A little more than 44% of all airline flight delays between May 2016 and April 2017 were categorized as Air Carrier Delay.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics defines Air Carrier Delay as “within the airline’s control (e.g. maintenance or crew problems, aircraft cleaning, baggage loaded, fueling, etc.).”
So it feels a tad misleading when Southwest Airlines asks its Rapid Rewards members to “Help us advocate for national ATC modernization.”
I suspect Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program has a few hundred thousand members, and probably more. And those members received the following message at the top their July 2017 report.
“Our ATC system is safe, but terribly out-of-date and increasingly inefficient, resulting in longer flight times and unnecessary delays.”
Hmm.
In fact, when I add weather to Air Carrier Delays, I find ATC was NOT responsible for 73.76% of the more than 1.1 million delayed flights between May 2016 and April 2017.
ATC is not a problem seeking a solution. Do we need to modernize? Yep. But this isn’t the best way to accomplish that.
So, after you tell Congress to reauthorize the FAA without privatizing ATC, tell your friends and neighbors and local newspapers and your customers. Just like Southwest Airlines.
This would be the death of GA as we know it just like what has happened in the UK and mainland Europe. We have to fight this because even the President has been convinced that privatization is the way of the future.
I’ve written my Senator and Congressman here in Texas.
What about you?
Let’s think back to a few years before 2010. All the Airlines and their association were putting out ads about how GA was the cause of their delays. How GA got preferential treatment by being vectored in ahead of Airlines, or airlines being vectored around GA traffic.
We need to make sure that our elected representatives KNOW that the airlines have been blaming their delays on anyone they thought they could and the court of public opinion would accept.
The problem is, modernization doesn’t mean turning over control of the US Airspace to the Airlines. All that will result in is a greater airspace grab and monopoly power to prevent other airlines or situations from coming about that will compete with the airlines.
I’ve been telling my elected representatives about these things. I have had one of them have a staff member interview me on flying in the USofA and Europe. They were interested in the safety of flight issues caused by a fee structure.