GCW Consulting LLC

This is the extra section of the "Users Perspective Track." Standing here today, I do not represent an airline, a government, a manufacturer, an airport, the military, or an air traffic control organization. I am merely a consultant -- just one step in rank above the most despised profession of all: being a lawyer. I have nothing to contribute to the technical discussion today. I got lost somewhere between GPS and ILS, and I thought WAAS was an acronym for Washington Area Association of Scientologists.

We have heard a number of speakers so far, but none who represents the real user -- namely, the airline customer. If it is not too presumptuous, I nominate myself to speak for the airline passenger. My remarks are not based upon a statistically valid survey, but essentially represent the proverbial "national sample of one." I apologize for this and for the over-use of the first person pronoun "I."

I should also apologize that my remarks focus on the United States when this is a global conference. Theoretically, the infrastructure challenge should be easier to solve in the United States because there is only one government, one aviation authority, and one ATC organization. However, I look at the current crisis in Europe with a certain degree of wonder. If the member states of the European Union overcame nationalistic pride and agreed on a common currency, surely they should be able to do the same with air traffic control.

My qualification to represent the airline customer is that I am the quintessential frequent business traveler. In the past twelve months, I have logged more than 200,000 miles, of which 40% was domestic and 60% international. I am not just a frequent flyer; I am the yield manager’s dream come true. I am totally time-sensitive. I make reservations late, and often change them. My company is not large enough to qualify for most corporate discounts, so I usually end up paying the unrestricted walk-up fare. There is one other thing you should know about me: I am becoming increasingly aggravated about the number of times that my flights are delayed or cancelled.

I used to consider the occasional delay or cancellation just part of the hassle of business travel. However, as a consultant, time is my primary product and my clients expect me to be on time. I now find myself taking an earlier flight or even leaving a day early in order to make sure I make my meeting. I used to pick routings based on comparative elapsed times. Now, I no longer book those 30-minute, minimum connections that U.S. airlines love so much at their hubs. That’s just too great a risk. I now look for connecting times of at least an hour to act as a buffer against delay.

I understand that blizzards, hurricanes, fog and thunderstorms can play havoc with an airline’s reliability. A few thousand years ago, Ramses looked at the plagues Moses visited upon Egypt and ignored them until it was too late. Are we, today, looking at aviation’s plagues and also ignoring them?

I know that the airlines do not operate the Air Traffic Control system. I nonetheless hold them responsible for on-time operations for two reasons. First, the airlines have taken my money -- often a lot of it -- and I have a right as a consumer to expect a reliable operation. Second, I sometimes find that airlines are less than truthful in explaining the reason for a delay or cancellation. They always place the blame on someone else, often with some unintelligible jargon. For instance, what the hell is a "ground stop"? Where else would you think about stopping an airplane?

As an airline consultant, I appreciate what the hub-and-spoke concept has meant to the development of a superb air transportation system in the United States. However, many frequent travelers do not understand the critical role that connecting hubs play. They often regard them as nightmares and believe that airlines force passengers through a hub rather than carrying them nonstop. You and I may look at a hub and marvel at both the magical choreography required to make it work as well as the O&D multiplier that results from each newly-added spoke. However, without operational reliability, the hub concept is a customer-relations disaster. When their plane is twenty-first in line for take-off, travelers can’t help but wonder if hubs aren’t the primary cause of delays. Don’t forget that passengers can look out their windows and see what they believe are delays caused by runway congestion. They do not have the same degree of visibility regarding delays caused by airway congestion.

The airlines preach that they are only giving the traveling public what it demands: low fares for the price-sensitive discretionary traveler, and schedule frequency for the time-sensitive business flyer. I very much appreciate the frequency choice I now have in most markets. However, as the delays mount, I begin to question whether all that frequency is clogging up the airways and the runways. And if not now, will it happen soon? How many airplanes can Delta cram into one connecting bank at its Atlanta hub? Does United really need 39 daily departures from Los Angeles International to San Francisco? At slot-controlled Reagan National, does it make sense to have 73 departures a day to LaGuardia, Newark and Kennedy? Two years ago, United offered 12 nonstop departures from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles and San Francisco, all of which were flown by 757s or larger equipment. This past summer, United scheduled 21 nonstop departures in the same two markets, but three-quarters of them were flown with A-320s and

A-319s. When do we reach the point of diminishing returns in terms of frequency versus aircraft size? If you offer me the option of additional frequency or a more on-time operation, I choose reliability.

Deregulation in the United States is now over twenty years old and a success by any measure. However, expanding the consumer benefits of deregulation is threatened by two separate but related problems: airway congestion and runway congestion. The first is driven by the inability of en route control centers to handle the volume placed upon them. The second is caused by an insufficient number of runways or inadequate separation at certain high-demand airports. Solving one of these problems does not necessarily solve the other. Historically, the solution to both has been to restrict demand, either by holding aircraft on the ground or by implementing a program of slot control.

The Air Transport Association recently issued a report entitled "Approaching Gridlock" in which it reported that the summer of 1999 was "the most delay-plagued season in history." If we can agree on nothing else at this summit, I trust we can agree that gridlock is a totally unacceptable condition for any air transportation system anywhere in the world. The problem, of course, is not just handling today’s level of aircraft operations. It is how to accommodate the expected growth in the next ten years. During the last five years, U.S. airline passengers enplaned increased by 26%, and departures were up by 15%. The surprise is, despite rapid traffic growth, passengers enplaned per departure has increased by just 10% in the same period when the load factor was increasing from 64% to a record-high of 71%. Confounding many industry experts, the phase-out of smaller aircraft in favor of larger ones has not taken place to the degree expected. The average number of seats per plane mile has actually decreased by 5% since 1993.

The DOT has proposed the elimination of slots at New York and Chicago, while Congress is arguing over how many slots should be added at the four slot-controlled airports. These actions seem rather disingenuous when, at the same time, we are talking about gridlock. The DOT exudes confidence regarding its ability to handle safely forecasted levels of operations without relying on slots. However, safety is not the only issue. Holding aircraft on the ground at their origin points and regularly delaying passengers in good weather is not acceptable as either a short or long-term solution.

The probability of new airports being built at major cities is extremely low, and most congested airports have little, if any, capability to add new runways. One also should not be naive about why some airport operations are restricted. Environmental pressures will continue to affect the ability of airports to operate at maximum capacity. Does anyone believe that the noise lobby will ever allow slots to come off at LaGuardia and Reagan National? San Francisco hopes to fill in part of the Bay to build a new runway. You can imagine how the environmentalists feel about that.

There is no question that infrastructure problems are very difficult to solve. There are many constituencies involved, and there have already been a number of blue ribbon committees that have proposed solutions. There is also no question that we are into blame season big time. The airlines blame the FAA. The controllers’ union blames the airlines. Everybody blames Congress. Only Saint Jane of Garvey remains blameless so far! I wonder who the blamers think the audience is for all these accusations. Is it Congress, the general public, the air traveler? I can tell you that I am no longer interested in who is to blame. I only want to know when I will be able to rely on published schedules.

At the risk of sounding naive and/or idealistic, here is what I believe the traveling public has a right to expect from its airlines and from its governments. First, stop the speeches and the accusations. Casting blame only hardens positions and allows Congress to shirk its responsibility by deferring any action. Second, under the auspices of the FAA Administrator, bring together representatives of each constituency: major, national and regional airlines; corporate and general aviation; airports; ATC personnel; military, and perhaps even the consumer. Third, break the problem down into three phases and identify solutions which will make a difference in each: short-term -- the next two years; medium-term -- three to five years; long-term -- more than five years. Fourth, recognize that, in the United States, no significant change can begin to happen at the very earliest until a new President and a new Congress take office in January 2001. Fifth, use the time between now and then to hammer out agreement on concrete steps that could and should be implemented, recognizing that no constituency will be entirely happy with the result. The obvious objective of the process is to find some degree of consensus among all the parties so that they can go to Congress early in 2001 with a unified set of recommendations. Clearly, achieving this goal will require a much greater degree of trust than has ever existed in the past -- particularly between corporate and general aviation interests and the airlines.

The starting point has to be a totally honest assessment by the FAA of what level of operations it can handle reliably in each of the three periods based on two sets of assumptions: First, the current organization, current technology solutions, current funding -- in short, business as usual. Second, a new organizational structure with independent financing. The time for heroic statements, wishful thinking and "I think I can" promises from the FAA is long since past. If the FAA cannot deliver an acceptable level of reliability in the near term, address that problem on a separate track while the longer-term issues are being debated. If we are in crisis, let us admit that we are and take the requisite steps to alleviate the problem. This is an industry that has had to respond to crises before -- the 1968 gridlock; the 1973 oil embargo; the 1979 DC-10 grounding; the 1981 PATCO strike. If the ATC system cannot handle an unconstrained industry in the long term, the airlines need to know now. They can then take the necessary action with regard to fleet planning, capacity growth, hub expansion, gate construction, and trading-off aircraft size versus frequency.

Deregulation requires that the FAA interfere in the scheduling process only when the harm to the public clearly exceeds the resulting loss of competition. However, with the expected growth of airline traffic and the lack of new airports and runways, it seems inevitable that at some point there will be airports facing unacceptable congestion and delays. The FAA should be planning today for the eventuality that some sort of restraint will be necessary and should be putting a plan on the shelf. Needless to say, even talking about such a plan is anathema to most airlines as they fear the FAA will take the easy way out and embrace constraints rather than fixing the problem. Of course, it would be naive to expect voluntary reductions by airlines, even if such action would seem to be in their self-interest.

If air traffic control, runway capacity, or environmental reasons dictate that aircraft operations be limited in the future, then those situations should be addressed through remedies other than the existing slot rules or administrative allocation. Any such restriction should be governed by three key principles:

The most difficult and highly political issue that must be faced is giving preference at restricted airports to those services that benefit the most people. If this is a valid consideration, and I believe it is, then inevitably choices have to be made between scheduled service and general aviation, between air carrier and commuter services, and between larger airplanes and smaller ones. Again, no one is in favor of restricting operations at any airport. However, if that day arrives when intolerable delays dictate some set of restrictions, then they should be designed to maximize service for the many -- not preserve benefits for the politically connected few.

No one wants to see constraints placed on airlines’ scheduling freedom. However, given the choice of an unconstrained, but unreliable air transport system versus a somewhat constrained, reliable operation, I believe the traveling public would opt for the latter. Remember this isn’t just about operating aircraft on time. It’s about serving the public. If the FAA, the airlines and the other parties with a vested interest do not come up with a workable solution, you know who will -- Congress! In view of some of the passenger rights bills introduced earlier this year, that ought to scare everyone enough to put aside their parochial interests and get to work.

Ramses saw and did not change. We, today, are witnessing the aviation plagues as I speak. And we are hearing reverberations of Moses’ cry, "Let my passengers go!" Surely, all of the interest groups -- the FAA, airlines, air traffic controllers, unions and other parties -- can work together and get passengers like me to the "Promised Land" on time.