Flying for the Holidays? It’s going to get ugly.
For those of you brave souls that have already purchased your tickets for the Holidays, you will want to pack patience in your carry-on bag along with a few meals. In response to screams to fix the flight delay problem in the Northeast Corridor, the Department of Transportation is recommending that JFK airport reduce the number of planes it handles in an hour(takeoffs and landings) from 100 to 80. Not flying in our out of JFK? You may still be affected since a majority of flight delays have been linked back to what takes place at JFK.
In August of 2006, the airlines posted a sorry on-time record of just 70% for arrivals and 72% for departures. This year it plummeted to 59% and 63% respectively for the same month. Living here on the East Coast, I don’t recall any big storms responsible for that much of a drop in the numbers. This can only mean that the finger pointing gets aimed at our air travel system.
While limiting flights may help bring the on-time numbers up for the remaining flights, this decision is going to trickle down to the consumer in the form of fewer flight choices, scarce availability and higher ticket prices. Now, I don’t know about you but I cannot recall the last time I got on an airplane and saw a vacant seat. Of course, for those who enjoy giving up their seat voluntarily on an overbooked flight for that free travel coupon it looks like those opportunities may increase.
Perhaps limiting flights will reignite a call to invest our transportation dollars in high speed rail as they have in Europe. Amtrak is a joke as it is currently operated and the condition of our nation’s railways is a travesty and an embarassment to this Country. You can only put so many planes in the air, and likewise only so many trains on the same piece of track, but putting both to work will solve our need to get from Point A to Point B in a timely fashion.
on October 25th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Amtrak is a big disappointment. I actually don’t mind trips taking a little longer because if you factor in the time it takes to get to the airport, check in, wait for departure, etc, a one hour flight can take several hours. The additional time it takes with Amtrak doesn’t bother me too much, it’s the price of the ticket I find very irritating.
We were looking at a short weekend trip to D.C. recently and compared tickets on JetBlue with Amtrak tickets. The difference overall was about $30! Hard to justify the added trip time for a $30 savings.
Aside from that — I hate traveling during the holidays and do whatever necessary to avoid it.
on October 25th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Amtrak’s fares are not competitive with air travel for the time it takes to get there. Aside of poor management and running under the assumption that the Feds will bail us out if we have a bad year, Amtrak’s failure to be more price competitive will continue to be its major stumbling block.
High speed rail like they have in Europe and Japan is the only alternative to short travel times over long distances. Unfortunately, unless we rebuild along existing rail beds the environmentalists will be blocking every attempt to clear a path for a new rail system.
A few years ago, I attended a meeting put on by the Department of Transportation regarding a high speed rail line along the Eastern seaboard. It’s path would cut through North Carolina and terminate in Atlanta, GA. During the meeting, it was shared that at least 2 years was being allotted just for environmental impact discussion with the public. 2 YEARS! No wonder we can’t get anything done in this country.