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It's going to take more airports and runways. For more than twenty years now the US Government has been collecting a tax on airline tickets for the purpose of building airports and runways, and hasn't actually been spending the money on that. It's got to use that money. The only real way to increase capacity is to increase capacity. In the short run, they're going to have to change how they charge for landing rights. Right now, an airline pays according to the number of seats in the aircraft they use. Which means a piddly commuter airline like Provincetown-Boston Airline pays far less for a landing slot than does United, simply because PBA is flying tiny airplanes with only 30 seats or so, while UAL is landing 757's. What is needed is for a slot to be priced according to its commercial value unrelated to the size of the aircraft using it, which in particular means that a slot between 7AM and 9AM will be more expensive than one at 1PM or 10PM. To determine this, let all the airlines bid for slots and sell the slots to the highest bidders no matter who they are. Re-auction once per year. If someone gets outbid, tough luck. Yes, this will mean that PBA can't afford slots in the most popular time periods -- which is precisely the goal. It means that at the most desirable times of day, only really huge planes will be taking off or landing, which means that the overall capacity of the system will increase without changes in infrastructure. This may mean the decline and death of a lot of regional commuter airlines such as PBA, but in a sense they only exist now because they're being subsidized by the current pricing structure But that buys you a one-time gain which long term increase in usage will again erode. The proposals being put forth by the FAA do the same. They don't represent a long term process which will continue to increase capacity as demand increases. In the long run there's no solution to this without more infrastructure. The big reason we're not building airports is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) as embodied in unrealistic local use of zoning. Everyone wants efficient flights but no-one wants airports and jets. It don't work that way. Part of what's going to be needed is laws which shortcut the zoning process locally. In a place like Boston (where I used to live) the zoning process is so labyrinthine, requiring the approval of so many different agencies, that it's a wonder anything ever gets built. Other places aren't quite so bad but it's a problem to some extent everywhere. Believe it or not, you can't have airports unless you build airports somewhere. (What a strange concept.) Update 20010611: Apparently Congress wasn't impressed by the FAA's plan, either. (discuss) |
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