Scheduling-Induced Congestion
or "ATC Delay"?
| 1972 | New York/LaGuardia | |
| 98 | Boston/Logan Intl. | |
| 1664 | Providence/T.F. Green | |
| 48 | Paris/Charles DeGaulle, FR | |
| 54 | Sao Paulo/Guarhulos, BR |
[original article published 09/03/1999 in Aviation Daily]
DEPARTURES
Opinions
on Current Issues
AIRLINES
HOLD THE KEY TO RESOLVING
CONGESTION-RELATED
DELAYS
The
media's recent airline industry focus recounts what are now all-
too-familiar
stories of congestion, rolling delays, air rage and strained
customer
relations. Perhaps most disturbing, from the standpoint of
solving
any of these problems, the media also report the industry's
penchant
for laying blame elsewhere. While environmental and external
influences
undoubtedly contribute to a lag in air traffic control
capacity
growth, the airline industry has itself to blame for the majority of
today's
"system" delays and resulting passenger anxiety and backlash.
Boiled
down to basics, the media focus offers vignettes on the
extent
to which post-deregulation airline industry profit optimization has
consistently
hammered customer comfort, business consumers' wallets and
employee
motivation, in the hopes of engorging option holders' (e.g.
executives')
paper wealth.
To
be sure, airline deregulation and the optimization it enabled
has
offered leisure customers bargains and business customers network
growth,
to and from hubs. The high price of this change, however, has been an
increase
in customer and employee anxiety from higher load factors,
compounded
by reduced aircraft size and related service demands, the
commoditization
of coach service and substantial real-dollar air fare
increases
for business consumers.
Add
to this continuing job insecurity among many front-line
employees,
due to more than a decade of outsourcing, downsizing and,
more
recently, domestic and international code-sharing and alliance-related
concerns.
Not
that FAA is faultless. Sure, it's embarrassing in 1999 to see
vacuum
tube failures strangle the ATC system. Greater airports would be
nice
to have, as well. But let's face it, the congestion problem is
largely
of the industry's own making, the result of a consistent
strategic
push outside the capacity envelope.
The record shows:
--
unrealistic hub scheduling, designed for competitive advantage, demands
terminal
airspace and airport capacity that does not exist;
--
slower en route cruise speeds, designed to reduce operating costs,
produce
greater system dwell time;
--
increasing numbers of small jet-for-turboprop substitutions,
designed
to produce competitive advantage and lower costs, generate increased en
route
congestion above FL240 and terminal/transition airspace congestion where
delays
already are endemic.
All
of these measures are producing demand-side, airline-induced
delays
everyday. They do not result from widely complained-about FAA
capacity
contractions due to new system introduction, Y2K work, vacuum
tube
or power supply failures. All of these measures are blindly designed to
reduce
an individual operator's costs, maximize his revenue and improve
his
profitability, with little consideration for the collective industry
consequence.
Instead
of laying blame elsewhere, the airline industry, individual
carriers
and the Air Transport Association need to step up and tackle
aspects
of travel - aspects they alone control - that create anxiety
among
customers and employees. These include a coordinated, constructive,
self-examination
of self-induced, scheduling-related delays, lengthier
passenger
dwell times in terminals (origination, connection and baggage reclaim
on
arrival), airport service staffing levels and use of less experienced
and
motivated third-party employees in many sensitive customer contact areas
(e.g.
security, airport service), and above all, rationalization of
ancient
baggage separation/reclaim and boarding/deplaning processes.
Progress
in these "final frontier" areas, and there is progress to
report
by such innovators as Alaska Airlines, AMR and Southwest, will
allow
airlines the luxury of further optimization without wholesale revolt on
the
part of customers, employees and, ultimately, investors.
Sure,
we - industry and passengers - would like to see more
capacity
growth and fewer vacuum tube failures in the system, but let's not
blame
FAA with congestion that airlines themselves cause and could rectify
through
realistic and enlightened practices.
Problem Solving Requires Candor
Now,
courtesy of the Air Transport Association, which ought to be
carving
out a position as an independent problem solver, the ATC delay
"who
dunnit" debate continues. While FAA has acknowledged it can
manage
differently for greater efficiency and the industry will
eventually
achieve a resolution, progress will only be facilitated when
parties
to the debate do so with candor.
Airlines
enjoy unprecedented immunity from anti-trust, despite this,
several
carriers operate under consent decrees relating to pricing.
ATA's
statements on carriers' inability to coordinate schedules, slots
and
facilities in the planning process, to reduce delays are simply incorrect.
For
example, since 1997, in the Collaborative Decision Making ("CDM")
project,
ATA and eight major carriers' System Operations Centers
participate
with FAA, DOT, NASA/Ames, the Volpe Center and
private
industry in coordinating schedules in real-time to reduce delays.
For
some reason, until this issue was raised by this author, no airline had
attempted
to coordinate schedules to reduce delays in the planning process.
In
October 1998, American and United requested guidance from the U.S.
Department
of Justice to coordinate their Chicago/O'Hare schedules for the
purpose
of reducing delays. In their filing, AA and UA acknowledged their
scheduling
exceeded the airport's capacity.
A good start, even if it required some prodding...
Likewise,
ATA statements that hub-and-spoke scheduling does not create
congestion
and that 50-seat jets are replacing 19 seat turboprops, are
simply
incorrect. Common sense, logic and the facts show otherwise.
Scheduling
ATA
lacks candor when it suggests air carriers cannot coordinate
schedules.
In fact, they have done so for decades and require no
regulatory
imprimatur to do so, even if they have asked (above).
In
1985, FAA granted US air carriers airport operating slots at High
Density
Rule airports based on what they then operated. Since then,
carriers
have engaged in a private process of allocating those slots,
coordinating
schedules. Outside of HDR, airlines routinely negotiate
for
terminal facilities use, alter schedules and allocate scarce
resources
without regulatory scrutiny.
That
this is an airline-run process is criticized by new entrants, as
when
Valujet was unable to secure LaGuardia slots to operate Atlanta
service,
despite their initial availability from TWA. Congress
continues
to legislate slots for new entrants and enhanced services,
precisely
because of incumbent carriers' hammer lock on the slot and
facilities
pools.
Outside
the US, since 1946, under IATA cartel auspices, air carriers
have
engaged in air carrier-coordinated scheduling exchanges, not to
mention
pricing, direct with other airlines, facilitated by airline
member-led
committees. These processes are so vetted that a segment of
the
software industry serves schedule coordination interests.
The
104th IATA schedules coordinating meeting held in June 1999 in Miami
was
overseen by air carrier representatives, including members from AA,
DL
and UA. Far from an 'open meeting', attendance by other than
airlines
and airport representatives is discouraged.
ATA
asserts "the market defines schedules and the public expects to be
able
to fly when they wish". I have not once been asked by an airline
when
I would like to fly, and I bet you haven't either -- even if you
work
in Congress. I fly at times chosen by the airline, for the convenience
of
meeting their hub schedules, and so do you, unless you have bought
into
Warren Buffet's 'NetJets' fractional jet ownership program.
The
cause of delays is an airline industry scheduling outside available
system
capacity, not as ATA has tortured the debate, the public's
expectation
that FAA will create system capacity to satisfy every
possible
demand, because in part, no one asks the public!
Hubs
With
the facts of air carrier schedule coordination now known, does
anyone
believe ATA's assertion that hubs don't generate terminal
airspace
congestion? I thought not.
Visualize
a hub: multiple spokes, concentrating feed and flow traffic,
converging
at a point in 4-D (four dimensions, time and space), a times
creating
demand for airspace, runway and terminal capacity that does not exist.
And
this assumes 'on time' operation. The delay problem becomes much
worse
in adverse weather and 'off schedule operations' (OSO). Many
carriers
devote substantial, unpublicized effort to managing OSO, because they
know
that their ability to maintain schedules is marginal under anything but
ideal
conditions.
In
fact, a subset of Operations Research/Management Science and
simulation
software industries serves the commercially-driven interests
of
those carriers creating the congestion. Their objectives: trying to
reduce
congestion costs, while maintaining or increasing traffic and
revenue.
One can hardly imagine a commercially driven software industry
where
no problem existed, but I suppose ATA would have us believe this.
Their
endorsement of real-time CDM (above) and carrier participation suggests
otherwise.
Small Jets
And
how about those 50 seat jets replacing 19 seat turboprops! Tripling
capacity
and doubling trip operating costs in the thinnest of feed
markets?
An unlikely formula for success at "Air ATA", wouldn't you say?
One
would hope for greater candor, but ATA knows this is a hot potato
that
requires lots of "spin" if not grease. Their posturing on this
issue
strikes to the heart of ongoing debates on scope and industry
structure.
In fact, the 19 seat business began to dry up in 1993 and
outside
the big four major networks, completely dried up after 1995.
In
fact, 50 seat small jets are replacing 30-68 seat turboprop equipment,
which
often replaced 100 seat mainline jet equipment earlier in the decade.
Hence
the scope and structure issues ATA hoped to avoid.
Candor, anyone?
I
return to my original thesis: if we want the airspace/facilities
capacity
and ATC delay problems resolved, airlines, their trade
association
(in ATA's defense, they probably just do what the airline
management
dues-payers tell them) and FAA must acknowledge their parts
in
producing congestion.
FAA
is doing their part. Failing participation by carriers, however,
we
are doomed to live with a worsening delay problem.
So, candor anyone?
Let's solve the problem.
Or shall we just wait? As we surely will, come Summer 2000.