The ATA wants to retain the status quo in air transportation.
The Air Transport Association, the Pennsylvania Avenue-based trade group which represents the air carrier industry, commented yesterday on the release of the February Air Travel Consumer Report. In summary, the ATA is happy that year-over-year on-time performance for the month of February has improved. The trade organization points to industry and government efforts as a cause of this improvement, and mentions the ‘significant drop’ in flight operations as another cause. The ATA also concludes that this indication of improvement can not be expected to continue as the economy recovers and air transportation demand expands right back into an ATC system that has not evolved to accommodate growth.
V1’s response –
Contrary to the ATA, V1 contends that the significant drop in flight operations is the primary reason for any improvement in on-time performance in air transportation. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that major air carriers decreased available seat miles throughout 2008 by 9%. And they plan to do roughly the same in 2009. And despite this drop in demand for the consumption of national aviation infrastructure, congestion persists in major terminal airspace such as New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (See the recent V1 Pilot Blog post and all V1 Pilot Tweets on Twitter.)
V1 agrees with the ATA’s conclusion that not enough is being done now to prevent the nightmarish re-emergence of lost productivity and wasted resources which air transportation delays cause. But the ATA and V1 do not agree on the solution.
The ATA continues to insist that the federal government must simply create more aviation infrastructure capacity for the air transportation industry to consume at will. As indicated in our independent research proposal, The V1 Concept of Air Transportation Management, we see many problems with the ATA’s position. To indicate two:
1. The nimble free-market provision of air carrier seat and freight capacity routinely over-consumes the slothful centralized provision of aviation infrastructure. There is nothing in the ATA’s position, or the development of NextGen, which will alter this dynamic. Just as the post-WWII technology of centralized ground-based aviation infrastructure has been over-consumed, so too will the satellite-based provision which is currently being developed. We propose this because the foundational process which requires centralized control of air traffic under the FAA will remain the same despite the shift from ground-based to satellite-based technology. V1 contends that the only thing being accomplished by the ATA’s position is the displacement of delays into the future – at minimal cost to the air carriers, at great cost to all taxpayers, and through lost productivity by air transportation consumers.
2. Federal taxation for the provision of centralized aviation resources is economically inefficient. Taxes do not govern demand for aviation infrastructure and they do not adequately supply the required volume of infrastructure capacity. Therefore the consumption of aviation resources is not reconciled by the cash price paid by all who consume them. They require some degree of subsidy, such as having passengers bear the cost of foreseen extended taxi times, as well as unforeseen delays. In fact, V1 has proposed that federal taxation of aviation resources may even be a cause of overconsumption, as consumers (air transportation providers and passengers) feel an entitlement to consume at any time and to any degree that which has been taxed.
Readers of the The V1 Concept of Air Transportation Management, and this blog, are already familiar with V1’s alternative proposals for ensuring the reconcilable and sustainable provision and consumption of aviation infrastructure.
The two components of this infrastructure, safe-separation airspace capacity (SSAC) and runway environment capacity (REC), must be re-created as ubiquitous utilities and tradable commodities.
They must be provided by private utilities which would be merely regulated by the FAA instead of being regulated and centrally provided by the FAA. As a result, aviation infrastructure would no longer be disconnected from the free-market provision of seat and freight capacity. Therefore, all three resources would be connected by a single market-derived price in the free market.
This would accurately govern demand and generate the market premiums for providing market demanded capacity.
Four-dimensional trajectories (4DT’s. The three spatial dimensions + time.) from the departure runway to the final approach fix at the destination runway, would be auctioned and traded in the free market.
Futures markets, hedge markets, and spot markets for 4DT’s would exist for contingency planning, as is the case with any other commodity.
For more details, please see the research proposal.
