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A court order put a delay on the plan to auction off takeoff and landing slots at NYC's area airports. The Bush administration has said auctioning 10% of flight slots would help alleviate air traffic and raise money for upgrades, but the Port Authority (which manages LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark) as well as NY and NJ lawmakers hate the idea, arguing it would drive up ticket prices. The NY Times reports that the delay will likely push "the proposal into the Obama administration, where it may die." Senator Chuck Schumer said, "Slot auctions will cause chaos in the skies and on the ground, and must not be bum-rushed through by a lame-duck administration." Photo: edEx on Flickr
No Airport Landing Slot Auction... For Now
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If this went through and I had the money, I would buy a slot and then ride a Big-Wheel up and down the runway. Just because.
Cheap but overcrowded, overbooked, delayed, dangerous, and generally shitty service overall vs. increased ticket prices to fix these problems.
Why the opposition?
"help alleviate air traffic"
You know what would REALLY help alleviate air traffic in the NYC area? A new air traffic control system. How about that?
I agree with Kojak. What I don't like about this is that they're not going to fix anything else. This is just an airline's chance to get the primo space and suffer with the current traffic system. A redesign of the airspace would be something I'd be willing to help pay for in increased ticket prices.
Here's an idea. How about the airlines make schedules that more closely reflect TRUE ETAs and ETDs instead of giving false hope?
Kojak, the ATC system is not the problem. The guys in NY center and at the towers are doing the best job they. Go and take a look at a map of EWR, LGA, and JFK; they are some of the most poorly designed airports in the country. No two runways at these airports can operate simultaneously leading to backed up air traffic. Now, go look at some well designed airports, Denver, and Atlanta for instance. The parallel runway design allows for simultaneous take offs and landings. It would take JFK using emminent domain to build a new runway to ease any stress on the air system in NYC.
I'd think the enviro-loons would support congestion pricing for airlines...
"No two runways at these airports can operate simultaneously leading to backed up air traffic"
I agree except with JFK. They do operate both of the east parallel runways simultaneously for landings + Takeoffs often. But yeah I don't see them expanding anytime soon. Like where could JFK expand to? Reclamation of Jamaica Bay? I suppose Newark would be the easier of the airports to expand.
Kojak is right: you can use more than two runways for take-offs and landings at JFK. There are four well-spaced runways there and you can use all four of them at the same time -- two for landings and two for take-offs. JFK's configuration isn't that bad and it's much better than ORD's, which is a mess and handles more flights. The problem with JFK is that LGA is so close, so it's really limited because LGA shares the same airspace. NextGen might help JFK use all its runways more efficiently by being able to fly LGA and JFK planes closer to each other.
LGA and EWR are pretty much screwed when it comes to expansion and NextGen won't do much in terms of increasing capacity there. Even with JFK, you can reclaim land in Jamaica Bay. You just need an additional runway, which won't take that much to do. Heck, if they can build new airports on man-made islands in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong or new cities in Dubai, we should easily be able to build JFK a new runway. There's just no will.
As for the slot auction idea, it was stupid and wouldn't have made any difference with the congestion problem. The number of slots would have remained the same. All that would have happened was that you'd be paying more money for the same crappy service the airlines provide with the exact same amount of congestion.