August 26, 2007 It’s Bird Eat Bird in a Cluttered Sky By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
The summer travel season is building toward its Labor Day peak, and fliers are growing ever angrier about delays. Now, the beleaguered airline industry is trying to shift the blame onto an unlikely villain: corporate jets, which the airlines claim are literally crowding passenger planes out of the sky.
In what is shaping up as a smackdown between two of the least popular constituencies out there — airlines and corporate chieftains — the argument over the delays plaguing airports across America this summer is quickly taking a populist turn.
It’s a delicious twist. After all, the airlines themselves have been on the receiving end of populist outrage, especially after delays that stranded passengers for hours in overcrowded airliners. But now the industry’s lobbying group in Washington, the Air Transport Association, has charged that the explosive growth of corporate jets is the real culprit. ...
And the people who own and use private jets are quick to say that airlines are offering them up as scapegoats.
“The vast majority of delays are caused by weather,” says Steve Brown, senior vice president for operations at the National Business Aviation Association, a group representing owners of private business aircraft. “The airlines have overscheduled everything so if the smallest weather pattern develops, you have cascading delays all day long.”
But many independent observers say corporate flights are also responsible for some of the logjam, especially in congested cities like New York and Los Angeles.
“Corporate jets may be smaller, but they still take up space,” says Steve Danishek, an independent travel industry consultant based in Seattle. “There’s just a finite number of slots, and we have no wiggle room left.” ...
So, although corporate jets tend to use smaller airports in the New York area, it’s possible that a crowded 737 might have to wait for a tiny Gulfstream to take off in Miami or at Dulles, outside Washington.
The users of corporate jets defend this practice, saying they deserve equal takeoff rights. “On a business flight, you might have people going to Wall Street from companies who are creating jobs and generating billions of dollars in commerce,” Mr. Brown says. “People on a commercial flight might be going on vacation or going to New York to go to the theater.” ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/weekinreview/26schwartz.html?ref=weekinreview>
Carl
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