On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:57:20 -0700, me
wrote:
>> Hardly stupid if this would fix the problem is it?
>
> Yes, it is stupid to schedule a flight you know won't be able
>to maintain schedule because at some point in the distant
>future the government might actually change the system enough
>that the flight might be on time more often.
Completely stupid. Being late, by definition, is being more than 15
minutes behind the schedule. So, if it's 16 minutes, you don't fly?
> No, I avoid the truly chronically late. It is the less than
>chronically
>late ones that are the biggest problem.
Gee, why fly at all if you can't be 16 minutes late?
>
>>
>>
>> >> This is just mindless airline
>> >> bashing and all without making any distinction between the various
>> >> airlines which is substantial. Anyone who doesn't think there's any
>> >> difference between, say, US Air and Continental is completely
>> >> braindead, but all these articles and such paint them wll with the
>> >> same brush.
>>
>> > They are different. It doesn't mean they don't share similar
>> >characteristics.
A completely stupid statement. Let's see, all humans have legs so
they share similar characteristics. You have a firm grasp of the
obvious don't you?
>>
>> Then you have no clue what you are talking about, since US Air is
>> routinely rated dead last, while Continental wins awards year after
>> year.
>
> Which means they are different, but share similar characteristics.
See above.
>> I was talking about the stranded on the runway for hours problem. If
>> you want to solve the delayed, etc. problem fix the damn stupid
>> archaic air traffic control system.
>>
> Or make reasonable schedules based upon what you KNOW are
>the current capabilities.
Right. Airlines should ground billions of dollars worth of aircraft
because someone doesn't want to be 16 minutes late. Brilliant
business strategy that.
> No, you want to argue the extent of the problem at each airline.
>Some do it better than others, some operate closer to the margins.
>But they all have it hung out there.
So walk then if you think it's such a huge problem.
>> They're only distortions to the complete idiots that don't bother
>> checking the websites for the rules on such things as baggage limits.
>
> Or on time performance, or gate closing times, or ticket change
>rules, or overnight stay requirements......
Posted, posted, posted and posted on websites.
>
>> Anyone with even half a brain can go and look at them before they
>> leave. Same for change fees and virtually everything else. But they
>> don't do they? Instead, they buy the cheapest possible ticket and
>> moan and groan when the airlines charge them for the services they
>> provide.
>
> They buy for the "friendly skies" or "best care in the air" or
>are told they are "free to move about the country".
If you're dumb enought to buy marketing hype that's your problem.
>> > When things start going bad the first reaction is usually to say
>> >nothing. At some point, they'll start giving cryptic information.
>> >Ultimately they'll make one wait hours before allowing them to
>> >change airlines or make other arrangements. I stood at a gate,
>> >watching my Continental flight sit for an hour past it's
>> >departure time. The computer screen continued to cycle
>> >through the preprogrammed set of "boarding, final boarding,
>> >flight departed" all the while the plane sat there, with no
>> >announcement on what exactly was causing the delay.
>>
>> Gee, one whole time.
>
> How many you want? Shall we talk about the time Continental
>lost my luggage for a week and didn't answer the phone
>number they gave me for "updates"? How about the time they
>changed the gates and didn't even tell the gate agent? Like
>I say, tell me when you want me to stop. They may be different,
>but it's merely a matter of degree.
Go ahead and moan. Nobody said anyone was perfect, but some are a lot
better than others. CO has one of the best lost baggage rates, which
is infintesimal anyway. I don't care if you ever stop, because you
are just making stupid comments based upon infintesimal problems. If
you want to be protected against all of this, go sue God for allowing
you to be created in the first place.
>
>> I get email updates all the times on the flights
>> statuses,
>
> Some of them are even accurate. But I frequently check prior
>to leaving for the airport. Funny how a half hour later when
>I get there they suddenly figure out that the plane (which
>was 1.5 hours late taking off from their departure airport)
>is going to be late.
Big deal. Go moan at the government and read this article in today's
NY Times. I*t's a lot smarter than grounding billions of dollars worth
of aircraft. Like I said:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International
Airport, Delta Air Lines said its jets take off an average of 10
minutes after pushing back from the gate — three minutes faster than
in previous years.
A device that U.P.S. installed in the cockpit of one of its cargo
planes to display traffic information.
Using new technology, planes take off following a narrow route, so
that that jets right behind them taking different routes do not have
to wait as long. That makes the system move a bit faster.
“The pilots say, ‘Wow, this is kind of neat,’ ” said Joseph C.
Kolshak, executive vice president for operations at Delta.
Delta, and also Alaska Airlines and U.P.S., is demonstrating pieces of
the possible future of the nation’s air traffic system, hinting at
what aviation might be like — if the airlines and the federal
government can get the details worked out.
All three airlines use refinements based on the constellation of
G.P.S., or global positioning system, satellites. Many of these save
at most a few minutes. But in a crowded system plagued by delays, that
may be enough to help smooth out bottlenecks.
The carriers’ use of satellite navigation and other tools and
techniques represents a step toward replacing a 50-year-old system of
radar and radio beacons.
In the process, they are pulling along a slow-moving government
agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, that is eager for better
air traffic control systems but short on money and the authority to
put changes in place.
It is a revolution in technology, but also in politics. Previously,
the F.A.A. usually bought new systems on the ground and told airlines
to equip themselves to use them; now the airlines are taking the
initiative to outfit their planes, with safety regulation from the
F.A.A.
Airlines are even developing their own approach patterns for airports,
which has almost always been a government job.
U.P.S. Airlines, working with Aviation Communications and Surveillance
Systems, based in Phoenix, is developing a landing pattern based on
separating planes by time, not distance, so they land at the briefest
safe interval.
“We’re going to create the future, because we think we know where it’s
going to go,” said Karen Lee, director of operations at U.P.S. This is
in contrast to the traditional way of doing business, typified by “the
F.A.A. tells us what the roadmap is,” she said, then “we’ll start
building the stuff to do it.”
This is not quite do-it-yourself air traffic control, because
everything requires F.A.A. analysis and approval.
But the agency is encouraging airlines to innovate, and is getting
itself out of the picture, in many ways. For example, last Thursday it
awarded a contract to a team led by the ITT Corporation, worth $207
million initially and possibly up to $1.8 billion, to build and
operate a national network of radio receivers to accept signals from
airplanes in flight.
Each plane would give its position as determined by G.P.S. The ITT
contract is part of a system that would process that data to allow
controllers and pilots in flight to see a display showing where all
the planes are.
Another big step for the agency, which it hopes to take this year, is
to publish a proposed rule giving the schedule for when airplanes will
have to be equipped for satellite navigation and surveillance.
No one knows how much this will cut delays and improve capacity. But
there are glimpses. One is in Juneau, Alaska.
For years, airplanes could not safely find the runway there, nestled
between mountains, unless clouds were at least 1,000 feet above the
ground and visibility was more than two miles.
And if there were clouds, there was only one way out, to the west,
with a quick U-turn, which could be frustrating for travelers.
To assure that the plane could accomplish that maneuver under
worst-case conditions — an engine failure on takeoff — Alaska Airlines
often had to leave passengers or freight behind at the airport.
Today, Alaska Airlines’ planes land there as long as clouds are 337
feet above the surface and in visibility down to one mile. And they
can take off in either direction. Of the approximately 3,600 flights
the airline operated in and out of Juneau last year, 754 could not
have been tried in years past.
“It’s a thing of beauty,” said Kevin Finan, acting vice president for
flight operations at Alaska Airlines.
The more reliable operations happened because of a system developed
largely by the airline. Through a combination of G.P.S., traditional
navigation aids and instruments on board that give the plane’s
position by measuring each turn, Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737s know
their position within 600 feet, the airline equivalent of the head of
a pin.
In contrast, the older system required pilots to draw a mental map of
the plane’s position, using compass cards and a display of how far the
plane was from some land-based radio beacon, and a paper chart showing
the mountains in the area.
Now the planes have a map that shows the mountains, the weather and
the plane’s position.
A satellite-based system that allowed airplanes to be limited to
narrower routes would help in New York, experts say, where departure
routes from Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty airports are
already sharply limited because the three fields are so close to one
another. With greater assurance that the planes would follow a precise
path, planners could increase the number of routes.
Perhaps the most ambitious effort is being carried out by U.P.S.
Airlines at its hub in Louisville, Ky.
The airline does not fly passengers. But it is even more eager to
assure that packages make their connections, since the next flight may
be 24 hours away. A single plane can carry 10,000 packages,
potentially infuriating just as many shippers and recipients if the
plane is delayed.
U.P.S.’s problem, like the problem of many passenger carriers, is that
it needs to land many planes in a hurry, and then send them on their
way.
Louisville has parallel runways, and in theory it can accept 60 planes
an hour, one every two minutes on each strip of concrete.
But an observer with a stopwatch can tell that instead of a plane
arriving every 120 seconds, said Ms. Lee of U.P.S., the planes would
be spaced apart by 150 to 180 seconds. There is a lot of free time in
useless segments between flights.
U.P.S.’s solution was to line up airplanes in the sky, 100 or 150
miles out, spaced not by distance but by seconds. Airplanes have
almost always been controlled in altitude, latitude and longitude, but
not in time. Doing so requires a fundamental change in air traffic
control.
In the cockpit of an 18-year-old Boeing 757, Christian Kost, a
technology manager at U.P.S., showed off the piece of equipment that
will allow the control of timing: a flat-panel screen about the size
of a laptop screen that shows the pilots all the planes in the area.
Soon the system will show the precise speed that the 757 would have to
fly to maintain that 120-second interval, a speed that will vary as
the line of planes in the sky slows and compresses, like cars leaving
a highway and entering an exit ramp.
That will allow the planes to separate themselves, rather than having
an air traffic controller issue instructions to speed up or slow down.
And a controller, looking at radar, will never space the planes as
precisely as the pilots can, experts say.
Spaced correctly, the airplanes can descend in a straight line, with
their throttles near idle. In the current system, controllers get them
lined up by low-altitude maneuvering.
Ms. Lee, who flies a Boeing 747, described getting to within 40 miles
of the runway at Louisville, and then flying as far as 80 miles to
land. At 9,000 feet, she said, controllers would order her to slow her
plane so much that she had to deploy the landing flaps, which meant
setting the throttles higher and burning more fuel.
“It drove me crazy,” she said.
The straight-in approach, descending at a constant angle, saves 50 to
100 gallons of fuel for each flight.
U.P.S. can experiment because it flies when other airlines are asleep.
But the technique would not work well at most airports, company
officials say, until everyone was equipped for it.
The same is true of the tighter navigation procedures used by Delta
and Alaska Airlines. The F.A.A. is preparing a rule that would require
such equipment and the training that goes with it. The rule might be
out for several months of public comment by the end of the year, but
it would have an effective date months or years after that.
And the F.A.A. has problems ordering new equipment, because in the
past, it had pushed the airlines to equip themselves for a variety of
technologies that the agency later dropped. The agency hopes that
demonstrations by the airlines will build a consensus for
modernization.
“We know where we need to go, but with an air traffic control system
designed in the 1960s, we just can’t get there from here,” said Marion
C. Blakey, the F.A.A. administrator, testifying before the House Ways
and Means committee on Aug. 1.
The new concept would require diverse parties to agree on standards,
procedures and extensive investments.
“The transition path is murky,” said George L. Donohue, a former
associate administrator at the F.A.A. who was responsible for research
and acquisitions and is now the head of the Air Transportation
Laboratory at George Mason University.
For Alaska Airlines, Delta and U.P.S., the push for better air traffic
control is not so much a matter of policy as it is a business case.
And that is probably the only way that other airlines will agree to
equip their airplanes — at a cost that can run into the hundreds of
thousands of dollars for each plane, depending on its age — for a
system that will not achieve its potential until all planes are
equipped.
But if carriers like U.P.S. can demonstrate a 10 or 15 percent
improvement in the capacity of the runway, “everybody else is going to
want to have the same thing,” Ms. Lee said.
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