Yesterday, as I was going through my usual morning ritual of scanning airline news and blogs, I came across a press release saying that the “Air Travelers Association” had submitted a “Passengers First” proposal to solve the congestion problems in New York. At first, I thought it was the ATA, but wait, that’s the Air TRANSPORT Association. This is definitely something different.

After reading the release, I became very suspicious. First, the release is very high level and offers no details. A visit to the Association’s website revealed nothing more than a very poorly put together site with a photo of an America West 757 in the original livery that must be at least 10 years old.

So what were “they” suggesting we do?

1. Eliminate corporate jets from LaGuardia - How many corporate jet flights are there from LGA every day? It can’t be that many. And where else would they go on the east side of the East River?
2. Do not permit “Non-Standard” departures from LaGuardia - This is a very rare occurrence. According to a New York air traffic expert friend of mine, this would have very little impact.
3. Eliminate all published connections at LGA - Why? He says it only accounts for 5% of the traffic at the airport. I can’t imagine that eliminating connections would do anything to relieve air traffic congestion. It would just reduce the number of passengers and not the number of flights. That isn’t the problem.
4. Eliminate the perimeter rule prohibiting flights over 1,500 miles - Huh? Again, this does nothing to reduce air traffic congestion. It just reallocates capacity to different areas. There will still be too many airplanes for the current system set up.
5. Change the definition of a “delay” from not just being 15 minutes - Again, huh? This doesn’t fix congestion. This just tries to convince people that they aren’t delayed. Wow.

That’s a heck of a list that leaves more questions than answers. After I finished reading this morning, I shot an email over to David Stempler, the man who appears to be the entire organization, asking many of the questions I posted above. I said that I was planning on writing this morning, so I asked to hear back by last night. I did not.

I suppose I shouldn’t expect such quick turnaround for a little blog like mine, but if you’re going to put out a press release and you want it to get coverage, I would think you would at least write back asking for more time to make sure you have a say in what happens. Hopefully I’ll hear back from him and can post updates here, but for now, I’ll just hope that someone reading can help fill in the blanks for me. What am I missing?

My biggest question is about who he is trying to support here. In his release, he says, “The Air Travelers Association is the airline passenger/consumer representative on the U.S. DOT’s New York Aviation Rulemaking Committee . . . .” He is clearly connected to someone if he made it on this committee, but as many others have asked, is he really supporting passengers?

Much of this proposal does not seem to address any of the issues passengers face today. Let’s say this does open up a little more space at the already saturated LaGuardia. Is that really going fix the New York area congestion issues? I think not. Flights will fill those holes very quickly. I’m just still trying to figure out the motivation here.

A quick Google search brought up a post from Chris Elliot with links to all sorts of sites that raise questions about the legitimacy of this organization. Hmm. Very questionable.

New York’s LaGuardia airport is not a big place. At least, it’s not big enough to handle all the demand that’s out there.

You may remember a few years ago when the FAA decided to eliminate the slot restrictions at the airport. It led to an unprecedented overcapacity problem that had delays well over an hour even in the best of weather. That led to slots being reinstated so that no more than 75 flights per hour could be scheduled.

Now, the FAA still isn’t happy. They know there’s a ton of demand, yet airlines are squatting on slots by using regional jets for flights. There could be other airlines ready to fly larger planes, but once an airline owns a slot, it’s theirs to use as they like, as long as they do in fact use it.

So the latest idea is to use “operating authorizations,” or what I like to call Airline Steroids.

Basically, the FAA would hand out something like slots but if you fill them up with a bunch of regional jets, the FAA can take them away and give them to someone who is going to use bigger planes. The idea is that the bottleneck at LaGuardia isn’t the number of people you can fit in the terminals, it’s the number of planes you can fit on the runways. So, if you can increase the number of people on each plane, you’re able to better serve the demand that’s out there.

Look for this to happen at the beginning of next year if it happens at all.