Weather Delays Plague Eastern US Airports

Nice weather heading into the US Thanksgiving holiday didn't last through the weekend, and travelers today are experiencing delays of up to many hours as a large storm hammers the east coast and delays are reported for many airports.

Check flight delay status either with your airline directly or here at the FAA website flight delay application: http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp LINK

Landing Fees may be used in attempt to ease congestion

Airlines and Airports do not appear impressed with US Government plans to use landing fees to help ease congestion on major US air travel routes. Landing fees are paid by airlines to airports and the proposal is to raise the landing fees during peak times in an effort to move more flight traffic to off peak.

The New York Airport Authority, operating five of the nation's largest airports, is not optimistic about the proposal suggesting it offers too little to be effective. They want a broad, regionally and nationally integrated policies to optimize routes and travel.

Flight Status from Google

Google has improved their flight status information. Simply type in the airline and flight number at the Google search bar and you'll get updated information about flight status. Note this will generally be from the airlines which may or may not provide excellent information, but this is usually a great thing to use before heading off to the airport to pick up folks in these days of delays and troubled parking and access to pickups.

Here is more from Google

New York Airport congestion may tangle holiday travel

AP reports , via Advanced Travel, that New York Airports will see 1.7 million travelers for this holiday, and that Airlines may have booked more traffic than those airports can reasonably handle without delays and problems.

The twin challenges of massive travel and security are straining the TSA's ability to safeguard the nation's traveling public. My view is that TSA has failed to implement technological as well as common sense solutions fast enough. This is partly just bureaucratic inefficiency but also comes from unreasonable demands from the public to create the impossibility of perfect safety and no inconvenience.

President Bush on Airport Delays

President Bush is speaking about how the government will attempt to curb flight delays this holiday season and take some measures to help passengers. Mary Peters, Secretary of Transportation and FAA Administrator Bobby Sturgill are flanking the president who is noting an "epidemic of aviation delays". He is offering these solutions:

1) Military to open some routes that had been unavailable to commercial traffic.
2) FAA is taking measures to head off delays. Moratorium on all non-essential projects.
3) Airlines taking measures to make more staff available, set aside extra seats and planes to help passengers affected by cancellations and delays.
4) Feds will use internet to update flight information. www.fly.faa.gov
5) New Regulations to assure passengers are treated fairly. Overbooking compensation will double. $400 will become $800 compensation for some major flight delays.

NY Metro area is the most problematic region for flights.

From Fox News:
27 million Americans are expected to travel this Thanksgiving holiday (I think this stat is air travel only).

Summer Delays Expected

Many are predicting airline delays this summer as travel heats up and airports are crowded.
The News Observer observes that increasing use of discount airlines for business travel and leisure travel is putting an added strain on existing airport facilities. I think this is a taste of how air travel will change in the future - basically we'll continue to have relatively cheap cross country and international flights but we'll see sacrifices in service, quality, on-time flights, and perhaps even safety.

In my opinion flying is actually *way too safe* right now because we spend *way too much* on airline safety and ineffective TSA measures while foregoing cheap life saving tools like more clever enforcements of smoke detector and seatbelt rules, drunk driving rules, etc. Each year only a few thousand people die from air crashes *world wide* while over 35,000 are usually killed on US Highways alone. US Air crashes are extremely rare despite the huge traffic from US air travel.

It's ironic but true that lower safety standards ... will save more lives.