Recently, Andrew Gideon posted:

On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:19:20 +0000, Neil Gould wrote:

Interestingly, most were saying that
GA was not a cause of airline delays, which was somewhat refreshing
to hear.

Yes, but at least one of the heads was repeatedly claiming that GA
doesn't "pay its fair share". The same head [I think] also kept
trying to turn away from "congested runways" towards instead
"congested airspace". That is a way to try to blame GA, I believe.

Of course, there are those that think GA contributes to the problem of
airline delays (though I think that is pretty much BS), and the only way
to balance the discussion is to have someone with that perspective as a
participant. What I found refreshing is that even that voice had to back
off from the radical rhetoric that we hear and refocus his complaint on
paying the costs equitably. Even then, I didn't get the impression that he
was using the term "GA" to refer to us spam can pilots, but to business
jet operations.

Another participant contributed the idea that the NAS is as much a part of
our nation's infrastructure as are roads and bridges, and should just be
paid for in the same manner as those aspects. From that perspective, it's
a matter of priorities, and anyone short of the village idiot could see
that the total cost of upgrading and maintaining the NAS is a drop in the
bucket compared to drains such as a war in Iraq that shouldn't have been
started in the first place.

Congested airspace? In a way, I suppose so. Causing delays? No.

As for "fair share", I'd guess that putting one slow-mover on the
visual for an uncontrolled field is a lot less work than lining up
those airliners of different speeds to a single runway.

That point was supported by a couple of ATCs as well. More than one
participant stated that a major cause of delays is the airline's hub
system, a point that I also think is on target for a couple of reasons.
The hubs overload some airspace and has an impact throughout the country
when there is inclement weather near one of the hubs... if you "can't get
there from here", nobody goes anywhere. Add to that the greatly increased
passenger load per plane, and one missed connection becomes a real problem
for dozens of passengers that can go on for days at a time before it's
resolved. Another point that was made is that the actual number of flights
are about the same as in 2000, when there were no significant delays. GA
was certainly busier in 2000 than it is today.

More, it is better for ATC and the airliners to have me a known target
that they can move around than a 1200 blundering around w/o talking.
In fact, I should get paid for the extra work of filing a flight plan
(which may seem trivial until one counts the 20 minute wait time on
my cell phone while an FSS recording tells me how important my call
is).

Well, on this point we part ways. 1200s don't "blunder around" in the
airways or in Class A and usually not Class B. Certainly not to the point
where they are an impediment on the system.

One interesting bit of the article for me was a rational defense of
hub-and-spoke. Was the speaker wrong?

See above. The only defendant of the hub system that I heard was the
airline rep, and his point was that it provided access to airline travel
from locations such as in Maine that couldn't support direct airport
operations. That is the same justification that created the hub-and-spoke
system. But, other participants and callers challenged that notion on a
number of bases; it just doesn't work in reality. I thought the discussion
touched on much of the rhetoric that we hear, and debunked a lot of it.

Neil