U.S. President Bush on Sept. 27 promised to implement steps to reduce air traffic congestion nationwide and alleviate the long delays that have left travelers stranded for hours on aircraft on the tarmac or in passenger terminals.
While the air traffic control and airline scheduling headaches are not new to those who follow such matters, shifting the debate on how to fix the nation’s aviation system to the White House raised the visibility of the nagging problems, putting more pressure on the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to come up with both short term and long term solutions.
“Endless hours sitting in a airplane on a runway, and there’s no communication between the pilot and the airport is just not right. A lot of our air travelers are not only inconvenienced they’re in some cases just not being treated fairly. There’s a lot of anger amongst our citizens. We’ve got a problem. We understand there’s a problem, and we’re going to address the problem,” said Bush after meeting with Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and acting Federal Aviation Administrator Bobby Sturgell.
The airline industry’s on-time performance in the first seven months of 2007 was its worst since 1995 when regulators started gathering such data. In July, twenty carriers reported an on-time arrival rate of 69.8 percent, from 73.7 percent a year earlier.
This past summer, the United States saw record delays in flights across the country. There were nearly eight million minutes of delays throughout the system. Of that, nearly half occurred in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia region. From October 2006 to August 2007, delays were up almost 20 percent, compared with the same period from 2005-06 as eighteen U.S. airports have returned to their highest pre-9/11 commercial passenger levels. Almost 30 percent of all flights are now cancelled or substantially delayed.
Sturgell says “it is no secret that while we are enjoying a record level of safety, we are at a critical point with congestions and delays. Our aviation system is stretched to the limit.”
After the White House meeting, Peters told reporters she is asking the nation’s airline executives to meet with her and Sturgell to formulate a plan to improve airline scheduling for the NY/NJ/Philadelphia area. If no solution is found, she said, DOT is prepared to force a scheduling reduction on air carriers serving the region through which one-third of the nation’s air traffic passes through, and two-thirds of the nation’s air traffic can be affected when the New York area experiences delays. The move would be similar to measures taken to address congestion at Chicago O’Hare International and New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
Peters said options under consideration include higher fees for flights during peak periods, a pricing scheme not favored by airlines who say paying more won’t mitigate the record delays. Peters must report back to the President before the end of the year with proposed solutions that could be in effect by next summer.
Bush said the nation needs to address “chronic airline over-scheduling” while better protecting passengers against long waits aboard civil transports. Passenger Bill of Rights legislation is before the U.S. Congress, but Bush believes “the best way to protect consumers is to solve the underlying congestion and delay problems,” noting that DOT and the FAA are working on a number of initiatives to provide the traveling public with more information and protection. Among other things, DOT is assessing the effectiveness of contingency plans for tarmac delays developed by individual air carriers.
The White House meeting followed contentious congressional hearings at which lawmakers heaped intense criticism on the FAA and air carriers for the surge in flight delays.
On Sept. 26, Delta Airlines announced that it would voluntarily modify its schedule at Kennedy International in hopes of averting federally imposed flight restrictions. Although actually increasing its schedule at the airport, Delta will help reduce congestion by spreading out its international flights, reducing the number of peak period departures.
A week before, Continental Airlines, with major operations at Newark, New Jersey’s Liberty International Airport said it will move 37-seat and 50-seat regional jets from Newark to Cleveland, replacing them with larger aircraft.
The flight delay and consumer protection issues came to a boil after the DOT Inspector General (IG) issued a report that said federal regulators should more aggressively oversee how air carriers handle passengers suffering flight delays.
Specifically, the DOT IG Report said: “The severity of the on board delays last winter demonstrates that airlines, airports, the FAA, and DOT must work together to reduce long, on-board delays and minimize the impact on passengers when these delays occur. Flight delays and cancellations continue as a major source of customer dissatisfaction and is further compounded by reduced capacity and increased demand which leads to increased passenger inconvenience and dissatisfaction with customer service. With more seats filled, air carriers have fewer options to accommodate passengers from cancelled flights.
“These delays occurred throughout the system and at many airlines, and, after the severe long on-board delays that occurred last winter, the Secretary asked that we assess airlines’ contingency planning for such situations. Overall, we found that: (1) the on-board delays that passengers endured last winter were largely due to airlines’ lack of a system-wide policy to minimize such delays; (2) airlines’ and airports’ customer service contingency plans are still not adequate to handle these occurrences; (3) airlines and airports have best practices and are moving forward with other initiatives to help mitigate these delays; and (4) there are other actions that airlines, airports, FAA, and DOT can undertake immediately to address such situations.
“DOT should take a more active role in overseeing customer service issues, and we made a series of recommendations to the Department, the airlines, airports, and FAA can take to improve airline customer service and minimize long, on-board delays. Many of the recommendations are not new and date back to recommendations in our 2001 report, which were directed at delay and cancellation problems–key drivers of customer dissatisfaction with airlines,” the IG report added.
The DOT IG recommended that time limits on tarmac delays be set and that air carriers post statistics regarding flight performance on their Web sites. The report also said U.S. airports should be required to establish way to monitor and mitigate lengthy on-board delays.
As would be expected, U.S. air carriers oppose a Passenger Bill of Rights and federally imposed rules on onboard delays. James May, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association, says “the long onboard delays that occurred late last year and earlier this year were unacceptable and clearly mistakes were made.
“These events revealed gaps in airline planning and decision-making procedures. Since then, our members have made changes to their contingency plans and operating procedures to address these problems.
“Imposing an arbitrary time frame to deplane passengers will have numerous unintended consequences that are likely to increase cancellations and cause even greater delays for passengers trying to reach their final destinations. Furthermore, there are many practical and safety reasons why a requirement makes little sense.
The FAA’s Sturgell says “clearly, stranding passengers aboard aircraft for several hours is not acceptable and something must be done to minimize such incidents.”