So let’s start a little smaller. How about adding some runways at existing airports? In the last 10 years only six new runways have been built at the nation’s 30 busiest airports, which handle 70 percent of all air traffic. That’s hardly enough to accommodate the growing demand. Experts say we could use about 25 more at big airports to help cut delays. About 15 are in the works, but most won’t be completed for three to seven years. And some of the neediest airports, including delay-plagued O’Hare, aren’t on that list.
Building the actual runway isn’t the problem; it’s that various local, state and federal agencies generally don’t coordinate their reviews of runway proposals or feel much pressure to meet deadlines. Memphis had to wait 16 years to complete its new runway, even though there was no local opposition to the project. Officials at San Francisco Airport, which is considering building a new runway, expect 32 separate agencies to weigh in on their proposal. “It’s like a maze with mirrored walls, and nobody can tell you when or where you’re likely to come out,” says David Plavin, president of the North American division of Airports Council International, an industry trade group.
FIX: Change the federal laws to require deadlines and better coordination of environmental reviews. It may sound like a long shot, but support in Congress is building for such a measure. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas proposed legislation recently to streamline the approval process. “The pyramids took less time to build than some runways in the United States,’’ she says. Airline executives also say the Federal Aviation Administration should campaign more for new runways to help relieve pressure on the system it oversees. “It ought to be an advocate pushing for consensus, not waiting for consensus,’’ says Don Carty, CEO of American Airlines.
COST: Although the price tag varies, the construction of a new runway costs about $100 million. But related expenses–moving highways, rerouting waterways and dealing with local opposition–can push the price all the way up to $1 billion, the current estimate for adding a single runway at Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle.
OBSTACLES: Changing a cumbersome process involving so many local and federal government agencies will require resolve from federal leaders that’s tougher than concrete. And even if the process were streamlined today, new runways would still take many years to build. For once, money is not the big problem. With ticket taxes, airlines’ fees and passenger-facility charges collected by airports, the funding is available. Solution 2: Unclog the Airways Until more runways are added, we’ve got to make better use of the ones we’ve got. Simply managing traffic better would help ease congestion. Too many planes want to fly in and out of key airports at rush hours–in the early morning and late afternoon. The tight schedule of takeoffs and landings leaves no margin for error, so even the slightest delays at key airports can quickly ripple across the entire country. La Guardia is a particularly bad bottleneck–last September, for example, the airport was responsible for 20 percent of all delays nationwide.
But the problem isn’t just the total number of planes crowding onto runways; it’s also the type of plane. Too many small planes–private aircraft, corporate jets and smaller commercial jets and turboprops–are taking up precious airspace. These smaller planes are needed to connect remote cities, but they also jam up busy airports. At LaGuardia, a quarter of the landing planes typically handle just 5 percent of its passengers. Smaller planes are also slower than big jets, so air-traffic controllers have to give them more time on the runway.
FIX: Airports now charge landing fees by weight, a system that favors smaller planes. At busy airports like La Guardia, the rates for landing could be set using an auction system instead, much the way the Federal Communications Commission uses auctions to sell off limited space on the airwaves. The change would smooth out the rush hours and encourage operators of smaller aircraft to shift their flights to off-peak times or use nearby airports that aren’t so crowded.
COST:If the airlines’ landing fees rise, ticket prices may rise as well. But as it is, airlines use their powerful computer systems to extract every last dollar in fares. If the average plane landing at La Guardia were bigger, more seats would become available, possibly at discount prices.
Prices may also fall for other passengers who are willing to fly at off-peak times or into secondary airports. Southwest Airlines has shown it can operate profitably with low fares by avoiding busy airports like Logan in Boston in favor of the nearby airports in Providence, Manchester and Hartford. The airlines’ trade group, the Air Transport Association, hasn’t reached a consensus opinion on such an auction system.
OBSTACLES: Residents of smaller cities, who depend on service from smaller planes, would storm Congress if they lost direct service to major airports. Private pilots and corporate-jet operators are powerful lobby groups and would undoubtedly complain about being shunted aside to outlying airports. Breaking the logjam of so many conflicting interests will require leadership from the White House, says Dan Kasper, an aviation consultant and a member of a 1993 presidential commission that studied the airline industry. “Somebody is going to have to knock some heads together,’’ he says. Solution 3: Customers Before Cargo Airline executives say they’re in the customer-service business. But in truth, their biggest concern is getting their planes to where they’re going. Passengers are merely lumped in with luggage in the category of stuff that has to be processed and loaded onto the aircraft.
The airlines admitted as much when they launched a 12-point service plan two summers ago. The initiative, designed to fend off congressional criticism and regulation, was dubbed “Customers First.’’ In a follow-up study, the Transportation Department noted that the airlines were “adding a customer focus when they make decisions regarding operations and schedules.’’ Delta Air Lines was lauded for giving employees rewards for keeping customers better informed during delays. America West Airlines won praise for appointing a “customer advocate” to serve at each airport. These are good steps, but most of corporate America adopted such measures ages ago.
There are also too many rules, particularly for tickets. American said last week, for example, that it will start charging customers $10 extra if they want a paper ticket instead of an electronic ticket, but it applies only in certain cases, and the fee will be waived under certain circumstances. Such rules create an environment in which airlines are always telling customers no, says Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant. Passengers get angry because the airlines are so “difficult to do business with,” he adds. And many travelers still feel the airlines aren’t leveling with them when there are delays or problems, let alone helping them. “It’s almost an ‘us against them’ mentality,’’ says Brian Dyak, CEO of the Entertainment Industries Council in Burbank, Calif.
FIX: Airline executives should navigate airport lines along with the rest of us and travel more often in coach class (in disguise, so they don’t get the red-carpet treatment from staffers). OK, so maybe that won’t happen, but the airlines need to do something to get a fresh perspective on what it’s actually like to deal with ticket and gate agents and fly in cramped quarters. Then they might see the need for changes: Why not appoint more “customer advocates”? Why not review agents’ job performance based on how well they treat passengers, rather than how quickly they can bark “Next”? Why not increase the size of overhead bins?
Carol Hallett, president of the Air Transport Association, the industry trade group, says airlines are trying to do more for passengers. “Has it been enough? No. Are we working hard to do more? Yes.”
COST: Airlines already spend a lot of money on training and initiatives intended to improve service. It’s just a matter of shifting their focus.
OBSTACLES: The biggest is changing the culture of the industry. This a hellishly complicated business, filled with endless checklists, byzantine rules and more acronyms than the Defense Department. Airline executives also have a bad habit of saying that most travelers are interested only in low fares and aren’t willing to pay for better service. That’s true, and many travelers do have unrealistic expectations. But this logic lets the airlines off the hook from thinking about small ways to make flying easier. Solution 4: As the Crow Flies The current air-traffic-control system funnels planes into what are, in effect, narrow roads in the sky. This is hardly the best way to direct more than 23,000 scheduled commercial flights a day through the country’s 3.5 million square miles of airspace. After all, aircraft often have to fly out of their way to hook up with these aerial roads. But it’s the best the Federal Aviation Administration can do with its outmoded mix of ground-based radar stations and navigation beacons. Because its radar systems lack pinpoint accuracy, aircraft must be separated by five miles horizontally and 1,000 feet vertically. “There’s so much space up in the sky, but we’re using it in two-dimensional, single-lane highways,’’ says Darryl Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University.
FIX: Adopt “free flight’’ technology, which would let planes fly more direct routes–as the crow flies. Part of the solution lies in using the military satellites that make up the Global Positioning System. With the right mix of technology, planes could precisely broadcast their positions to other planes, as well as to controllers on the ground. Sophisticated software could steer aircraft away from one another long before they ever get close. The entire approach to air-traffic control would be different–rather than controlling airspace like traffic cops, the focus would simply be on keeping flights separated once they break out of their highways in the sky. Planes could also approach airports more directly.
The FAA is in the very early stages of introducing the technology, following the strategy it refers to as “build a little, test a little, deploy a little.’’ Private companies aren’t waiting, with FedEx Corp. taking the lead in testing the technology on its own. The Boeing Co. is planning to file a wide-ranging proposal with the FAA next month to replace the current radar system for air-traffic control with one that makes use of the satellite technology. Boeing, which says it specializes in such complicated projects, has even signaled that it might be willing to make enormous upfront investments. John Hayhurst, who heads Boeing’s newly created air-traffic-management division, says current governmental efforts to improve the system lack overarching goals and deadlines. The move by Boeing clearly ups the ante with its key competitors, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, for big FAA air-traffic contracts. The FAA has said it’s interested in reviewing proposals for public-private partnerships.
COST: Estimates vary widely–from hundreds of millions of dollars to billions. But getting planes to where they’re going by more direct routes would ultimately save the airlines a lot of time and a bundle of money on fuel and maintenance.
OBSTACLES: See next section.
Solution 5: Fire the Paper Pushers Is the Federal Aviation Administration really up to the task of running an air-traffic-control system that handles more than 8 million scheduled commercial flights each year? Not according to a growing chorus of experts. To be fair, the federal agency, a branch of the Department of Transportation with 49,000 employees and a $12 billion annual budget, has shown that it can do the job safely. But in light of growing traffic and worsening delays, safety isn’t the only measure. The air-traffic-control system needs constant technological upgrades to keep it running with businesslike efficiency.
By this measure, the agency gets a failing grade. It has wasted billions of dollars on botched efforts to modernize the system. Perhaps its biggest embarrassment was the Advanced Automation System, a 10-year, $12 billion plan launched in the 1980s to update the existing air-traffic-control technology. Costs soared, delays set in and the project delivered far less than promised. The General Accounting Office determined that the project wasted $2.8 billion. Former FAA administrators went on record recently saying that the FAA’s culture was “risk-averse and not sufficiently customer-focused.’’ The FAA has been trying to hire a “chief operating officer’’ to help improve the air-traffic system. But the best salary it can offer is about $145,000 (bonus could go as high as $43,500), because it’s a federal agency. So far, nobody has stepped up to take the job. “They just can’t compete, and the talent level has gone down dramatically,’’ says Clark Onstad, an aviation executive and former FAA general counsel. Jane Garvey, the FAA administrator, dismisses the criticism: “We’ve got an incredibly professional and technically competent work force.”
The airlines’ blunt assessment: “The FAA’s system is broken,’’ says a report on air-traffic control by the Air Transport Association.
FIX: Take the task of running air-traffic control out of the government’s hands and create an independent, nonprofit corporation to operate it. That’s what they’ve done in Canada, Australia and Germany, and it’s reduced both delays and costs in those countries. A board of airlines, airports, private pilots and the military could oversee the system and pay for it themselves through user fees, rather than by the current system of congressional appropriations generated through excise taxes. Freed from relying on the federal budget process, the new corporation could issue long-term bonds to raise money and investments in GPS systems and other new technology. And it could afford to offer salaries that would attract talented managers. Garvey, the FAA administrator, says that, given the amount of air traffic in the United States, such proposals are too simplistic. “We have a lot we can learn from looking at the private structures that are set in place in Europe and Canada,’’ she says. “But our system is much more complex.’'
COST: Restructuring the air-traffic-control system, currently handled by about 17,500 FAA employees, would be costly. But any investments would be quickly recouped, says Robert Poole, coauthor of a study from the Reason Public Policy Institute on commercializing air-traffic control. He estimates that, based on the experience of Canada and Australia, the U.S. airline industry would save about $1.8 billion a year from improved efficiency.
OBSTACLES: Many in Congress oppose the idea, in part because they would lose control over the joystick that guides a big part of the FAA. Air-traffic controllers say big structural changes might compromise safety. Solution 6: Stop the Merger Madness Airlines are acting like professional sports teams engaged in whirlwind trades. The latest proposal involves United’s acquiring a majority of US Airways and spinning off parts of it to American. The Justice Department has tough standards for approving such deals, and many people are betting this proposal won’t make it. But if it goes through, other major carriers would feel compelled to combine forces just to keep up with United and American, which would carry about half of all air traffic in the United States.
History suggests that airline marriages, intended to create bigger route networks that will attract more passengers and lead to greater profits, are rarely successful. There were 18 airline mergers during the 1980s, and only one–Delta’s acquisition of Western–produced the kind of financial and operational savings that might lead to more profits and possibly even lower fares for travelers. Many fail because of difficulties in meshing the airlines’ different systems for running their business, and because of tension among labor groups. (In the 1990s, Southwest successfully integrated Morris Air into its operation.) “Big airline mergers aren’t a great idea,’’ says Michael E. Levine, a former airline executive and an early architect of the industry’s deregulation.
FIX: The government should usually lean toward blocking mergers among the large carriers. Granted, that will only maintain current competitive levels, not enhance them. What’s needed is more successful new airlines. There were plenty of them in the early 1990s, when ValuJet led a wave of start-ups that were eager to steal market share from the established giants. But after the crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades in 1996, travelers and investors lost confidence in start-up airlines, and many of them folded. Given the early success of JetBlue, which has new planes and deep pockets, investors may warm again to bankrolling such ventures.
COST: Travelers could actually save money by flying on low-fare airlines.
OBSTACLES: You may be the biggest one. If consumers want low-fare service, they must be prepared to support low-fare carriers, even if it means flying at off-peak times or driving farther to secondary airports. Solution 7: Reward the Reformers American Airlines’ introduction of frequent-flier mileage in the 1980s was a brilliant marketing stroke, and other airlines quickly followed the carrier’s lead. But there’s a problem: travelers are so focused on building up mileage on a single airline that they’ve become brand-loyal and are loath to switch, even when another airline offers some tempting service innovation.
Exhibit A: American’s decision last year to remove two rows of seats from coach class in each of its planes, giving every passenger a few more inches of legroom. The airline bet that the extra space would attract new business customers, whose higher fares would more than offset revenue lost from taking out seats. American says its bet is paying off, but no other airline seems to be feeling threatened enough to follow–yet. (United Airlines added a section of seating called Economy Plus, which offers a little more legroom to passengers who pay full coach fares. It’s the right impulse but the wrong solution, since it still leaves too many people struggling with claustrophobia in the back of the plane.) Cramped legroom is a real problem. Given all the flight delays, more people are sitting for longer stretches. In many polls, including NEWSWEEK’s, tight quarters rank high on lists of gripes about flying. Health experts are also raising concerns about “economy-class syndrome’’: the risk, during long flights, of “deep-vein thrombosis,’’ or blood clots that can occur when people sit still for too long. A 28-year-old British woman died from it last year at London’s Heathrow Airport after a 20-hour flight from Australia to London.
FIX: Travelers can reward airlines for their innovations by traveling with them. And because this is an industry of shameless copycats, carriers that find they are losing business will quickly match whatever innovation is clearly helping their competitor. It’s not just American that deserves a pat on the back. Continental refitted its entire fleet with much bigger overhead bins. United is spending $150 million over the next two years to cut waiting time at airports through measures like installing 800 electronic kiosks that can issue boarding passes and assign seats.
COST: If travelers shop around more, they may not earn free frequent-flier tickets as quickly. And if any other airline would like to match American’s legroom, it should budget somewhere around $70 million to change the spacing of the seats on its fleet. Bigger overhead bins? Continental spent about $14 million to install them.
OBSTACLES: Travelers typically consider fares, schedules and their frequent-flier accounts when booking a ticket, not which airline offers the best service. But if passengers want airlines to treat them better, they’re going to have to reward those carriers that do, in fact, try harder. Sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around for the mess air travel has become. But consumers have to realize they’re part of the problem, too–and part of the solution.
