Check Out Business Week!

Check the cover story of this week’s Business Week, it makes great points about the problems with the airlines, the FAA and the real reason for delays; despite its wrongful assessment of user fees.

“To see how these groups paralyze the FAA, consider the fate of some far-reaching reform proposals that would help solve the congestion problem. One of the big reasons flying is so miserable is because airlines schedule more flights at desirable times than airports can handle—much as they sell seats to more passengers than their planes can hold. On a typical Tuesday morning in August at New York's John F. Kennedy International, the airport has enough capacity for around 44 departures between 8 and 9 a.m. But airlines schedule 57, guaranteeing delays, even under perfect conditions.

“The carriers are well aware that their commitments to travelers are often impossible to keep, but they make them anyway because they like to give passengers what they want. And everyone prefers to fly in the morning or early evening so they can get in a day of work or play on the day they fly. "We don't schedule flights at one o'clock in the morning because people don't want to travel at that time," says Peter McDonald, chief operating officer of UAL Corp (UAUA).”