CNN article on problems in Air Travel, as seen by FAA
Recently, John Kulp posted:
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:16:17 GMT, "Neil Gould"
wrote:
It appears that your expectations are too optimistic. The reasons
for the required separation in the destination airspace are wake
turbulence and runway safety. GPS will not have an impact on that,
and that is where and why the delays are occurring. As several
others have explained, getting there faster will not mean getting on
(or off) the ground faster. It may be that having 25% more flights
in the air would only aggravate the situation, as the required
separation would still have to be maintained in the airport's
environment.
And it may well not. You are only looking at rush hour times in this
analysis that I can see. In that period, there may or may not be an
improvement.
That is when the delays are occurring. It would be easy to increase the
number of flights without building any new systems if all the additional
flights were scheduled in off-peak times. So, it is your notion that there
may be an improvement during those times that is being questioned.
But, in non-rush hours time when flights are delayed due
to say weather along the flight path that an airplane is taking that
could be avoided using GPS,
The major impact that weather has on the airline system is due to the use
of hubs. Bad weather at one of the hubs can ground flights all over the
place. GPS can not move the hubs, so why would there be any change for the
better?
Neil
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