be when it comes to airlines finances.  In fact, when you read about the fines and see $27,500 per passenger, please keep in mind that that is the *maximum* fine that can be imposed.  Typically, the FAA imposes fines that come no where near what the maximums are.

In the end, let me repeat my mantra:   We are a long way away from being able to judge the harm or effectiveness of this rule.  We don’t know anything yet.  There are no trends and no one should be hooting or crying about it yet.  Shame on the FAA for continuing to call a victory over this.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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It’s been noted that fines levied against airlines by the FAA have risen sharply over the past 2 years and they show no signs of leveling off either.  USA Today in the Sky reports that Airtran was fined $20,000 for advertising $39 fares instead of the $44 they actually were.  Delta was fined for improperly displaying taxes and fees on some fares.  Other airlines are now getting fined for blatantly violating their own policies on lost luggage or for treating handicapped people inappropriately. 

Many see these fines as draconian and I see them as an example of what largely has been wrong w/ the Federal Aviation Administration for decades.  They are just way too close to the industry that they are supposed to regulate and govern.  That doesn’t mean that I advocate an adversarial position on the part of the FAA  towards airlines.  And it doesn’t mean that the FAA needs to make hay with the public by portraying itself as “tough” either. 

It means that the FAA lost its objectivity long ago and while I do applaud the reversal of that direction in many cases, I”m unhappy to suddenly seeing the FAA treat airlines like they are rats now.  The truth is, we, the people, created the monster (FAA) and we, the people, allowed the airline industry to grossly influence that agency for far too long.  Of course the airlines used all the influence they could to move the agency that governs their operations in the direction they preferred.  It’s an exercise in self preservation and no one should be surprised by it.

What we do need is a reorganization of that federal agency so that it can become less political and less influence by airlines.  While airlines *should* have some input on regulations that will govern them, they should not get to write the rules and hand them over to the FAA.  The FAA shouldn’t be bobbing and weaving to the political tunes written by Congress and/or the Executive either. 

It really should be operating much more independently like the Federal Reserve.  It needs to be a bit more above the fray and a independent enough to hold airlines to a tough standard when it comes to safety and fair play.  In fact, the FAA has been so unduly influenced and, at many times, unaccountable for its decisions and actions, we’ve exacerbate the problem by demanding more accountability via Congress and the Secretary of the Department of Transportation.  The FAA now simply reacts.

But the FAA needs to plan.  It needs to plan for the long term and it needs to be able to meet demands for qualified staff and it needs to govern airlines independently, fairly and appropriate to the times.  By operating independently, I also mean that its budget needs to come out from under Congressional whimsy (at least its administrative budget) and it needs to become stable and self-supporting for the long term. 

It needs to focus on providing better systems and great excellence when it comes to air traffic control.  We, as a country, are woefully behind the curve when it comes to these systems and we’re following, not leading.  This isn’t a corrupt government agency but it’s one that is pulled in too many directions all too often and it is far too frequently subject to conflicting influences and opinions.  It is an agency that needs to be a bit more above the fray and able to do the right thing.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Aircraft Development, Airline Service, Airports by ajax
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Two days ago, I took exception to a post made by the very popular blogger, The Cranky Flier, over statements made about the 3 Hour Rule.  The dialogue taking place over there highlights the biggest problems with arguments being made for and against the 3 Hour Rule.  Too many judgements are being made on both sides on the basis of incomplete data and emotional arguments rather than facts.

The FAA argued that tarmac delays were dramatically down versus a slight increase in cancellations and, I agree, crowing about it just a bit too much.  Cranky argued that the “slight increase” was in fact a 20% increase and there was an emotional reaction to that.  The problem is, no definition or data is being given for really measuring the impact of the rule on cancellations or the impact of the rule on people. 

Most of the original arguments made for a 3 Hour Rule were derived from exceptionally rare events.  Even when you considered those events in a seasonal context, they were vastly outside the norms.  Indeed, you might have been able to say that 3+ hour delays occurred infrequently enough to be considered statistically insignificant.  What we do know is that if your population of events is large enough, you’re going to have a few that occur far outside the norms. 

Further, we reacted emotionally to the conditions people sat through on many of those flights and really only to the subjective reactions on the part of people who spoke to the press.  We never heard from the person who just sat on the plane quietly for 7 hours and thanked his lucky stars he finally arrived home and got off.   That person doesn’t play well on CNN. 

I do think that there is an argument to be made for limits on the basis of health and welfare of individuals on flights.  I do not think it is wise to hold people on a MD-80 for 8 hours except in the case of major emergencies.

There are health issues to consider such as the close proximity and contact that occurs between a wide variety of people in that environment.  Air quality is another.  Sanitation is also a serious one.  Food and water is really a strong factor as well.  And let me point out that we will divert an entire aircraft to an unscheduled stop when someone is having a medical emergency.  There should be a discussion on how we value the health and welfare of people in these situations.  And just because 4 people want to go at all costs doesn’t mean that rises above the needs of 4 people who have serious health conditions that could well be impacted by a prolonged stay inside an aircraft. 

We should carefully evaluate anything we hear in the media about cancellations as well.  Should we be giving full weight to the person who had a flight cancelled and who suffered a 24 hour delay vs the other 10 people who had a flight cancelled and suffered a 5 hour delay?   Is a businessman’s need to get to the next meeting superior to the mother’s need to get her 2 young children off a plane because of health considerations?  The truth is, I don’t have black and white answers to questions like that but it would be good to see a debate on issues like that.  We, as consumers, should see a bit of argument on both sides and get a more complete picture before we start judging these moments purely on our needs at that particular moment.

As far as the data goes, we don’t know what the impact of this rule is.  We aren’t measuring the impact by the number of people per 100,000 travelers who are getting their flights cancelled specifically because of the 3 hour rule.  We know that cancellation rates go up and down.  Those cancellations can be caused by seasonal events, bad airline operations or, frankly, just a bad week of equipment failures at a particular airline (I believe it was AA who recently saw not one, not two but three 767s go INOP in a single day).  We do know that the overwhelming majority of flights never come close to spending 3 hours delay on the airfield.  Seriously, we do know that.  We know that the frequency of occurrence for delays going past 3 hours prior to the 3 Hour Rule was negligible by any standard. 

What I believe (which is different than objective fact) is that we also have a need for some kind of rule governing those instances that did fall outside all of the norms and which were not caused by major acts of god or major emergencies.  As Doug Parker said, the airlines did this to themselves in many respects.   There were enough instances that we, as a nation, found unacceptable given the particular circumstances around the event.  Airlines and airports didn’t deal with those situations considering what might be humane but instead were making objective decisions based on operational and financial data. 

Objective data and objective decisions are, generally speaking, good to have.  However, we live in a world with human beings who are very subjective creatures.  Yes, you really do have to give consideration to that. 

Statistically speaking, an increase in cancellations that sees a rise from 1.18 percent to 1.43 denotes an exceptionally slight increase from an objective point of view.  The FAA was right.  However, the FAA failed to consider the number of people who were potentially impacted by that slight increase and Cranky was right to point out that these incredibly slight increases do have an impact on a rather large number of people.  By Cranky’s math, that slight increase potentially affected 150,000 more people.  Are we satisfied with the idea that more people than the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium can hold were materially affected by a cancellation?  Well, we can’t even make that judgment because we don’t know all of the “why” behind each cancellation. 

But I think we can agree that it isn’t anything to brag about when 150,000 more people were affected by cancellations.  If nothing else, it is in appropriate to reduce people, human beings, to that kind of statement.

At some point we all should start acknowledging that our airline transportation system is imperfect and cannot delivery you to your destination 100% on time without any cancellations.  If you travel by air, you are going to be affected by a combination of factors virtually every time.  It’s time to be a bit more reasonable in our expectations.

On the other hand, it’s time for airlines to start acknowledging that as well.  One of the biggest causes of uproars over these kinds of situations is an airlines propensity to expect us to adhere to a byzantine set of rules governing our options when traveling while allowing themselves all manner of leeway for those same events.  Airlines want a $20 fee to check a bag but they don’t want to refund that money when they don’t perform.  However, when you miss flight due to a large traffic jam or weather event, you’re often expected to pay penalties and change fees for being affected by something outside your control. 

Not even Las Vegas has a better rigged game than the present US airline industry.  That is what is driving the perception that airlines are abusing people.  And I think it’s manifesting itself in reactions to the more outrageous although exceptionally infrequent events such as a long tarmac delay.  A little more balance between the airline and its customer is called for in my opinion.

Is it right for the government and/or the FAA to regulate some of this behaviour?  Absolutely.  Airlines are using public airways and other public infrastructure while serving the public.  They benefit from a great deal of government investment and expenditures.  The government is not created by the businesses for the businesses.  It’s here for the citizens.  The people who vote and who are ultimately and individually responsible for this nation.  That said, it doesn’t mean that the regulation and oversight needs to be hamhanded or political either.  However, just like no human being or airline is perfect, neither is government. 

Let’s be a bit more realistic about our expectations for all parties involved in this subject area.

Filed under: Airline News, Airline Service, Airports, Frequent Flier, security by ajax
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The FAA has proposed new rules to govern rest for pilots and I’m sure it will set off considerable debate.  I haven’t read the proposed rules in detail but the highlights didn’t really encourage me.  In fact, I don’t think fatigue is being addressed in those rules very well at all.  Instead, I think the perception of the problem is being addressed.

Pilots aren’t just fatigued because the number of hours they work in a day.  They aren’t fatigued because we only require 8 hours of rest period between duty time on successive days.  Both of those conditions do contribute, yes.  But one of the hidden problems has more to do with how a pilot has to manage his or her life with respect to their career.

Mind you, we aren’t requiring 8 hours (9 hours in the new rule) of sleep between duty periods.  Just rest.  Rest being largely defined as “do what you gotta do to get your stuff done and get some sort of sleep.”  A pilot entering a “rest period” still has to eat, bathe, tend to family obligations, etc, as well as sleep. 

In addition, many pilots have to commute to their duty stations.  A pilot assigned to New York City for duty may be commuting in from Topeka, Kansas.  That means to make a duty start time of 8am on a Monday, they probably left mid-day the previous day, flew to NYC, went to a “crash pad” or hotel room, had some kind of meal and some kind of sleep but then got up as early as 5am to make an 8am duty time.  That doesn’t allow for much rest much less *quality* rest.

If we’re going to have new rules, it would seem to be better to craft rules that allow for quality rest on a regular basis.  That doesn’t mean every night necessarily but it does mean more frequently than every 7 days too.  We need rules that, perhaps, govern how much time you can spend commuting in the 24 hours prior to your duty time.  Do we really want pilots spending 8 hours in a day to get to their duty station and then put them on the job for as much as 8 hours of flying and 12+ hours of duty time? 

Maybe pilots shouldn’t be allowed to spend more than 4 hours commuting to their job on their duty day and no more than 6 hours commuting the day before their duty day.  I’m certain there is a number to be found that would help reduce real fatigue. 

How many hours someone can work in a particular day is important, yes.  But how many hours they can work in a week and how many hours they spend commuting back and forth to their job is even more important.

These new rules were spurred by the Colgan Air crash in New York State.  Fatigue was cited as a contributing problem.  Let me point out that those pilots had commuted coast to coast and their “rest” was garned by sleeping on the aircraft they were commuting on and in pilot “quiet rooms” at airports.  That’s not rest, that’s a holding action at best.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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When the Federal Aviation Administration downgraded Mexico’s aviation safety from Category 1 to Category 2, people took notice and, no doubt, so did Mexico’s airlines.  Does this reflect on Mexico’s airlines?  Yes, I think so. 

Mexico has joined the ranks of countries such as Haiti, Congo and Serbia & Montenegro.  In fact, the only nation listed as Category 2 that surprises me is Israel and I suspect that has to do more with execution and very specific circumstances than it does with technical quality.  Nonetheless, when you join those ranks, it speaks poorly of your country *and* your airlines.

Is a nation’s aviation infrastructure always indicative of the airlines?  No, of course not.  There are plenty of Category 1 nations who have had airlines that had unsafe operations over the years including the United States.  However, I can’t think of a particularly outstanding airline coming from a Category 2 nation except El Al.   You don’t really hear of the operational excellence of airlines from Honduras, Paraguay or the Phillipines, do you? 

This is bad for both Mexico and Mexico’s airlines.  And with Mexicana trying desperately to leap off a cliff and kill itself, it looks even worse. 

Suddenly, Mexican airlines can no longer codeshare with US airlines because of this.  That means participation in alliances is going to mean very little in terms of revenue. That is going to hurt.  And, let’s face it, Mexico doesn’t have a great reputation for fixing its problems quickly.  The Mexican Way is to bicker about it for as much as a decade before doing something.

It would be in the best interest of airlines in Mexico to start safety audits with IATA immediately and to put political pressure on the government to fix this asap.  Sadly, I think this is going to get much worse before it gets much better. 

I am a huge fan of Mexico.  I genuinely enjoy its people and much of its culture and I want them to succeed every day.  That said, success isn’t going to happen until its current government and, more importantly, its businesses and citizens come together to insist on excellence.  They have, quite literally, a major conflict going on in their drug war and a crumbling financial infrastructure and waning exports to countries like the US and Canada.  This development in aviation puts them at a further disadvantage with its partner trading countries and it needs to get fixed fast.

Mexico needs to ask for help from the US and other countries fast.  Or they can contact Swaziland or the Ukraine and ask for advice on how to dig one’s grave even deeper.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Airline News, Airlines Alliances, Airports, security by ajax
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Over the past year and particularly over the past 6 months we have heard a great deal about NextGen Air Traffic Control Systems using GPS for guidance.  GPS will allow aircraft to fly more precise routes and permit distances between aircraft to be reduced which should allow more “capacity” into our system.

Increased precision should permit a “redesign” of approaches to airports that will allow aircraft to enter a “pattern” earlier and perform continuous descent approaches that will save fuel and even reduce the workload on pilots.

On flights over oceans, aircraft could use GPS to precisely locate  themselves and then automatically report back their position(s) to traffic control centers which could then “tighten up” routes across those oceans and allow more aircraft to follow an optimal route. 

There is no doubt that GPS is overdue in this game but it isn’t necessarily the “no downside” solution to our problems either. 

GPS signals are provided by satellites and things can happen to those satellites to either block or severely degrade the signals.  Sunspot activity can affect their signals,  for instance.  It’s also not unheard of to suddenly find satellites decommissioned because they were hit by space debris or such intense solar storms.   Suddenly loss of those signals could result in a very intense situation where we find tightly space aircraft without the ability to precisely locate themselves.  The chances for this are, admittedly, statistically very low.  It’s worth an acceptable risk provided aircraft retain guidance redundancy with other systems not dependent on satellites.

Indeed, not all GPS signals are actually emitted from satellites.  There are ground based augmentation systems that permit a finer degree of precision in certain areas.  In fact, one such use is in Instrument Landing Systems being designed for the future.

But there is a security problem with GPS.  First, it is possible to “spoof” GPS signals.  In fact, it’s relatively easy to “spoof” these signals and a reason why the military doesn’t rely completely on GPS signals for guiding munitions and why they’re developing other systems that are not satellite based but which do provide accurate relative navigation.  

Signals by which aircraft would navigate are encrypted but that encryption is somewhat out of date for this era.  While a terrorist wouldn’t necessarily be able to spoof the signal, a foreign country could conceivably do so.  And you can do such “spoofing” by sending a signal from the ground, air or space with equipment that isn’t very costly and not very hard to engineer. 

While aircraft aren’t necessarily going to experience their guidance being impacted by pranksters or terrorists, the risk for it being a target of a foreign nation who decides its at war with the United States or some other country does exist.   Any country capable of doing the math and engineering technology from the 1980’s can potentially engage in this.   That might include countries such as North Korea or Iran.

In addition and quite unfortunately, China has shown its willingness to strike at satellites with missiles.  Again, any country capable of building an intercontinental ballastic missile is now capable of striking at GPS satellites in space.  And don’t think that those won’t be targets in a conflict, they will be.

While we have some safeguards and the United States Air Force works very hard at securing and protecting the existing satellite system, we really need a global commercial navigation system that is secured by a larger, more redundant grid of satellites.  A system that is owned and maintained by responsible nations of the world and one that is designed for air and sea navigation.  A system that is encrypted with modern encryption and upgradeable for the future.   And a system that can be “turned off” selectively for certain regions or countries in times of conflict. 

I’m thrilled we seem to be moving forward with a new generation of navigation systems.  It’s long overdue but I do wish that we would consider the security risks inherent with these systems just a bit more.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Airports, security by ajax
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Recently the FAA has required operators of 767 aircraft to inspect the engine pylons on their fleet because cracking was found on a few pylons in the American Airlines fleet recently.  A co-worker expressed concern about this because they will be flying an American 767 in a few weeks and asked about it. 

I would have absolutely no worries about flying on a 767 of any type despite this discovery.  As aircraft age, they do develop new trends in how their structures age.  While the pylons found had cracked, very few, so far, have been discovered to have actual cracks.  I have no doubt that there will be increased inspections on this area of the aircraft and if pylons are showing fatigue, they’ll be replaced immediately. 

Yes, it stirs up pictures of a certain DC-10 from the 1970’s in Chicago.  However, there are differences between the two aircraft.  First, the DC-10 cracks developed because of improper maintenace procedures.  The cracks found on the 767 result from simple metal fatigue.  How is that different?  In the latter case, the progression is much more preditable typically.  In the former situation, severe stress was being placed on parts and in areas where it wasn’t supposed to be.  It is kind of like feeling sore and tired and how you got that way. If you were beat up by someone, you’re sore and tired and you may have other injuries.  If you’re just old, it’s a natural consequence of age and something you can do something about but it doesn’t necessarily indicate catastrophe or other injuries either.

Yes, fly the 767 with confidence.  It’s an aircraft that will be around for some time to come.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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Do we need regulation for better passenger service in the airline industry?  Well, I don’t think we need regulation for price or route frequency or food.  We don’t.  We’re fine.  Aircraft are transporting people just fine every day and doing it credibly. 

However, where we could stand some government oversight is in how airlines meet or, rather, don’t meet obligations that are implied in the sale of a seat on a flight.  If airlines are going to charge baggage fees and term it a service, then there is an obligation on their part to transport your baggage as reliably as they are transporting you.  I do think some government regulation on this is appropriate.  For instance, if you don’t transport a customer’s baggage and deliver it back to them upon arrival, you should be required to refund that fee in full and get them their bag as soon as possible. 

Do we need them to regulate how they conduct their flights?  No but we do need a minimum service standard for things like delays on tarmac.  We have the 3 Hour Rule and while I think the jury is still out, there is some strong evidence that this rule is having its intended effect. 

Do we need to insist food be served?  No, not for free certainly.  But providing some kind of food and water in the event of a long delay isn’t unreasonable. 

Should airlines be allowed to set their prices?  Absolutely.  But when they set those prices, we should have a standard that enforces that *all* costs and/or potential costs are displayed *before* the purchase rather than just a base fare with taxes and fees. 

If an airline has to cancel a flight should the be obligated to transport you on another aircraft immediately?  No, they shouldn’t.  Airlines would have to carry tens of replacement aircraft at every major station and that’s unreasonable.  However, should be able to put you on a flight 5 or more days in the future?  No, they shouldn’t.  Once flights commence, 24 hours or less should probably be the standard in most cases. 

Yes, there is a place for regulation but it should be miminum standards and in areas where the airlines make a service promise but write contract language to absolve them of the very obligation they imply that they have.

Filed under: Airline Service, Deregulation by ajax
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I found a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer today that discusses whether the airline should or should not be considered for heavier regulation.  You can read it in its entirety HERE. 

We regulate the airline industry on safety matters (but not without a lot of groaning from the industry at times) and we definitely have found that it is appropriate to regulate interstate commerce on some level.  However, a return to the days of pre-1978 deregulation would, in my opinion, be a mistake. 

People often long for those days in the perception that things were better all the way around and that really isn’t true.  Today, we really do have more choice in most cases when it comes to travel on a particular route.  In the so-called golden years, the CAB decided who got to fly what routes and at what price.  We often forget that those prices were regulated as well and an airlines profit was determined on their costs.  However, so was the price.  Airlines often made a justification for raising prices on routes based on their costs and an appropriate profit level.  Not unlike how many electrical utilities are still regulated today.

Airlines are, if anything, far more safe today than 30 years ago as well.  That’s despite the drum beating going on about airlines sacrificing safety for profit and it is a product of our regulation in that area and its influence on both manufacturers as well as airlines themselves.  I do also believe that safety remains a top concern with airlines today despite the competitive environment because of how much impact on profit there can be as a result of a crash or safety incident. 

But airlines do use a variety of public assets and as a result of that, they should, in my opinion, be subject to some regulation.  For instance, airports are a public asset and, yet, we allow airlines to dominate airports by leasing/purchasing terminal space and holding on to underutilized assets.  In a sense, we allow airlines to bully both airports and other airlines who would make use of those public assets.  I wouldn’t propose that we tightly regulate terminal space but I would propose that these assets should periodically be subject to some sort of competitive bid for them.  That shriek you just heard is the airlines.

The airways are a public asset as well.  How much traffic a particular part of our airspace can withstand is determined by our infrastructure and our airports both of which are public assets as well.  There is, in my opinion, a duty on the part of the government(s) to see that these assets are used as efficiently as possible.  Where airports are slot controlled, those slots should also be subject to a periodic competitive bid for use.  When airlines find it “profitable” in a competitive sense to hold on to those slots by using them for high frequency and/or small regional jet routes, they are potentially being underutilized. 

That means that when there are 20+ frequencies between two cities among 2 or more airlines, there is some indication that those assets (i.e. slots) are being underutilized and with just a few less frequencies, slots could be opened up to provide new or improved service to other destinations and also improve competition on routes being “dominated” by a couple of airlines who are controlling prices via frequency.  If you think this doesn’t happen, just look into how major airlines respond to new competition by “small” competitors on these and non-slot routes.  They add capacity via larger aircraft and or additional flights to “buy” the business.

But does the consumer really benefit from that?  In short term spurts, yes they may benefit.  In the long term, no, they don’t.  If you control the route, you have some influence on the price and losing control of that route could quite possibly mean it turns unprofitable very quickly. 

In pre-deregulation days, it was thought that the nation’s infrastructure couldn’t withstand the loss of a trunk airline via bankruptcy and/or strikes.   So the government regulated price on their behalf and assured a stable system.  During that time, that made sense since those trunk airlines held much more regional segments of the United States.  For instance, in those days Delta might have been perceived as “essential” to the south east and its removal from the system might have meant a major economic loss to the area. 

We think there are fewer airlines and to some extent that is true.  However, our system is also vastly more flexibile today than it was 30 years ago.  A loss of a major legacy airline doesn’t mean the nation’s airline infrastructure becomes paralyzed.  We have enough airlines who are already serving those routes and who already have the flexibility to either serve them with more frequency or more capacity or both.  A correction via the remaining airlines would take days in some cases and mere weeks in others.  Not months and years.   Deregulation has provided that flexibility.

One argument many legacy airlines make for being allowed more dominance at hubs is that they serve the public good with flights to small, outlying areas in regions that no one else would serve if they were gone.  In a few cases, they’re telling the truth.  In most cases, they serve those areas with very high prices and very low frequency and they do little to stimulate commerce in those areas.  This is because those airlines serve those areas inefficiently with the wrong aircraft and schedules so that they may “feed” their hub systems.  Hub systems have to grow to remain profitable.  They are the animal that simply grows hungrier every year.

Should a place like Abilene, Texas have 3 or 4 direct flights to hubs like Dallas or Houston?  I’d argue that it isn’t really justified.  However, you could justify it as a whistle stop on a multi-city route being served by a turboprop as opposed to a regional jet.   Does service suffer as a result of that?  In most cases, no.  Airlines would earn more profit, service the same number of passengers or possibly more due to lower prices and the cities themselves wouldn’t suffer any economic impact.  

Abilene, Texas is served by no less than 7 flights a day to DFW all on ERJ-140 aircraft.  2 pair of those flights have departure times that separate them by less than an hour.   Does an isolated city in West Texas with a population of 120, 000 really justify that kind of frequency?  Probably not.  There are larger city pairs that don’t have that kind of frequency.  Could the 5:50am and 6:35am departures be combined into a single 6:00am flight?  Absolutely.   Would those passengers be impacted if the flight originated in Midland-Odessa at 5:50am and made a simple whistle stop in Abilene on its way to DFW?  No, not at all.  Would the Midland-Odessa passengers be impacted by a flight that was, at best, 20 minutes longer?  No, they wouldn’t.

We hurt the public by not regulating the industry for more competition and by the public, I mean the greater good for all, not just the 2 bankers in Abilene who get in a snit if they don’t have 4 morning flight choices.  Promoting competition by regulating access to our public assets isn’t a bad thing and there are decades of evidence to show that this is an area where the government can regulate very successfully and profitably. 

Do I think the airlines service levels should be regulated?  Let’s take a look at that tomorrow.

Filed under: Air Traffic Control, Airline Service, Airports by ajax
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After 4 months of furious construction, JFK airport in New York City hs re-opened its longest runway, 31L/13R, for business again. 

The asphalt surface was replaced with concrete projected to last 40 years.   Since its closing, JFK has operated under heavier than usual movement restrictions to keep congestion and delays down and with great success on most day.   This runway is important to the airport since most days the prevailing winds align with it and its parallel cousin on the other side of the airport.  In addition, its additional length (14,000+ feet long) provides an extra margin of safety for the heavy, widebody international flights that usually take-off from it.

Notably, the project was delivered on time and on budget and improves the airport infrastruture for the future.  A credit to airport management, the FAA, the airlines and, most notably, the air traffic controller’s working at the airport.

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Now that more than a week has passed, I want to revisit my first post about the Virgin Atlantic flight diversion to Bradley International Airport last week.  You can read my original post HERE.

First, I think both Congressional and administration officials have grossly overreacted to this event.  This was not a 6 or 7 hour event.  It was a 4 hour event.   And the primary cause of keeping people contained on the aircraft was weather and then no available customs and immigrations officers to process passengers.  You see, it might be called Bradley *International* Airport but it’s “international” aspect derives from relatively short flights to Canada.

Now we have Senators and Secretaries demanding that we impose a 3 Hour rule on international carriers and decrying the inhumanity of what those poor people experienced.   Indeed, the more these people pound desktops, the more they reveal their ignorance.

Folks, I’ve sat in an aircraft waiting 4 hours to take off a number of times.  It’s boring.  It’s tedious but it isn’t inhumane.  The same is true of a flight that likely took about 7 hours from London to the NYC area.  

The real issue here is what we allow when it comes to a diversion and the reason for that diversion.  I said it in my first post and I’ll say it again:  Virgin Atlantic’s chief mistake was in putting themselves into a position to have to use Bradley or choosing Bradley for its relatively low cost to land, refuel and take-off again.  There were plenty of better alternatives and VA didn’t choose one. 

If we presume a 200 nautical mile diversion capability, let’s look at what was in range from Newark (EWR).  Click THIS MAP to see what was available.

This flight could have made Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, any of the NYC airports, Washington Dulles and maybe even Pittsburg.  Short of a real fuel emergency, this flight should have made for one of those major airports that has full facilities for a widebody jet carry international passengers. 

The fact that we don’t distinguish what is and isn’t a legal diversion in a non-emergency event is a bigger part of the problem for international flights.  We make any airport that has the ability to land the aircraft a legal airport for diversion and I’m not so sure we should.  Perhaps a better rule would be to insist on the ability to divert (for non-emergency reasons and weather ain’t an emergency in most cases) to a *capable* airport designated as such for an international flight. 

Regardless, one of the reasons given for the delays was lack of customs officials.  The airport would not dis-embark the passengers until they had staff.  I may be wrong but I believe they could have allowed them off the aircraft *if* they were kept in a sterile area until customs officials arrived.  Whether or not they had a sterile area large enough is another question but also reinforces the need for diverting to airports that are properly equipped for these events. 

Who is at fault?  Virgin!  Bradley!  The FAA!  The passengers! No one!

The better question is how do we fix this so that passengers can reasonable expect reasonable treatment in a reasonable time period in non-emergency diversions.  And reasonable really is probably some amount of time between 3 and 4 hours.  

Look, no reasonable passenger is going to be outraged by many hours of delay when the aircraft engine shuts down and the flight has to divert to the first and best available airport during a real emergency.   Sure, there is always the chance of a crank or arrogant passenger being outraged no matter what but in those events, they just don’t count and virtually all passengers understand the nature of a real emergency.

The real failures are in events like these where the pilots gambled (on circling and hoping they could land too long), the airline and pilots choosing a poor airport, the FAA not distinguishing what is and isn’t an appropriate diversion airport in an event like this (and the FAA has no right to be “outraged” at VA since they themselves make an airport like Bradley legal for this kind of diversion) and where airlines continue to be ill prepared to respond to passenger needs during such events.  Might I point out that I would find it extremely hard to believe that someone couldn’t deliver a little food or attach ground air conditioning (if that airport has it) or a ground power unit (which I’m sure they have) to help provide power for air conditioning?

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the two pilots of the Northwest Airlines jet who allowed their flight to fly past its destination last year will not get their jobs back.  You can read the story HERE.  Captain Timothy Cheney has chosen to retire in lieu of fighting for his job and First Officer Richard Cole is reported as “no longer with the company”.  Northwest Airlines is now owned by Delta.

Both pilots had their licenses revoked after the incident but reached an agreement with the FAA a few months ago that would conceivably allow them to have their licenses reinstated after certain requirements were met. 

Apparently those requirements won’t be met while working for Delta and I couldn’t be happier.  There was agregious negligence involved in what happened and neither pilot has satisfactorily explained the event.

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The FAA has denied exemptions for their 3-Hour Rule at NYC area airports.  They replied:

“Passengers on flights delayed on the tarmac have a right to know they will not be held aboard a plane indefinitely,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in the department’s announcement. “This is an important consumer protection, and we believe it should take effect as planned.”

 

” In denying the requests, the Department concluded that airlines could minimize tarmac delays by rerouting or rescheduling flights at JFK to allow the airport’s other three runways to absorb the extra traffic.”

 

“The Department also noted that it has the ability to take into account the impact of the runway closure and the harm to consumers when deciding whether to pursue enforcement action for failure to comply with the rule and the amount of a fine, if any, to seek as a result of non-compliance.” *

And that is really what I both expected and hoped for as a reply.  I am certain the war of words is not over, however.

*  These quotes are from the Dallas Morning News Aviation Blog entry which can be read HERE.

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Yesterday, I explained what we’re dealing with now in the United States for air traffic control.  Today, I’ll explain what NextGen ATC can do and why airlines want it so badly.

Since developing an air traffic control system in the 1950’s, our technological capabilities have expanded exponentially.   We have fast, compact computers, excellent software, GPS, better radio systems and a better understanding of how best to move aircraft.  It’s time to develop a system that makes use of these capabilities.  One reason the FAA has been so unsuccessful is that each time its walked down a path with a set of technologies, the technologies became obsolete before they could even fully test them in a new system.

Now our technologies are more compact and object oriented and can be used in more of a “plug and play” system and that means it is time to get going.  Our current GPS system can navigate aircraft with an accuracy of less than 10 feet of error.  We know that we can and will develop future GPS systems that will be even more precise but our current system is perfect for our needs and if it does become obsolete, the next system can be “plugged in” to the new system we’re designing.  The same is true for virtually all the other systems we’ll have.

Using the precision of GPS and the computing power we now have available, it’s possible to design a system that requires less than a mile of “margin of error” for our ATC system.  We can have planes take off and land every 45 seconds or less now.  In addition, our aircraft can fly “blind” with such a high degree of precision, it’s possible to land the aircraft in completely blind weather conditions that otherwise would ground almost all aircraft today.  Because our system relies on this new technology, we don’t even have to slow the pattern of traffic when weather occurs because this precision lets us navigate, communicate and aviate with complete comfort.

Aircraft can be allowed to fly more directly from departure point to destination without following all those intermediate pinpoints first.  Because we’ll no longer need so much separation between the aircraft to keep the same margin of safety, more aircraft can fly on those routings too.  That means substantial savings in fuel for airlines and fuel is the second highest expense an airline has.  Not only does it save fuel and raise the capacity of the airways, it helps prevent bottlenecks at congested airports by raising the capacity to land and take off using this precision. 

Will this stop delays?  No, not completely.  At the end of the day, the pilot still has to land the aircraft and the aircraft still can only land within its specification of conditions.  If it is too windy, it will still be too windy.  If there are thunderstorms right in front of a runway with microburts in them, its still too dangerous to fly through those.  Delays will still happen but they’ll happen with less frequency and intensity. 

Currently, when aircraft near an airport, say within 80 to 100 miles, they begin working their way down from high altitude to progressively lower altitudes to be ready to land when they arrive.  If you looked at the profile of this approach, it would appear to be an inconsistent set of stair steps leading downwards more and more.  It’s inconsistent because it is at the whim of conditions, traffic and the ATC controllers ability to manage traffic.   The result is that aircraft reduce power, go lower, stabilize at a new altitude, raise power and await permission to lower their altitude again.  The do this over and over again until they’re at the height at which they can land at the airport.   This practice is the same for take-offs as well although generally there aren’t as many “steps” to climb up. 

Problem is, this approach is slow and uses a lot fuel.   Each time those engines have to spool up to power to hold an altitude, a massive amount of fuel is used.  Just like in a car, the more you change the throttle position, the more fuel gets used. 

Airlines have been practicing something called a continuous descent.  This kind of descent means they’ll start descending a bit later in the approach but they’ll essentially pull the throttles to “idle” and kind of “glide” down one continuous slope until they land generally only applying some power in the last mile or two of the approach.  They’ve also been practicing take-offs like this as well.  But by practicing, I mean they’ve proved the concept and proved it saves *massive* amounts of fuel and is actually less stressful for the pilots as well.  Mostly this has been done with long haul flights taking off from coastal cities and going to coastal destinations elsewhere in the world.  How much fuel does it save?  It can save tens of thousands of dollars of fuel on a flight using a large, widebody 4 engine aircraft. 

It can save thousands of dollars even on smaller, single aisle aircraft flights too.  NextGen ATC will allow these approaches and departures to become the usual as opposed to the extremely unusual.  Again, that saves fuel, time and allows more aircraft to flow in and out of an airport than ever before. 

This is why airlines want it so badly.  Improvements such as this could literally save them tens of millions of dollars on annual fuel costs.  Airports with congestion problems could, for the most part, become uncongested.  With this precision, we can design how aircraft approach airports in busy areas such as NYC and allow for safer, better flights in those areas.  There is no downside to this at all except the cost.  Over the next 2 decades, such a new system will cost about $35 Billion dollars. 

Is it worth it?  Absolutely.  In fact, $35 Billion dollars is rather cheap all in all.  Our economy is highly depedent on our air systems and it will be choked a bit if we continue on with our present system. 

Is the FAA capable of contracting for and implementing such a system?  Certainly.  Contrary to most media criticisms, the FAA biggest problem was the advancement of technology rather than the implementation.  Yes, they are a large, monolithic agency but they also have a vested interest in getting this done.  There is a growing shortage of ATC controllers and this kind of system would help with that shortage tremendously. 

Will it get done?  Yes, I think so.  Our technologies have reached a stage of maturity that allows us to design a system that can accomodate new technologies in the future and avoid becoming obsolete even before the new system is turned on.  We really only got there about 6 to 8 years ago.  Now we can do it and we can do it safely and pretty efficiently.  It’s still a big job but it’s a relatively straight foward job now.

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I’ve had a few people ask me about NextGen air traffic control over the past couple of months wanting to know what it is and if it really is the silver bullet to current problems so I thought I would take a few minutes to give a cursory description of what it is and why airlines want it.  This is part 1 and we’ll have part 2 tomorrow.

The FAA has tried to find and implement a new system of air traffic control for 20 to 30 years now.  Airways were crowded in the 1960’s and 1970’s and all parties knew it was time to find better methods of controlling aircraft.  Contrary to what is often read in general news media, the current system is not 1950’s technology.  The basic system of controlling aircraft was introduced in the 1950’s, the technology has evolved and been improved a number of times over the past several decades.  That said, the issue with the technology is that in our modern microchip world, our current ATC technology is still kind of rooted in the mainframe era.  You can go only so far with a system and the technology that supports it before you need to transition.

NextGen really is two things.  First, it’s a re-envisioning of how we control aircraft.  In other words, we’re talking about re-inventing air traffic control and we’re able to do that because of newer, more modern technologies.  Before going farther, you have to imagine first that any system we use is not similar to a highway system because not only are we concerned about direction and speed, we have different altitudes to use too.  It’s more like layer upon layer of highway systems. 

The old system (and by system, I mean methodologies for controlling air traffic) was conceived in an era where our knowledge and technology allowed us to navigate with a fair degree of precision for that era but which still required a fairly large dose of margin of error to make it safe.  Under the old system, have a system of “points” that pilots can navigate to and upon reaching those points, they then navigate to the next point they need to go to.  When they create a flight plan, it is a plan that states which points they’ll fly to (within the rules of planning) and at what altitudes and speeds they’ll do it at.  It is a kind of multi-dimensional connect the dots plan.   Ever see the actual flight path of your aircraft and wonder why it looks a bit convoluted and twisted?  It’s because pilots are flying along airways from point to point rather than from departure to destination direct.

Let’s say a pilot for an airline wanted to fly from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Currently, the pilot cannot simply take off, flight at an altitude of his choice and fly directly from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Instead, he takes off, flies to a point that is on or close to a routing that leads him in the *direction* of Los Angeles and he continues to fly from point to point to get to Los Angeles.  As he gets closer, he flies with more precision to the airport by navigating to points that lead him to Los Angeles.   Flying to these points is essentially done by “homing in” on radio broadcasts from beacons at these points and through direction from air traffic controllers who are “tracking” his flight via radar. 

Neither the radio nor the radar paint a very precise picture.  There are many seconds delay in the radar that paints the picture of the aircraft and where it has been and where it is going.  If there is, say, a  15 second delay, that amounts to a lot of error.  It doesn’t sound like a lot but consider that these aircraft are traveling at 530mph.  That aircraft is traveling 0.15 miles / second and in 15 seconds, it has traveled nearly 2.5 miles.  In 30 seconds, it has traveled nearly 5 miles.  In just one minute, it has gone 10 miles.  This explains why we currently require so many miles of separation between aircraft in the air.  When you hear about aircraft being required to stay 5 miles away from each other on the horizontal, it probably sounds excessive.  When you consider that an error in knowing where you are that last just 30 seconds, you may well lose all of that separation and suddenly run into another aircraft. 

We’ve developed some systems over time that mitigate these risks such as TCAS (pronounced TEE-CASS) which stands for Traffic Collision Avoidance System.  This allows two (or more) aircraft to announce where they are to other aircraft and to decide if these two aircraft are on a collision course.  If they are, one system tells its pilot to “dive” and one tells the other to “climb”.   The problem is, aircraft have accurately know where they are for this to work.

For the most part, they do.  Airliners use a complicated set of gyroscopic inertial navigation machines.  These sophisticated machines sense movement direction and speed and if they know where they were before they started moving, then they can tell where they are as they travel.  Again, the problem is that the precision of these systems is measured in miles rather than feet. 

Next up, what we can do now.

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Both Delta and jetBlue have requested exemptions to the 3-hour rule about to be implemented in April for their operations at JFK airport citing the runway closure for re-construction that will be in place until July.  At first glance, this seems a reasonable request and I’m sure most would say such a condition is justified. 

To be honest, I thought so at first as well.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like the idea.  This will set a precedent for other “exceptional” conditions in the future and what I don’t like about this is that this is not an unplanned or unforeseen event.  We know the runway will be closed.  There has been plenty of time to plan operations to accomodate this closure.  Both the airlines and the FAA have had plenty of time to come up with a contingency plan to deal with potential problems.  When I consider that, I really don’t think the 3 hour rule should be exempted. 

If this runway closure was sudden due to unforeseen circumstances, I could certainly get behind the idea of an exemption.  That isn’t the case.  Granting exemptions for planned events is unwise, precedent setting and undermines the rule itself for future events. 

It makes no sense to have rules and advocacy for customers if those rules can be undermined by a planned event.  If we do grant these exceptions, then I have to ask what is the sense in having a rule in the first place? 

Airlines might be tempted to state that they did plan for this event but the rule caught them out since much of their planning was done before the announcement.  My response would be that that planning clearly was inadequate if there is a genuine fear of running into 3 hour delays. 

If the FAA feels it must make some kind of accomodation, I would suggest they grant the exception only on days with weather events that impact airport operations or some similar conditions.   Set a boundary range of conditions and if the airport meets those conditions, no exception is allowed. 

I realize that these thoughts likely rankle many airline employees and airline fans even.  I’ve never believed the 3 hour rule is a perfect rule.  I do, however, think it is a good rule to start with and the nice part about rules is that they can be changed if they don’t work.  With the massive and constant changes that go on with carriers’ carriage contracts that are simply designed to protect the interests of the carriers only, it’s time to have some rules  that protect consumers. 

I recently read one article that pointed out that while a consumer can be charged an egregious amount for needing to change their travel date on a non-refundable ticket, an airline can change that flight at any time without penalty to the consumer.  This is a great example of the imbalance that exists between consumers and airline service providers.  We have finally begun to address some of those imbalances and I think that is a good thing.  I also think that by addressing some of these imbalances with rules that define a more just and fair relationship between the consumers and airlines, airfares may well go up in price a bit.  That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing either. 

The relationship between consumer and airline today is, frankly, one of the more dysfunctional in existence.  It resembles two spouses who hate each other and yet refuse to get a divorce or seek other options in life.  That relationship is only going to change if we actually do something and doing something shouldn’t take several years of hearings either. 

I would love to see a commission that addresses these issues in a timely manner similar to BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission that addresses how this nation closes and realigns military bases on an annual basis.  It’s isn’t perfect but it is bipartisan and something that we all generally can abide by. 

Imagine a airline industry rule making commission made up of 3 former airline executives and 3 former FAA and/or DoT administrators and one former Federal judge that address these needs and issue guidance upon reaching a simple majority consensus on a fair rule.  No consensus, no rule.  Have them meet and issuance guidance twice a year and let the rules be implemented.  It’s bipartisan, reasonable just and fair and may well have the ability to help both the airline industry as well as consumers.

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I  have a funny feeling that safety and getting those Delta/Northwest ops combined is about to become a big focus at the airline. 

Incident 1: NTSB INVESTIGATING LANDING OF COMMERCIAL JETLINER ON TAXIWAY IN ATLANTA
——————————————————————————–

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the landing of a Delta B-767 on an active taxiway at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport (ATL).

According to preliminary information received from several sources, on Monday, October 19, 2009, at 6:05 a.m. EDT, a Boeing B767-332ER (N185DN) operating as Delta Air Lines flight 60 from Rio de Janeiro to Atlanta landed on taxiway M at ATL after being cleared to land on runway 27R. No injuries to any of the 182 passengers or 11 crewmembers were reported.

A check airman was on the flight deck along with the captain and first officer. During cruise flight, the check airman became ill and was relocated to the cabin for the remainder of the flight. A medical emergency was declared and the company was notified by the crew. A determination was made to land at the scheduled destination of ATL.

The flight was cleared to land on runway 27R but instead landed on taxiway M, which is situated immediately to the north and parallel to runway 27R. The runway lights for 27R were illuminated; the localizer and approach lights for 27R were not turned on. Taxiway M was active but was clear of aircraft and ground vehicles at the time the aircraft landed. The wind was calm with 10 miles visibility. Night/dark conditions prevailed; twilight conditions began at about 7:20 a.m. EDT and the official sunrise was at 7:46 a.m. EDT.

A team of four from the NTSB, led by David Helson, is investigating the incident.

The issue of runway safety has been on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements since its inception in 1990. Information on the NTSB’s work on runway safety is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/Recs/mostwanted/runways.htm
Incident 2: NTSB INVESTIGATING FLIGHT THAT OVERFLEW INTENDED MINNEAPOLIS AIRPORT
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The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an incident where an Airbus A320 overflew the Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain Airport (MSP).

On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 5:56 pm mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, N03274, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet. The flight was operating as a Part 121 flight from San Diego International Airport, San Diego, California (SAN) to MSP with 147 passengers and unknown number of crew.

At 7:58 pm central daylight time (CDT), the aircraft flew over the destination airport and continued northeast for approximately 150 miles. The MSP center controller reestablished communications with the crew at 8:14 pm and reportedly stated that the crew had become distracted and had overflown MSP, and requested to return to MSP.

According to the Federal Administration (FAA) the crew was interviewed by the FBI and airport police. The crew stated they were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness. The Safety Board is scheduling an interview with the crew.

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) have been secured and are being sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington, DC.

David Lawrence, the Investigator-in-Charge, is leading the team of 3 in investigating the incident.

Parties to the investigation are the FAA and Northwest Airlines.

It would appear that pilots at the combined companies are allowing themselves to be a bit distracted these days.  I particularly hope that the CVR transcripts for that second incident become available one day.  Something tells me that policy talk wasn’t the problem.

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I’m glad that there has been a dialog on excessive flight delays for the past few years.  Just having the dialog has helped, I think.   But now people are starting to talk about real solutions as opposed to shouting out “there ought to be a law!”.  I agree, there should be a law but I also agree with airports and airlines that the law ought to be sensible too.

The cause of long delays on the tarmac derive from a variety of factors.  Certainly weather is the biggest one of all.  Severe weather is somewhat unpredictable both in timing and severity and I get that.  You just can’t always guess right.  But I think there are some issues that are getting ignored in the discussion.

First, I would ask why we allow airlines to board airplanes and send them out in droves when it is clear that airport operations are about to be impacted severely by an arriving storm?   I blame airlines, airport management and the FAA for that.  When an arriving severe storm is on the horizon, cramming people into the airplane and trying to rush it out for take-off before it (the storm) arrives is just a bad strategy.  Every airline is pursuing that at the same time and that means maybe 10% of all the aircraft are going to make their departures. 

Airlines have several incentives to behave that way.  One, if they leave the gate within 15 minutes of scheduled departure, they get to count that as an on time departure.  That counts in the evaluation(s) of virtually every airline employee working that particular flight.  Bad idea because it allows them to shove the problem on someone else without consequence.  Wouldn’t it be better for the Department of Transportation to set criteria for these “on time” departures that reflects both reality and common sense?  Isn’t it better to declare an amnesty on on time stats during severe weather on the part of airlines?  You need to dis-incentivize that behavior during those times.

The big unspoken problem that airlines haven’t really mentioned is the impact to their operations system wide.  If an airline starts canceling flights in a hub city, that impact will start to be felt all over the country in as little as 2 hours.   Canceling flights has an impact potential for creating disarray in airline operations for days.  Delaying them but ultimately getting them to their destinations that day has far less of an impact.   There could be a few solutions to this problem such as a mutual aid pact between airlines.  Why not consolidate 2 delayed flights onto one aircraft, share the revenue and return to normal asap rather than try to send 6 delayed flights to the same destination at the end of a storm?  There is a history of mutual aid pacts among airlines but they largely disappeared with deregulation.  However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be encouraged again. 

Airlines need flexibility but the drive to equip a fleet with as few different aircraft types as possible means that they lost some flexibility.  I wonder if the costs of sorting out a massive disruption aren’t worth an extra aircraft or two to mitigate against problems.  Again, airlines used to have a history of having backups for these kinds of problem but lean operations demanded by shareholders don’t really allow for proper risk mitigation.  Better fleet planning and utilization might allow an airline to fly a 767 with 2 flights of 737 passengers to a destination during a severe disruption to operations.  By consolidating the passengers into one flight, getting them to their destination instead of stranding them and eliminating some departure congestion, every one’s best interests and pocket book might be better served.  But it requires us to allow some cooperation among airlines and some long range planning too.

If you make it the law that a passenger must have the right to get off an airplane and abandon the flight after 3 or 4 hours, you won’t solve anything.  There will be as much congestion (and possibly more) and the potential for greater delays.  However, if you allow the FAA to “prioritize” departures under certain circumstances and meter the flow, airlines won’t be so quick to board airplanes and shove them out onto the taxiways.  Airports and airlines should be forced to consider the whole picture before boarding an aircraft.  If it has no opportunity to taxi to the runway and take off within one hour, it shouldn’t be leaving the gate in the first place. 

Airports could help better too.  You can’t expect them to accommodate every displaced passenger during a storm but you can expect them to have a good emergency plan that includes keeping restaurants and stores open, overflow areas for passengers to park themselves for longer durations and equipment that allows disembarkation during storms that keep ground personnel indoors. 

Right now, you have people saying that airlines should allow individual passengers off an airplane if they want off after three or four hours.  That potentially further delays 100+ passengers for the benefit of 5 or 10.  Instead, airlines should simply be required to return to a gate and accommodate passengers reasonably if they haven’t departed within 3 hours.  Like it or not, a flight should be an all or nothing proposition. 

Finally, airlines should be required to consider what the diversion options are.  Airlines have been increasingly using alternate cities that are close by but non-standard stops for their business.  Should American Airlines keep aircraft on the ground at an airport that doesn’t have proper ground handling equipment or facilities for those passengers?  Absolutely not.  The context of potential diversions should be considered when planning a flight.   If an airline is faced with potential diversions when flying to a particular area, it should carry enough fuel to divert outside of that area of disruption and to a location where they can reasonably accommodate the aircraft and passengers. 

It does absolutely no good to anyone to send flights to Rochester, MN when MSP is shutdown if the airport can’t accommodate the aircraft and passengers in the first place.  For that particular event, it would have been far better to send that aircraft to Milwaukee, Des Moines or Rockford where the airports were experienced in accommodating diverted flights late at night. 

Without genuine cooperation between airlines, empowering the FAA and air traffic control and requiring airports to plan for the worst rather than the best, this problem doesn’t get solved to any one’s satisfaction.

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Deregulation in 1978 was never full deregulation.  It was, instead, deregulation of the revenue side of the equation.  Airlines were suddenly free to fly routes and set fares as they wanted.  The barriers to entry on a route were no longer regulatory but, rather, business cost.  My father phrased the start of a route as “starting a new business” and I must say that that is true.  Airlines have to invest in infrastructure, new employees and market their services when entering a new city or route.  The airline is essentially starting a new business.

What never got deregulated was the labor cost side of the equation.  Flight crews were fully unionized (with the notable exception of Delta’s Flight Attendants) and the union approach to wages and work rules was and always has been to negotiate for more each contract.  When the game changed with regulation, the airlines were still inhibited from negotiating freely for their labor on an open market because the unions had 30 years of precedent and enormous political power.  God help the airline who had pilots striking against it because it denied *any* revenue to the company and airlines are cash intensive businesses.  They go out of business very quickly if that cash stream is interrupted. 

Using pilots as example, take a look at their negotiating power in 1978.  First, the barriers to entry in a career as a pilot were (and to some degree remain so) very high.  A typical pilot spent 7 to 9 years in the military flying multi-engined aircraft and when they exited, they got their ATP license and went hunting a type certificate to fly for an airline.  Once in an airline, they entered a seniority system that made it very difficult to leave because every airline had the same system.  If you started at one airline, made captain on an aircraft type and then wanted to leave, you had to start over again.  The union(s) set a contract and work rules in place that essentially made each airline a fiefdom.

The airline union is the lord and the pilots are the serfs.  Well paid serfs in their later years but serfs nonetheless.  Not only is there no incentive to seek work elsewhere, there were strong incentives to stay and play the game no matter what.   Even when an airline is by all measures about to fail.

This situation remains true for most airline unions to some degree or another.  What the government never did was deregulate labor so that airlines could compete for qualified people to fill their staffing needs.  One interesting by-product of this is that airline pilots work terrible schedules today.  They do so because it is enormously expensive to have a pilot sitting on the ground doing nothing.  Airlines fly pilots on different schedules than their flight attendants (at least at most airlines) and they do so because they want to extract all possible value from them because the cost is so high.  Ironically, a more ratioinally paid airline pilot would work an *easier* and more rational schedule that impacted their lives (both personally and professionally) far less if their pay were more in line with a free market competition.   Mind you, they wouldn’t be underpaid, just paid more in line with the demands of their job.

My father thinks that a free market salary for a pilot would be about $70,000 / year and there would be far less range between entry level and an experienced level.  I personally believe that number would be higher.  About $100K to $120K.  I think so because the costs to become a qualified airline pilot and the skill required still make for a rather rare person today.   The pilot still has to become qualified under FAA rules by getting time first on single engine aircraft, then multi-engine aircraft and turbine engined aircraft.   Flying also takes  talent.  Being an commercial pilot also means having a great understanding of engineering (many pilots gets undergraduate degrees in engineering for just this reason.) 

What the airlines needed was an opportunity to negotiate for new labor under new rules.  It would have been impractical and politically difficult to “break” the existing unions.  It would have been better to set new rules for airline unions and airline flight crew going forward.  For instance, eliminating the seniority system but making one’s qualifications and types fully transportable between airlines for the same pay would have made it more fair to both sides.  A pilot who was “captain” qualified on a Boeing 737 would be able to take those qualifications and fly at any airline for market pay.  

Suddenly a pilot would not be married to just one airline and have to deal with fear of furloughs and bankruptcy multiple times in their career that could reset them back to “zero” in their career.  Instead, they would be able to seek positions at other airlines for a commensurate career salary.  The same could be true for any flight crew.   It would even have the benefit of further “harmonizing” best practices among various airlines. 

Over the years, some airlines have made some attempts to re-negotiate this situation.  American Airlines introduced the A/B pay scales in the 1980s.  That worked very well for many years but the advantage was lost because the “B” scale employees still worked for the original union and the “A” scale employees had a vested interest in raising all salaries for everyone.   

There is nothing wrong with unions existing in the workplace.  However, when a union’s sole focus is on raising salaries to everyone else’s detriment, it begins to lose value.  Unions can and should enforce good work rules, good working conditions and even qualification standards and salaries.  They should not, however, distort their own labor market or their airline goes down.

Another way airlines have gotten around this is by starting commuter feeder airlines.  American Airlines has American Eagle for instance.  These “new” airlines have employees who are hired at “market” rates and who remain employed by unions.  Now the airlines use these airlines to fly mainline routes at higher frequencies because it is more cost effective than flying the route with less frequency but greater capacity using mainline equipment.

A great example of this is American Airlines and how they served the DFW – MKE (Milwaukee) route a couple of years ago.  They used 50 seat ERJ-145 aircraft in their American Eagle subsidiary and flew as many as 5 cycles a day.  What’s worse, they frequently turned away people or re-routed them through Chicago because their aircraft were either capacity limited or load limited.  The aircraft had average load factors far in excess of 85%.   The better solution would have been to fly either mainline MD-80 or Boeing 737 aircraft 2 to 3 times a day.   That would have offered better service (more reliable and not load limited), more comfortable seating and slightly shorter flights.  But they couldn’t because AA MD-80/B737 pilots for such routes would cost 4 times more than American Eagle pilots. 

The demand was there.  The fares actually offered great revenue opportunities (when compared to average DFW – ORD fares) but the expenses were still too great on the labor side.   So people were offered a cramped ERJ with all coach service that, by the way, eventually lost passenger traffic to Midwest Express (who flies more comfortable MD-80s and B717 aircraft) and to other mainline airlines who would service Dallas via Chicago or Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

Regional Jets were never built for serving such markets and they do so very inefficiently.  Regional aircraft should never be serving route sectors greater than 400 nautical miles and certainly should never be serving mainline city pairs such as MKE-DFW.    They should fly from Odessa to Dallas or Cedar Rapids to Milwaukee. 

Could labor be less regulated in the airline world today?  I don’t know.  It would require great political will and I frankly don’t see that on the horizon.   It would require the airline industry to be both realistic and cooperative with each other and it would require unions to recognize that not every contract means “more” but maybe it means different and more accomodating instead.  It should also offer some job security and certainty too. 

In the next part, we’ll take a look at how the lack of full deregulation has distored air travel in the United States and caused inefficiencies.

Filed under: Deregulation, Trivia by ajax
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