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Overscheduling Causing Grief In the American Skies
James Hayden
http://www.marketkafka.blogspot.com/
Most of the major airlines admit to over scheduling flights but justify this action on grounds of competition and that there is no rule against this practice.
Last year was probably the worst year in the history of the American aviation industry in terms of flight delays. Surveys have shown that American airline travellers waited for an approximate total of 285 million hours, that is, nearly 32,477 years! This year with the holiday season just around the corner, air travellers might have to wait for longer hours to get to their respective destinations.
So, how did the American airports get to be so congested? And above all, what is the solution to this ever-increasing problem?
For many years now, researchers have been observing this problem, which seems to brewing for more than a decade.
Going to the airport in the United States is generally a spirit-crushing experience, and our researchers predicted that it will only get worse. As a result of which, our passengers have become immensely frustrated with not having a predictable and comfortable flight.
The most serious problem that most of the major airports encounter is overscheduling of flights. Overscheduling cause's flight delays and cancellations, this in turn ruins the travelling experience for the passenger nationwide.
What's more, utilizing technology to help relieve this over scheduling problem will do very little or practically nothing to erase this problem. Many of the actions that are required to be taken in order to relieve the industry of overscheduling and flight delays are not limited to the technical community itself. The government needs to take part in this by first understanding what the causes for these problems are. And, the public needs to do their duty by pushing them into take action so that we can have a safe, comfortable and predictable air transportation system.
While flight delays and cancellations are inconvenient and annoying, there are other serious safety hazards that are caused due to over scheduling of flights. Research has shown that there is a strong correlation between overcrowded flight schedules and safety issues. When schedules are found to be congested, there is usually a definite loss of aircraft separation. The tighter the airline schedule is, the more unsafe the transportation system is found to be.
When flights are overscheduled at a particular airport, they are generally trying to land safely at a faster rate than the airport runway can accept. This however, puts an immense amount of pressure on traffic controllers, as they attempt to keep flight delays at low levels while at the same time keeping the planes away from each other. In the past, airplanes circling over the airport terminal waiting for a safe place to land have been the cause of plenty of accidents, thus, air traffic controllers have now started making attempts to get these planes down on the runway before this is any sort of air-borne accident.
Why is Overscheduling so common in American Airports?
Most European passengers tend to experience a much more enjoyable and predictable flight experience as compared to their American counterparts. This is because the European regulation agencies make use of slot controls and forbid airlines to schedule more flights than the concerned airport can actually handle.
The congestion in the US is mainly caused due to the deregulation of the airline industry in the 70's. When these laws were passed, they took away all government control over the scheduling of flights at any given time at any given airport.
How to solve this problem?
So, the passengers of today are being treated terribly and have grown so accustomed to it that they have now started to accept this treatment. If the passengers can find a way to make their voices heard, changes will surely come. The government has to find a way to fix the problem.
Airlines are not ready to reduce their schedules because they feel that their competition will get ahead of them in that case. Owing to the antitrust laws, airlines are not allowed to get together and jointly reduce each of their schedules.
A number of solutions have been proposed to alleviate this problem that includes:
- Implementing the use of larger aircraft so as to reduce the number of flights, thus relieving congestion in the air traffic between major airports.
- There has to be shared use of airport capacity in some of the congested metros.
- Greater use of charter flights and regional jets.
- Congestion pricing at metropolitan airports.
In the long run, the need to increase the overall efficiency and capacity of the country's major airports is of utmost importance. New technology will hopefully improve the separation space between the flights, but technology alone cannot unclog this congestion.
Hopefully, passengers will begin to comprehend the seriousness of the situation and put pressure on the government to take action.
Keeping all of this in mind, the charter industry has now begun to flourish. As an ardent admirer of charter flights (FMI FMGM), I have never had to go through flight delays, cancellations, and over scheduling.
Article submitted Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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