Cockpit Confidential (14 page)

The old Douglas DC-8 came with a stipulation that permitted inflight reversal of its inboard engines to help with descents. No modern planes allow this; reversing in flight is strictly prohibited, and the reversers are locked out to prevent inadvertent deployment. Aerodynamically, I suppose you
could
reverse in flight, provided you did it symmetrically. Just as you
could
drive your Toyota backward down the interstate at 90 miles per hour. Chances are it's not going to end well.

This is either the gastrointestinal distress of the guy sitting next to you, or what's known as a “cruise climb,” whereby the plane is ascending from one cruising altitude to a higher one, be it for traffic, weather, or better economy. Engine thrust is increased, resulting in a noisy rumble, but because the climb angle is a lot more gradual than it is on departure, you don't necessary feel it. This sound is most noticeable only to those seated aft of the engines. People in the forward rows might not hear it.

Bad weather causes delays in two ways. The first is materially—the physical slowdown that inevitably results when human beings are forced to perform their duties in harsher than normal conditions. If it's raining or snowing, planes tend to be late taking off for the same reasons that people tend to be late getting to work or school: we and our vehicles move more slowly; simple tasks take longer.

The second way, which has greater repercussions and is harder to predict, is by blocking up the air traffic control system. “Weather delays” is frequently a misnomer. More correctly, it's a traffic delay—the product of aircraft saturation at departure point, destination, or someplace in between. Even in ideal weather the skies are crowded and delays common; throw in ice, snow, low runway visibility, strong crosswinds, slick surfaces, and so on, and you've substantially reduced the number of allowable arrivals and departures per hour. Runways need to be plowed or sanded, aircraft need to be sequenced into instrument approach patterns, crosswinds or low visibility might render one or more runways unusable, and so on. And as local traffic backlogs, the effects are soon felt hundreds or even thousands of miles away. A plane headed to New York City might be asked to fly a holding pattern over Pittsburgh. To avoid airborne gridlock, departing flights are sometimes kept on the ground until specified, preplanned release times.

One thing that makes ATC postponements maddening to airlines and passengers alike is their fluidity. They change hour to hour, minute to minute. Typical scenario: A crew is preparing for a noontime departure from Washington to Chicago. The plane is on the verge of pushing back when suddenly, owing to a line of thunderheads somewhere above Ohio, there comes word of a ground stop. The pilots are assigned a “wheels-up” time (
see glossary
) of 2:00 p.m., or two hours hence. Passengers are asked to disembark, with the plan to re-board at approximately 1:15. But then, fifteen minutes later, ATC calls back with a revised time: the plane is cleared to depart
immediately
. Unfortunately the passengers have all wandered off, browsing in the bookstore or standing in line at Starbucks.

Government statistics show us that better than eight out of ten flights arrives when it's supposed to. That's a strong number, and one that has been improving. Still, it's no secret that ATC bottlenecks continue to victimize tens of millions of flyers. The system is so precarious that backlogs develop even on clear sunny days. We hear lots of flak as to what's to blame for this—from antiquated air traffic control equipment to freeloading business jets clogging up airways—and how to fix it. It's an important conversation, but one that too often ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that airlines have pumped too many airplanes—particularly smaller regional jets—into an already stressed system. More takeoffs, more landings, more delays. Clearly we ought to modernize ATC—for instance by taking greater advantage of GPS technology to reduce the horizontal distance limits between aircraft. But, in the end, you can only squeeze as many planes into and out of a major airport as its runways and taxiways will allow. What is typically spun as an airspace issue is really an
airport
issue.

And we can't talk about delays without talking about the preponderance of regional jets. The number of flyers has more than doubled over the last thirty years, and so has the number of planes carrying them. Yet the size of these aircraft has been shrinking. In 1980, going from New York to Miami or Chicago, you stepped aboard a 275-seat L-1011 or, at the smallest, a 160-seat Boeing 727. Today, don't be shocked if you're riding in a 70-seat RJ. The average jetliner now has 140 or so seats—far fewer than it used to. The use of RJs, which carry up to ninety or so people, has increased 300 percent in the past ten years alone, and today these planes account for an astonishing 53 percent of all domestic departures. That's half of the traffic carrying about a quarter of the passengers—a highly inefficient ratio. At airports like LaGuardia and Washington-Reagan, it's not unusual to watch ten or more regional jets arrive or depart in a row.

Short of building dozens of new and bigger airports—about as likely as constructing a civilization on Venus—the most reasonable alternative is for airlines to consolidate flights and use larger planes. Unfortunately, competitive forces make this almost as far-fetched. There are a lot more airlines than there used to be, and market shares have fragmented. Therefore, one of the most effective competitive tools is the ability to offer as many flights as possible to the busiest cities. More airlines providing more flights, on smaller planes.

And passengers, after all, are getting what they demand. When airlines come around asking for opinions, their customers invariably answer yes, absolutely, they want as many flights to choose from as possible. Instead of offering five departures a day between cities A and B, why not ten? If the demand isn't there to fill ten big planes, bring in RJs. In this way, frequency has become one of the holy grails of airline marketing; having more flights to pick from sells more tickets. It's an illusion, of course, when those flights don't actually leave or arrive when they're supposed to, but airlines sell it and people buy it.

But for the heck of it, let's try an informal poll. Instead of a choice between a dozen daily flights, a third of which land an average of 30 minutes late, how about picking between a half-dozen larger planes instead, with all of them landing on time? Apply this line of thinking systemwide, and I suspect many ATC bottlenecks would be eliminated. Not only that, but the larger economies of scale would save millions of gallons of fuel while reducing emissions. (It also could eliminate thousands of jobs, so I should be careful what I wish for.)

But what about other possible solutions, such as increased use of satellite airports, peak-period pricing schemes, and the construction of high-speed rail? Let's review some of the commonly suggested alternatives.

Although enhancements are long overdue, they would primarily benefit the higher-altitude, en-route airspace sectors, with a lesser impact where it is needed most—in and around airports. Benefits would include shorter flight times, fuel savings, reduced emissions, and somewhat better traffic management during inclement weather. Those are all good things, but they neglect the reality that a runway can process only so many planes per hour.

For lots of reasons, not the least of which are the long and contentious battles that runway construction projects inevitably trigger between airport authorities, politicians, and anti-expansion neighborhood groups. At my hometown airport, Boston's Logan International, it took thirty years to get a badly needed, 5,000-foot stub of a runway completed. No less daunting are the funding and technical issues. Taxiways have to be constructed; complex lighting systems installed; navigational aids put in place; flight patterns developed and test-flown. Denver's newest runway cost $165 million. And Denver, at least, had the room. At LaGuardia, Newark, or Kennedy? Where would it fit?

This is one of the more annoying and persistent red herrings. To begin with, big, busy hubs are just that because of the number of passengers who connect there. People transfer from flight to flight—from small plane to big plane, from international to domestic. Satellite airports offer limited amounts of point-to-point, so-called O&D (origin and destination) traffic, such as leisure flights heading to Florida, but there are virtually no connecting options. Therefore, unless a carrier is going to move its entire operation into a satellite airport, the end result is actually more aircraft entering the system. If American Airlines were to begin flying from Stewart-Newburgh (located northwest of New York City) to London, it would not do so
instead
of flying from JFK, but
in addition
to flying from JFK. Or take the example of Southwest Airlines, which has capitalized by drawing millions of flyers into cities like Manchester, Providence, and Islip, providing an alternative to the hassles of Boston, Kennedy, and LaGuardia. Have its competitors at those crowded airports reduced their schedules in response? Heck no. If a certain number of passengers are siphoned away, the tendency isn't to eliminate flights outright; it's to reduce the size of the aircraft. A 767 becomes a 737; a 737 becomes an RJ. Airline competition is seldom a zero-sum game. The market splinters and keeps on growing.

These very same points are what make the high-speed rail “solution” similarly misunderstood. There's no reason to oppose trains on their own merits, but any effect on air traffic would be negligible. See Europe, where railways are fast, dependable, and ultra-convenient, yet the number of annual airline passengers is only marginally lower than it is in the United States.

Peak-period pricing, this is called, and it's a popular and controversial idea, akin to levying heavy tolls on downtown automobile drivers as a way of alleviating traffic jams. In cities like London, apparently, such roadway disincentives have met with success. But jetliners are not cars, and airlines are not private motorists. The result would be higher fares with a minimal impact on congestion. With ticket prices as low as they are, it'd be relatively easy for airlines to pass along a modest rise to customers. You already pay extra to fly at the choicest times, and I suspect you'd be willing to pay more.

Technology will not fix the problem. Neither will patronizing small airports, bleeding the airlines, or fantasizing about new runways. If you ask me, the only hope is a theoretical one, where carriers abandon their self-defeating fixation with frequency and break their berserk addiction to regional jets. Expecting airlines to consolidate in this fashion is a bit like expecting them to return to the days of three-cheese omelets in economy class, but I can't help throwing it out there. What we have instead is a new normal in which airlines and passengers are resigned to a certain, apparently acceptable level of inconvenience. It is what it is. Try to look on the bright side: 85 percent of all flights land on time. All things considered, that's a pretty strong number.

“The tower” is used colloquially to describe ATC in general, but towers themselves are responsible only for planes on the runways and those within the immediate airport area. There's a lot more to it. To give you some idea, let's follow a flight from start to finish across the United States. As we do, keep in mind that airplanes use an electronic unit known as a transponder to transmit location, speed, and altitude to an ATC radar screen. At many airports, the transponder-radar link is used to track planes along taxiways as well.

Departing from New York, bound for Los Angeles, our flight first obtains local weather info and flight plan clearances via cockpit datalink computer. When it's ready to leave the gate, the crew radios for pushback clearance, followed by another call for taxi instructions. A separate call is occasionally required for engine start clearance. Getting from gate to runway can involve four or five conversations on as many frequencies—clearance delivery, gate control, metering, ground control, and others—varying from airport to airport. Finally a flight will be cleared onto the runway, and for takeoff, by the control tower.