Air Traffic: February 2007 Archives

Push grows for flier 'bill of rights'

"You gotta realize the frustration -- you can look out the window and you can see, there's the gate, and if you let us off the plane, we can walk there," said Farrell, one of hundreds of passengers stranded on planes held up by the bad weather.

When they're already where they're going, that's one thing.



When they're haven't departed yet, that's quite another.



Here's the situation: Since 1970, there have been two - count them, two - new commercial airports in the country. Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver. Nor have there been any new runways at older airports. Meanwhile, the increase in air traffic is something like ten-fold.



How many aircraft can use a runway at the same time? One.



How many aircraft can use a gate at the same time? One.



Separation and Safety standards have evolved over many years in response to many issues. Decreasing them endangers everyone, and has a very small effect upon air traffic. The rule is that there has to be one form of separation in effect at all times. Five miles or 1000 vertical feet in centers. Approach controls have more options: diverging courses, visual separation, etcetera. But towers have to have and maintain 6000 runway feet minimum for jets or aircraft over 12,500 pounds of any description, and there are wake turbulence rules in addition to that which are measured in minutes. This amounts to one aircraft on the runway at a time, and the larger the plane, the longer it takes to clear the runway, either on arrival or departure, and the more time after it that the next aircraft needs before it is legal - or safe - to use that runway.



It may be frustrating to sit on the ramp, but there's never been a mid-air collision between two airplanes on the ramp. If they do bump, the worst that happens is that the airlines need another airplane for those passengers. Nobody dies.



Now, launch them into the air, and throw them into the mix at their arrival station, which is having difficulty dealing with what it has and getting them down onto the ground. Usually the reason for delays has something to do with weather. So now you've gone from a situation which is difficult but manageable to one which is an outright nightmare. Put more airplanes into bad weather longer, and you're going to have more mechanical incidents. Airplanes declaring emergencies and throwing everything even further into chaos because now they've got to be taken out of turn, or they need more resources (airtime, runway time, airspace). And when airspace is cramped and getting more so, there are going to be more mid-air collissions. I'm unaware of any mid-air in which any of the passengers (or crew) of any airliner lived to tell about it.



I was a controller for twelve years. If there is going to be a delay, it's better for everyone if the delay is taken on the ground. I've seen what can happen when severe weather unexpectedly hits. For instance, there's a gap of eleven miles between restricted airspace northeast of Los Angeles (near Barstow), and through that gap all of the aircraft coming into and out of Southern California to and from areas north and east must go - or it has to go 200 miles north, or south to Palm Springs (another narrow busy corridor for stuff coming into and out directly east), or almost to the Mexican border, where there is an even narrower gap between the Mexican border and restricted airspace. When a thunderstorm hits any of these areas, the aircraft cannot go through it and expect to emerge in one piece. And in all of these places, you have aircraft climbing and descending in each other's face on directly opposite courses, and not much lateral room to work with. What are you going to do? There are contingency plans to use most of the restricted airspaces, but they take some time to implement, and in the meantime you have airliners all over the sky. The last thing you want to do is add more airplanes into the mix. So they start holding aircraft or re-routing them, and now other sectors are trying to deal with more aircraft holding right in the way of traffic flow, or putting them through in ways that the airspace wasn't designed to accommodate. It gets to be a large mess very quickly.



The only way to really remove airplanes from the problem is to put them on the ground, or keep them there. You can't pull off to the side of the road at 37,000 feet. Nor can the airplane sit on the freeway at 35,000 feet. We should all know what happens to airplanes that try either or these. Now keep in mind how many new airports (two) and new runways at existing commercial airports (zero) have been laid down since 1970. The best control system possible can't put you safely on the ground unless there's a runway available for that airplane to use. In other words, if you want to get on the ground sooner, you need to have some serious discussions about the factors that have been keeping runways from getting poured - NIMBYs and BANANAs, environmental regulations, court delays, and political wimps in office. If your portion of the economy is tied to the availability of air travel and you're part of the reason why no new runways have happened, you can look in the mirror for the responsible party. Nor will complaining do you any good.



Now, perhaps the airlines can come up with a better alternative as to how to handle the delays. For example, loading passengers only when they are expected to depart within 30 minutes. Perhaps just informing people about lengthy expected delays and letting them make their own call, knowing they might have to take the next flight. This would necessarily involve a lot more flexibility on gate use and perhaps even necessitate more gate sharing agreements. Both of those can certainly be done, but they are really a matter of logistics. The real issue is too many airplanes trying to do the same thing at the same time. Either some of them are going to be delayed, or there are going to be accidents. Airline accidents have a near certainty of being fatal to everyone on board and often, to some people on the ground who didn't even agree to board that airplane under those conditions. As frustrating as delays are, given these facts, they are the least bad option.