Marion Blakey, outgoing Grand Poobah at the FAA, gave her farewell speech to the Aero Club this week, and her comments make me throw my arms up in the air with frustration.

The big issue right now is delays (duh), and the FAA needs to be proactive in fixing these problems. 07_09_12 blakeythoughtsBut instead of outlining what the FAA could be doing, she pushed it back on to the airlines where we know it won’t get fixed.

You know you’re in trouble when the speech contains gems like this one. “I predict passengers will continue to be fed up with delays, and that’s got to be taken more seriously by all of us and particularly our airlines.” Holy crap – amazing revelation! But don’t worry, she’s on it: “If airlines don’t address this voluntarily, don’t be surprised when the government steps in.”

I WILL be surprised, because you guys don’t seem to be in a hurry. It’s clear the airlines won’t address this voluntarily. JetBlue isn’t going to reduce schedules at JFK unless they know Delta and American will do the same. And it’s not like they can all get together in a room and talk about that legally.

So until the airports and airspace can be designed to handle the amount of traffic that needs to be supported, the FAA is going to have to step in. They know this, but they aren’t doing anything about it. They’re just talking and that does nothing. Unfortunately, we know Marion Blakey is checked out. She’s done in a couple days and she’ll be on her way to a nice fat lobbying job. It’ll be up to the next administrator, which rumors say could be Mike Levine. Now there’s a guy that would be interesting in this position. He could actually get something done here. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

UPDATE 9/12 @ 205p: Someone suggested I might give a little more background on Mike Levine. If you’d like to know more about him, head to this link.