Irwin Stelzer’s misguided airline economics

Irwin Stelzer, a very intelligent commentator on economic issues, indulges too much air rage in his latest column. After running through a laundry list of typical air travel complaints, he reveals that his understanding of air traffic control funding, for example, is shaky:
Now consider the world’s airlines’ roles in all of this. They have by [...]

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Daily departures: Tsk tsk TSA, pilot shortage, and outsourcing flights

Report: The Transportation Security Administration can damage your stuff, and, if you complain, arrest you. [Aero-News.Net]
Regional jet operators that contract with big airlines are facing a pilot shortage, and it will affect the entire industry. [Dallas Morning News]
Outsourcing short hops and thin routes has been commonplace for a long time, but what about long-haul flights? [...]

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Daily departures: JFK, JFK, JFK . . . and a Russian PBOR?

The FAA’s flight cap proposal at JFK is creating strange bedfellows. [Towers and Tarmacs]
The head of Boeing’s commercial plane unit claims that JFK flight caps are a sign that “the industry” has failed. (It’s actually a sign that the FAA has failed to keep up with demand for air travel.) [ATW Daily News]
Is the FAA’s [...]

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An unprecedented luxury airliner

So the A380 flew for the first time in commercial service, yippee. I just can’t get all the excited about the overdone Airbus-Boeing rivalry hype and the endless back-and-forth in the mainstream media about how every setback/leap forward means that Airbus/Boeing’s business plan is great/terrible. But I can get excited about this:
Safety concerns have been [...]

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Airlines and cake

The title above has nothing to do with inflight meals, unfortunately, and everything to do the airlines wanting to have their cake and eat it too in the congested airspace brouhaha (see yesterday’s post). There are several options the FAA is currently weighing to resolve the delay problem:

Charging more for slots at congested times of [...]

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Feds weighing market-based solutions to JFK snarls

Well, it’s been an exciting few days in the aviation policy world. I’ve been swamped with work at my day job, but I’ve been looking forward to this post for some time. Last Thursday, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters came much closer to endorsing a congestion-pricing plan for crowded airports than ever before. The next day, [...]

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Robert Sturgell to head FAA

The current acting administrator will be nominated for a full five-year term. He is likely to continue the policies of former administrator Marion Blakey and current secretary of transportation Mary Peters.

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SUX to be Sioux (City)

After years of trying to get the FAA to change its airport’s three-letter code, Sioux City, Iowa, has embraced its memorable identifier.
The code, used by pilots and airports worldwide and printed on tickets and luggage tags, will be used on T-shirts and caps sporting the airport’s new slogan, “FLY SUX.” It also forms the address [...]

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When it comes to planes, old is not unsafe

In a post about Northwest Airlines’s new Airbus A330s, Ben Mutzabaugh reminds us that Northwest’s workhorse aircraft, the DC-9, is still in use with no planned replacement. NWA has 134 DC-9s, which seat 90-130 depending on configuration, and it has 130 of its other domestic workhorse type, the A319/A320 family, which seat between 125 and [...]

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Congestion pricing on the table

A federal task force of aviation stakeholders is meeting to discuss ways to reduce delays in the New York area, per Transportation Secretary Mary Peters’s orders.
The talks, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, have been closed to the public, but participants report that one of the primary topics will be “congestion pricing,” a scheme [...]

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