Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged airports, history on March 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I was thinking recently about names of airports. The standard formula in the United States is to name an airport after its locality, and if there are multiple airports, to name it after a local personality or feature. A small proportion of our airports are named after truly national figures, unlike in Latin America or [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged budget airlines, airports, prestige, business on March 7, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Yes, this sounds like a good idea: start a low-fare carrier in an era of $100+ oil. Compound that brilliance by making it point-to-point only, but based at an airport with less than 285,000 enplanements in 2006 and a metro area of 300,000 people. Throw in the fact that even scheduled charter services masquerading as [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged air traffic control, airports, icao, labor, latin america, safety, world on March 7, 2008 | No Comments »
As of March 5, according to new International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules, English proficiency is now be the required of all pilots and air traffic controllers. In the past, controllers and pilots could communicate in a local language if both spoke it, even though English was the most common standard. More than anything else, [...]
Posted in Evan's Fiskings, tagged airports, europe on February 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
If you build it, they will come.
This sort of wishful thinking too often infects policymakers seeking to improve and expand air travel systems. Sometimes, unfortunately, they choose the most expensive option: building an entirely new airport. As I’ve written earlier, this does not happen very often (at least not in developed countries, but check out [...]
Posted in Evan's Fiskings, tagged airports, prestige, transit, travel on January 25, 2008 | No Comments »
In an otherwise unremarkable editorial today, the Washington Post lets slip some factual and logical errors about airports.
The Post assails the Federal Transit Administration’s decision to put the kibosh on the long-planned extension of DC’s Metrorail system to Dulles International Airport. The only transit connections to DC’s major international airport are a bus line from [...]
Posted in Evan's Debates, tagged airports, network airlines, air traffic control, faa, delays on January 19, 2008 | 5 Comments »
From the comments on this post: there’s a vigorous debate going on about whether some form of congestion would really reduce delays, given that flight schedules (for business travelers at rush or for international flights connecting to overseas hub banks at planned times) are not easily adjusted. But there’s another point I want to bring [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged regulation, airports, usa, air traffic control, faa, travel, delays on January 15, 2008 | 8 Comments »
Very exciting news yesterday: the FAA has proposed amendments to a rule that will allow the most congested airports to adopt a modified form of congestion pricing. (You can–and should–read the full filing at regulations.gov and my take on congestion pricing at American.com.) I spent the evening reading over the rule, and I think it’s [...]
Posted in Evan's News and Quick Takes, tagged airports, competition, usa, travel, mergers, delta, northwest on January 14, 2008 | No Comments »
I’ll be blogging more on the “merger mania” going on in the aviation observers’ world, but I wanted to draw attention to an article in my hometown paper, the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, about how airport officials are worried that a combined Delta-Northwest would drop Memphis as a hub. Delta-Northwest’s smallest hub would be in [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged airports, competition, network airlines, usa, travel, congress, small communities on January 3, 2008 | 4 Comments »
The “Essential Air Service” (EAS) is back in the news, this time in an article in USA Today, which is being batted around the blogosphere at View from the Wing, Marginal Revolution, and elsewhere. If you’re not familiar with EAS, read the article first; it offers a good overview of the program. In this post, [...]
Posted in Evan's Commentary, tagged airports, prestige, network airlines, open skies on January 3, 2008 | No Comments »
The Airline Hub blog links to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story wistful for transatlantic flights to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Now, if you click on the “prestige” tag below, you’ll see that I have had some scathing opinions about airports that go out of their way to secure transoceanic airline service that’s not supported by [...]
