Quote:
Originally Posted by jimworcs
A bit of honesty by the airlines wouldn't go amiss. This is a uniquely American problem.. this does not happen anywhere else in the world on anything like this scale. Why is that? Is it because only America has weather?
Or perhaps the US airlines cram too many flights into too few slots, which actually results in some airports (JFK for example) being physically unable to handle, on time, the number of flights it has scheduled. When the slightest problem in the system develops, the backlog quickly becomes unmanageable. The airlines solution is to make passengers suffer, on the grounds that this is the more efficient solution. If we pass regulations which prohibit this, or which required the airlines to pay prohibitively expensive compensation where they have kept passengers on the ground and onboard for over 3 hours, I think you would find that solutions would be found. One of which is to spread flights out over the day more efficiently, and stop overstuffing "peak time" take off and landing slots beyond endurance.
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For the traditional hub and spoke model your suggestion to spread the flights out is just not very feasible. Flights arrive into the hub then go out of the hub to get people to their destinations. Most flights to Europe and Asia leave in the late afternoon or evening so people are not going to book a flight into the hub arriving at 9 or 10 AM when their international departure isn't until 6 or 7 in the evening unless they absolutely have to. Most arrivals are timed to provide convenient connections.
Also airlines must schedule with the business traveler in mind. Most people cannot cut their workday short to make a 3 or 4 PM departure so departures between 5 and 7 PM are much more convenient for that crowd. Let's say there are two departures to a particular city between Noon and 4 PM and four flights Between 4 and 8 PM. Under your scheme they should schedule those six flights out evenly over that 8 hour period but the flight that gets moved earlier than 4 PM to accomplish that is going to suffer a drop in sales and the three flights after 4 PM will be consistently overbooked because the business people just can't leave before 4 PM.
The only other solution would be to add more runways however in the major metropolitan areas of the US the airports have expanded to their maximum. You just can't build a runway in Central Park in NYC to provide extra capacity for NY's three major airports. In some major metropolitan areas like New York they are trying to better utilize airports in the outlying suburban areas but those efforts often meet with resistance from the surrounding communities and where they are able to fly people continue to choose flights from the major airports because they are easier to reach by car or public transit.
The biggest problem we face in the US is that we didn"t invest in rail when we should have. Our rail system has many gaps which we are only now trying to catch up with Europe.