It's not the most exciting news we've heard this week, but for those of us who fly regularly, it's important.
Yesterday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that the the Department of Transportation will not be allowed to auction off takeoff and landing slots at busy airports. It's a blow to the FAA, which saw the auctions as a way to reduce the delays that choke New York area airports, and a win for airlines, which would have been forced to pay out of pocket for flying into and out of those airports during peak hours.
The airline industry was quick to congratulate the GAO for its stellar work. "Airlines applaud the clear and decisive opinion rendered by the GAO, which affirms what we have said all along -- that the DOT slot auction is unlawful," said James May of the Air Transport Association (ATA), the industry's big trade group. "We urge the FAA to put their focus and attention on increasing capacity and airspace redesign to make progress in actually reducing delays.
The ATA thinks the magic bullet is NextGen, an air traffic control system that would replace the current radar-based technology with GPS. The ATA says NextGen would track aircraft more accurately, freeing up airspace by allowing planes to fly closer together. Without it, May predicts that all hell will break loose, saying that "today's capacity crunch in the Northeast will be a national crisis."
That's all well and good, but the reality is that most of us won't live to see the $15 billion system. After all, the treasury isn't exactly drunk on money these days (see: Federal Bank Bailout, budget deficit, slumping tax revenue, etc.), and Congress can't even pass a bill that properly funds the FAA.
Which is why the FAA proposed slot auctions at the three New York area airports. It figured that by forcing airlines to pay for taking off and landing at certain times, rather than just scheduling flights as they pleased, congestion could be moderately reduced. Not surprisingly, airlines and airports were against the idea, with the New Jersey Port Authority going so far as to say it would ignore any slot restrictions the FAA tried to put into place at the Newark Airport.
So now that the slot auction plan is dead, what's next? With NextGen a generation away and congestion likely to grow despite recent flight cutbacks, something has to give. Some say better air traffic control staffing is the answer, but all the controllers in the world won't solve the problem of too many planes competing for a finite amount of runway and air space.
While the government and the industry try to hammer out a long term solution for the congestion mess, something needs to be done in the short term. At this point, what it will be is anyone's guess.
Photo by Flickr user Suzushun
