Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

You may recall this interesting item from October — one I found via James Fallows’s blog — in which an airline pilot explained some of the irreducible realities of commercial air traffic:

Airline flight delays: an expert weighs in.

The pilot, Patrick Smith, pointed out how airports are overloaded with flights by smaller regional jets rather than larger airliners. The smaller planes carry fewer passengers each, so that a given airline needs more planes to carry the same number of passengers. They do this because more planes allows more different flights per day, which suits consumer preferences for (a) more choice in departure time and (b) more direct flights. The trouble is, smaller planes take up a slot of runway time just like larger planes do.

Which leads us to this dynamic:

• Airlines want to offer more flights, and
• Consumers want the choice of more flights, yet
• Runway clearances — the amount of flights per hour — are inflexible, as they should be given the dictates of safety.

The technical and safety aspects of that last point were driven home to me (in terms that this layperson can understand) when I read this great post via another Fallows-supplied link:

Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

The post’s author, Don Brown, was an air-traffic controller for many years, and from all I can tell he knows very well whereof he speaks. He comes down hard in favor of pursuing air safety rather than rewarding airlines’ commercial mandates, which currently, according to Brown, extend to being “allowed to schedule more flights than the runways can handle in even perfect weather.”

It’s clear from reading the piece that Brown understands the huge pressures on airlines to offer more flights and to fly them on time. And he understands why they don’t limit their flights, even in the name of safety.

Airlines can make more money selling 70 airplanes worth of tickets per hour than they could if they limited themselves to the 60 airplanes per hour that the runway can handle. In fairness to the airlines, it’s not in their interest to limit themselves. It is easier to sell the tickets and blame the delays on the weather or the “antiquated” air traffic control system. Especially if the flying public doesn’t understand runway capacity limits and therefore fails to notice that the “antiquated” air traffic control system is delivering more airplanes to the runways than the runways can handle.

As Brown ably explains, those runway limitations aren’t subject to much tinkering, and they’ll hardly be solved by the much-discussed NextGen air-traffic control system, which is still on the FAA’s drawing board. Why? Because airports — especially horribly clogged ones like JFK in New York — are already at maximum runway capacity.

The math is as simple as it is inescapable. Roughly 60 airliners can use a runway in one hour if conditions are absolutely perfect. It is physically impossible to improve that number. However, it can get a lot worse.

Brown is right when he calls the current disconnect over runway capacity “madness.” The problem, as I see it, is that the interested parties each look at only a part of the issue — the part that affects their desires, naturally — without acknowledging the inherent contradictions in their views.

Consumers want more flights, more direct flights, and consistent on-time departures. Of course, we also tend to want sexy spouses, lucrative-yet-easy careers, and, often, chocolate-chip cookies when we’re feeling blue. But we don’t usually act like we’re automatically entitled to get these things, unlike on-time departures and six direct flights daily from Austin to Columbus.

To the degree that they can, airlines respond to these consumer desires, even when it means they cut corners on customer service, because experience tells them that travelers will choose flights primarily based on the convenience of the itinerary and the price of the ticket, not on how nice the gate agents or telephone operators are.

Meantime, Brown wants safety above all. To get it, he thinks that federal action is required:

Congress should pass legislation mandating that each commercial airport’s maximum hourly capacity be established and published. Furthermore, the FAA should impose limitations on the number of flights that can be scheduled at each commercial airport. That number should be less than the maximum capacity, taking into account such factors as typical weather patterns for the airport, routine maintenance and any other factor that typically limits capacity.

There are plenty of areas where I’m wary about regulation, which often arises from a good idea but then collapses under the weight of bureaucracy. But there are cases in which the federal government is the only entity that can address all parts of a problem. This is one of them.

For all my railing against them, airlines aren’t wicked. But all sorts of un-wicked businesses will do ill-advised things in their non-stop search for profits. Hey, that’s capitalism, and for the most part I’m glad to take it. But there’s a reason our arch-capitalist society has evolved sophisticated regulatory regimes over time, namely because over time we’ve come to realize that other considerations besides profit ought to come first, at least for certain things. Don Brown has hit on a very good example.