Aviation08: McCain the perimeter-slayer?

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, like LaGuardia in New York, is well-known for its perimeter restrictions. Flights are limited to 1,250 miles from the airport. This restriction, which dates to 1969, is due in part to noise concerns but more to a kind of industrial policy: the desire to drive long-haul traffic from the desirable, [...]

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Obama vs. McCain on aviation

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone. What’s been a relatively quiet month in the policy world is ending with a few huge bangs in the political world. I was very impressed with Senator Obama’s inspiring acceptance speech in Denver last night. It was a tremendous event. I’m also very pleased with Senator McCain’s selection today of [...]

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More on the BAA case

I have a guest post on the Competition Commission’s remedies for BAA’s common ownership over at Towers and Tarmacs. Thanks to Benet Wilson for the invitation!

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More on BAA: why it needs to be broken up

I’ve been digesting the UK Competition Commission’s provisional findings on BAA, and I’ll have more to say on the proposed remedies later. Here, in summary form, is what the Commission has found.
BAA was privatized with control of London’s three main airports in 1987 primarily to increase airport efficiency and provide a solid financial base for [...]

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Obama: China’s “airports are vastly superior to us now”

Barack Obama has been watching the Olympics and marveling at how amazing China’s infrastructure is.

Here’s the text:
Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly superior to [...]

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As expected, Competition Commission finds BAA hinders competition at London airports

The Competition Commission has published its provisional findings. Key passage:
Our provisional view therefore is that a number of features each give rise to an AEC:
(a) As regards common ownership:
(i) Common ownership of Edinburgh and Glasgow is a feature which prevents competition between them.
(ii) Common ownership of the three BAA London airports is a feature of [...]

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One reason that governments privatize airports

One of the few cases where Adam Smith advocated public provision was that of large-scale infrastructure, and in particular transportation infrastructure, which he saw as a prerequisite for economic growth. His rationale was essentially an institutional one: private finance markets were neither large enough nor sophisticated enough to handle the scale and the long payback [...]

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The air travel a-la-cartel

At Cato at Liberty, Michael Cannon writes:

With fuel prices surging, commercial airlines have started charging passengers for once-gratis amenities (sodas, the first checked bag, pillows-n-blankets) and have increased fees for other amenities (alcoholic drinks, additional checked bags).  A recent [Washington Post] editorial ["Pillows and Planes," August 13] describes these fees as “picking passengers’ pockets” and “idea[s] to separate you [...]

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Wide open skies

Last week, the Financial Times carried an editorial on expanding “open skies” between the U.S. and Europe. After heralding the decline of flag carriers (even more marked with the proposed merger of BA and Iberia), the editors write: “Governments . . . must deal with the remaining obstacles to effective global airline consolidation.”

The US once [...]

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Security compromised

Stories like this — “A laptop containing the unencrypted security data for 33,000 travelers using the Clear system was stolen at San Francisco International Airport on July 26, according to CBS5 Television” — are pretty depressing. TSA is ineffective, and the contractors hired to make up for problems caused by TSA — that is, Clear [...]

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