Tag Archives for air traffic control.
The FAA’s move towards diversity-oriented hiring practices for air traffic controllers raises concerns over industry impact, although it doesn’t appear to compromise safety.
The federal government keeps kicking the air traffic control crisis in New York down the road. About three quarters of all airspace delays track to the New York metro area, according to the FAA. And this has knock-on effects as delays of planes flying out of New York wind up causing downline delays elsewhere in the country. So far all the government has been able to do is encourage airlines to fly less, rather than fixing the problem. The government hands out the right to takeoff and land at congested airports (“slots”) to incumbent airlines. These are treated as property rights (given free, so subsidies) that block competitors from entering the market. Since there’s a severe shortfall in air traffic controllers in the New York area, the government has waived the normal requirement that airlines…
ATC says “we are dispatching emergency services to your location now.” And the pilot gives their location as “Across from the Wendy’s and Aldi’s.”
After breaking up the American Airlines – JetBlue partnership which competed against Delta Air Lines, Delta sees a clear path to dominating in the Northeast. That’s bad for airfares and consumer choice. Now the government has taken another step to limit choices and raise fares.
The FAA asked airlines to reduce their flying in and out of New York this summer, because of a shortage of air traffic controllers. New York TRACON has been staffed only at around 60% and the FAA hasn’t acted. And yet they still can’t handle the volume that remains. Most people suppose this is a lagging problem coming out of the pandemic, since staffing across the board has been a challenge for businesses and especially in hospitality and transportation. But that’s actually not the issue.
On May 19, a United Airlines flight was forced to abort landing in order to avoid a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 on the runway. Then an Alaska Airlines jet aborted its landing, too.
Air traffic control called out the Southwest pilot – “you shouldn’t be on the runway.”
Delta flight 1482 from New Orleans to Salt Lake City was cancelled Friday evening after being told to reject takeoff when another aircraft crossed the taxiway. The Delta Airbus A321 was already accelerating down the runway for its takeoff roll.
When I saw Tucker Carlson’s Tuesday evening piece on air travel safety making the rounds, I didn’t give it much mind. But as it’s picking up steam, it seemed important to cover. Because while nearly everything he says in the segment is wrong, if his staff spent a little bit of time researching instead of picking up online complaints by United pilots who do not like the politics of their airline or President Biden, he could come up with a much better-grounded argument.
FedEx freighter flight 1432 was cleared to land in Austin, while a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, flight 708 to Cancun, was cleared to take off, using the same runway. The incident occurred around 6:40 a.m. on Saturday morning. Thankfully the FedEx plane pulled up and away, mere feet from landing on top of the passenger flight.
Taxpayer subsidies aren’t the right way to handle funding needs of the FAA. It’s not surprising that airline CEOs don’t want user fees, they want more money to provide services for their flights but they do not want to be the ones to pay for it. They’d rather get government subsidies than pay the cost of upgrading air traffic control.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
