Thirty years after deregulation, the White House entered the passenger service fray by ordering the Department of Transportation to take care of the delay and congestion problems before the next summer season. That would be laughable, if it were not so sad since that gives them a mere eight months to solve what 40 years of trying could not. But, for regionals, it could finally realize FAA’s long-held ambition to reduce regional jet flights.
After all, we have faced waves of such crises in the past along with 40 years of system neglect. The only resolution came with some form of mild or severe economic collapse which reduced demand. While President George Bush blamed the airlines, they are fully within their rights to say, “Not so fast, Mr. President.” This is an issue they’ve been fighting for a long time with PR campaign, after PR campaign to try to get the funding necessary to deploy modernization. Between funding and FAA mismanagement, airliners continue to try to fly out of the tiny balloon that is the current airspace.
FAA, and now the White House, has gone out of their way this year to blame first the regional jets, then business aviation and, finally, airline scheduling for grinding the system to a halt. It would be fair to say that the airlines were only meeting passenger demand and it has actually been the federal government that has failed to meet the promise of deregulation. Indeed, the new move to restrict flights will only result in dramatically higher air fares, returning the system to serving only the elite that was so prevalent before deregulation. Continental Senior Vice President-Network Strategy Zane Rowe told the Senate last week that would only mean a reduction of service to small communities and job growth as well as an increase in fares.
In a jaw-dropping move, Bush called for legislation to modernize the FAA and ordered a quick report from DOT on how to ease congestion during a meeting with Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and acting FAA Administrator Bobby Sturgell. Exactly how often have we heard that over the past 40 years? While that may play well for the cameras, the rest of us know that it is only window-dressing making it appear that the administration is acting, while knowing full well that such actions will do little until the system is modernized.
After the meeting DOT Secretary Mary Peters announced the department will develop options for reducing flight schedules at JFK. She also formed a scheduling committee of JFK airlines to develop recommendations for reducing the number of flights. But, she said, the preference is to find a way to “let market incentives do the job, and not to return to the days of government regulated flights and limited competition.” She also reported the creation of a special Aviation Rulemaking Committee to study the nationwide congestion issue and develop a proposal by December.
After the White House summit, Secretary Peters asked airlines to develop a plan to improve scheduling at Kennedy, saying if they fail the department will take over. Wait, wasn’t that what the FAA did this summer with the redesign of the airspace in the Northeast which was shot down by Congress? All possibilities remain open, she said, including peak-hour pricing for congested airports, something we all know would not address the problem and hit regionals hardest. In addition, she is improving the department’s complaint system, something that has long needed overhaul because it fails to illustrate the root cause of many of the problems passengers face. Related Story
In order to get summer schedules in advance, the FAA imposed a “level two” designation on Kennedy and Newark airports, joining 87 other similarly listed airports worldwide. The change requires schedules to be submitted by October 11 for flights between March 9 and November 1, 2008. While Newark was already on the list of U.S. airports, with the designation, Kennedy becomes the fifth.
FAA said JFK operations jumped 23 percent for the 10 months through July while delays of one or more hours rose 114 percent. Gate arrivals within 15 minutes dropped from nearly 70 percent to 61.2 percent, while average taxi-out delays were up 36 minutes or 19 percent.
For starters, Delta is planning a 20 percent capacity increase at Kennedy next summer although it said the flights would be scheduled earlier and later to reduce congestion in addition to reducing the number of regional airline flights. The moves mean six percent fewer peak our arrivals and departures.
For its part, as bad as the FAA is, it is often been faced with the quandary that it is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. Its recent move to rationalize New York airspace in an attempt to alleviate congestion was canned by Congress because the redesign meant noise for entire new constituencies. Congressman James Oberstar wants FAA to study the issue – as if it didn’t study it before the deployment – before implementing the plan. But that is Congress 101; if you don’t know what to do about a problem, or the medicine is too harsh, delay it with a study.
FAA’s Sturgell reports that the agency has accelerated the deployment of ASDE-X for runway safety and efficiency by a year. In addition, it combined high- and low-altitude airspace to create more efficient arrivals and departures. He noted 13 new runways have been added to major airports and a new runway extension in Philadelphia is underway that could cut delays by three million minutes a year. He cited the new Atlanta runway that enables a hundred thousand more takeoffs and landings a year, a 30 percent increase which is coupled with an airspace redesign there with new arrival and departure routes that save $34 million dollars in fuel per year. In addition, redesigns are underway for Houston and current efforts to add capacity at Chicago would allow the removal of “temporary, short-term caps.”
The problem is not with what the FAA has done, but what it hasn’t done. Even so, this issue has been studied to death. We all know what needs to be done – more funding and speeding up the glacial pace of the FAA to modernize the system. Instead, we get ridiculous proposals to change the funding mechanism, with such changes actually bringing in less funding – more window dressing – and calls to reduce regional jet service. Much of this congestion results from increased passenger demand, coupled by the congressionally mandated elimination of the high-density rule.
For their part the airlines are welcoming White House involvement with politically correct statements. "The Air Transport Association appreciates the involvement of the White House and the DOT in what is becoming an increasingly serious national crisis of flight delays," said ATA President and CEO James C. May, applauding the use of the Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). "We especially appreciate that the administration has committed to address critical operational concerns with New York airspace.
Of course the airlines are not entirely innocent. The recent controversy was, of course, sparked by the DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel’s report saying there should be limits on how long passengers are held captive owing to airline and airport inability to handle such problems. Their failure to provide even limited passenger service has raised tempers to a fever pitch since the strandings over Christmas and, again in February. While bad weather was responsible for the strandings last winter, the problem is compounded by FAA’s failures.
"We found that there has been little improvement from what we reported in 2001,” he said, “that only a few airlines' contingency plans specified in any detail the efforts planned to get passengers off the aircraft when delayed for extended periods." He noted that Delta, Midwest, US Airways, ATA and Aloha have no procedures for such problems and, while others may have plans, there is not uniform policy with current plans ranging from allowing passenger strandings between one and five hours.
Aviation Consumer Action Project Executive Director Paul Hudson, called the IG’s recommendations “as weak-to-nonexistent as ever.”

RAA: RJs Not to Blame for Congestion
Blaming regional jets for congestion is an urban legend said Regional Airline Association (RAA) President Roger Cohen in testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week.
“Instead of demonizing RJs, historians will likely look back at the regional jet as the transformational jet of this generation,” said Cohen. He noted regional flights accounted for less than five percent of the 1,041 daily flights at Kennedy. “Regional aircraft today represent just about half of the daily schedule. [During] the evening rush hour aircraft of less than 70 seats represent only 25 percent of the departures, so there are fewer RJs during JFK’s busiest period than at other time of the day.
“While the number of passengers flying on regionals increased by about 2.5 percent, in 2006, the number of regional flights actually declined three percent year over year, from 5.13 to 4.98 million,” Cohen continued. “Last year, the total hours flown by regional airlines fell by about three percent, in other words, regionals reduced their usage of the ATC and airport system year over year. Most notably, the ‘upgauging’ of the regional fleet has been occurring without any forced schemes or bureaucratic board games. In the post 9-11 period, average seating capacity of the regional fleet has grown by about a third, from 35 to more than 50 seats per aircraft today.”