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Airport
Delays on the Rise
From a news story by
CNN San Francisco News Reporter Greg Lefevre
January 2004
You often can't get there from here. At least not on time. Delays infuriate
travelers, and cost the country billions in lost productivity.
A business traveler says,
"Chicago's the worst, maybe New York."
A FAA study listed eleven major problems and proposed eleven solutions.
All problems are within the small world of air traffic control. The
various regions don't talk to each other enough. Each region operates
differently and the number of planes in so-called regional traffic is
exploding.
In the first of eleven proposed solutions a FAA national center will
seize control from the regions during heavy traffic or bad weather.
Jane Garvey of the FAA says, "The purpose of the command center
is to really make those decisions that effect the system in total."
Also, the FAA pledges again to upgrade its computers.
The booming economy has clogged the skies.
Michael Barr is a safety expert at the University of Southern California,
"We've got fares that are reduced. We've got more people that want
to fly and we are actually saturating the air of the United States with
air traffic."
An example of this is San Francisco International Airport is growing
fast as a world-wide gateway and a as hub to a hugely expanded regional
service.
Ron Wilson of the San Francisco International Airport says, "If
we've got 16, 17, 18 aircraft, which is common, [all] departing at 8am
in the morning the guy that is [on the] 18th [plane] is going, probably,
to be 40 minutes late."
Jane Garvey says, "It's important to note that aviation is growing.
It's becoming a form of mass transportation for a number of people.
Our volume numbers are up and that's having an effect on the delay numbers
as well."
Still weather causes about 70-percent of delays. Then the FAA moves
planes farther apart from the usual five miles to as much as 20 [miles].
The new rule may reduce that to 10 [miles]. But if the sky is already
crowded, where do those planes go?
[A traveler says:] "Naturally,
I think the more space between planes there is the greater the safety
factor that most people would assume exist".
The FAA calls its fix mitigation, not a cure. Critics say the core problems
remain: too many planes, too few controllers and too little modernization.
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