The friendly skies

Air travel is both inspiring and aggravating. It both gives you the power to be transported across oceans in a matter of hours while also treating you like a farm animal as you are herded through security. While amazing, I think it could be so much more, and probably at lower cost.

I'm not alone in these suspicions, with Salon's "Ask the Pilot" columnist Patrick Smith offering up a list of measures to improve air travel that was written shortly after President Obama's election, which I will use as the basis for this post. Smith begins by deploring the state of air traffic control and airports:

The country's antediluvian ATC system is grossly ineffecient (sic) and prone to expensive breakdowns. Although modern aircraft are equipped with advanced navigational equipment, the underlying network still requires pilots to navigate much the way they did a half-century ago, relying on antiquated, point-by-point routings that waste millions of gallons of fuel each year and add to delays. The groundwork for improvement is already in place. The so-called NexGen (Next Generation) initiative will move ATC toward a streamlined, satellite-based system incrementally over the next several years.

But if the current predictions of air traffic growth are anywhere near accurate, we need to move faster. Meanwhile, runways and taxiways are in increasingly poor condition, and many airports lack ground surveillance radar, stopway barriers and other safety equipment. (Despite our excellent track record, the sharp increase in air traffic has pushed many airports to the brink of saturation, increasing the chances of runway collisions and other hazards.)

While Smith nails the problems, he probably reveals Salon's left-wing bias when examining solutions, unimaginatively calling for higher fees to fund needed modernization. The better move would be to privatize air traffic control, which has already been successfully done in Canada notes Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute (and a Canada native I believe):

Canada privatized its ATC in 1996, setting up a fully private, non-profit corporation, Nav Canada, which is self-supporting from charges on aviation users. The Canadian system has received rave reviews for investing in new technologies and reducing air congestion, and it has one of the best safety records in the world.

The United States should be a leader in air traffic control, especially given the nation's legacy of aviation innovation. A privatized system would allow for more flexible hiring policies, replacement of expensive human controllers with machines, and access to private capital for infrastructure upgrading. It is also likely that privatization would help improve safety and reduce air congestion by speeding the adoption of advanced technologies.

The second problem area identified by Smith is delays and congestion, a product of lots of carriers trying to take off at similar times with relatively small planes (as opposed to less frequently with bigger planes):

Over the past two decades, airlines have come to rely on frequency of service as the holy grail of marketing. There are more people flying than ever before, and they are doing so in smaller planes making more and more departures, snarling our skies and tarmacs. Short of building new airports, delays won't go away until carriers better rationalize their schedules, and/or begin consolidating flights with bigger aircraft, reducing their dependence on regional jets.

When you have a lot of people competing for a common good -- in this case access to the runway -- it means that the incentive structure is probably flawed. An obvious way to correct this is through an auction, with those who pay more receiving priority in the queue. Known as slot auctions, Smith calls such a measure "controversial" and instead elects to pass the buck by calling for a commission to study the problem.

Unfortunately it seems that people such as Smith are having their way on the issue, with a Bush Administration plan to conduct such auctions now apparently shelved -- a move criticized by The Washington Post:

We wholeheartedly supported auctions then for the same reason we do now. Airline schedules are out of whack. It is neither rational nor reasonable to cram the skies with flights at peak times. If the airlines want to fly in and out of two of the nation's busiest airports during those heavy travel hours, they should have to pay a premium. It's a pity this idea is going nowhere. Mr. LaHood's decision, following a 30-day comment period, will snuff it out for good. The secretary says he's "still serious about tackling aviation congestion in the New York region." This summer he plans to gather all the stakeholders to figure out how to move forward.

Smith next criticizes what he calls "regulatory rigmarole":

Progress with items 1 or 2 above would likely be speedier if we had a more user-friendly Federal Aviation Adminstration. The FAA does a decent job when it comes to safety, but the agency is fond of overly complicated fixes to simple problems and, in quintessential bureaucratic fashion, is obsessed with regulatory minutiae at the expense of common-sense, big-picture solutions. (For passengers, one easy-to-spot example of this is the seat pocket card outlining eligibility to sit in an emergency exit row. Or check out the latest volumes of the Federal Aviation Regulations for airline crew members, a thousand or so pages of regulatory arcana that could quickly be pared to about 10 percent of its size.)

Well, yes, bureaucracy is definitely a problem and a reason to reduce government involvement to a minimum. Unfortunately Smith's solution is for Obama to appoint a head of the Department of Transportation that is "young, ambitious and progressive" to shake things up. Given that progressives are almost inevitably in favor of expanded government and regulation I hardly see how this will resolve matters.

Then we come to the issue of cabotage -- the transport of goods or passengers between two points in the same country:

The trend globally has been one of liberalized, so-called open skies agreements, which have thus far been welcomed by most participating nations and their carriers. But while loosening the rules for flying between countries is one thing, loosening them within countries is something else. There are those who believe it is in America's best interests to open up our domestic system to foreign airlines. All things being equal (wages, reciprocal rights, safety standards, taxes and so on), this might not bring on the catastrophe some warn of (that is, the collapse of multiple carriers and the offshore outsourcing of their labor force). But they are not equal, and strong protections should remain in place. In a business with minuscule profit margins, in a downsliding economy, dogfights with well-funded foreigners will not result in U.S. airlines' bettering their product to remain competitive. It will result in them going out of business.

This is flatly ridiculous. Cabotage is something that we should be all for. It is absurd that foreign airlines can not transport passengers between U.S. and can not purchase a controlling stake (more than 49%) in a U.S. airline. If I want to fly British Airways -- or hell, even Aeroflot -- between two U.S. cities that should be my right. If they provide cheaper and better service resulting in U.S. airlines going out of business, so be it. The airline companies exist to support the consumers, the consumers don't exist to support them.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from allowing more airlines to compete for domestic service. After all, competition is one of the best ways to ensure increases in quality and decreases in price.

Smith next brings up the disaster that is airport security, where I wholeheartedly agree with him. Noting the Transport Security Administration's pre-occupation with presenting another 9/11 type attack he says:

In doing so, we are forced to treat every last flier, regardless of age, race or gender, as a possible terrorist or criminal, resulting in an apparatus so massive and cumbersome that it cannot adequately enforce the very policies it claims are so important. Civil liberties are subverted, billions of dollars are wasted, and millions of people are hassled and inconvenienced, all with little or no effect on actual safety. It is a national embarrassment.

While again dead-on in diagnosing the problem, Smith's proposed solutions are rather feeble, consisting mainly of "improved anti-explosives screening" and sending more personnel to overseas airports.

I disagree. Frankly I think the TSA should be abolished, with security left to the individual airports and airlines. After all, who really has more at stake in ensuring a terrorist doesn't board your flight? This guy:


Or these two?


Just think about the level of self-interest for each of them.

Smith's last suggestion, while a bit off topic, is a good one:

Last but not least, lift the restrictions on travel to Cuba. This artifact of Cold War hostility has no place in 2008 America. Rescinding the embargo would be good for diplomacy, good for the economies of both countries and good for the airlines.

Absolutely. If you feel like heading to La Habana for a long, mojito-soaked weekend that should be your right.