Anyone who has traveled by air over the past year notices that the experience is becoming more human. Airports are less crowded. TSA checkpoints seem to move better. Less luggage is getting lost. Four out of five departures and arrivals are on-time. Airline route reductions are having an unexpected effect.
Though the airlines have been fighting limits on their growth and caps on air traffic at many airports, the medicine has been working. Granted, the capacity reduction that is currently in force at airlines is a function of supply and demand blended with a profit motive. But a government-mandated capacity reduction would probably have the same effect of providing the airlines some operational room to breathe.
Slot controls would add a market effect encouraging more efficient scheduling of landings and take-offs.
Flight operations have been slashed voluntarily at JFK, LGA, EWR and ORD as most of the nation’s airlines are trimming back their schedules to deal with slackening demand. The improvement of on-time and lost luggage statistics has been dramatic in some cases.
Though the industry continuously fights capacity caps and slot auctions, such government regulation has proven necessary to save the airlines from themselves. Obviously, a better, state-of-the-art air traffic control system would help everything out. However, some regulation is needed to keep the current system running optimally.
Besides the emerging on-time and lost-luggage benefits of the shrinkage of legacy carrier routes, America will soon begin to experience other benefits as lower-cost carriers, especially Southwest, begin to target markets where high demand and high prices reign. Case in point — MSP.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
