Aopa: Airline Excuses Continue In Faa Funding Debate

[Teller1900]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]"[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]This holiday weekend, the airlines will subject their passengers to more delays and miserable customer service. But it won't be their fault, they'll tell the news media. The airline's trade organization, Air Transport Association (ATA), has blamed congested airspace for delays. "You can have all the concrete you want—it's when you're up in the air that you have a space problem," ATA spokesman David Castelveter told The New York Times on August 26. As any pilot knows, there's more room for aircraft in the three dimensions of airspace than the two dimensions of a limited number of runways. Read more in "Airlines are in concrete denial." To point out the airlines' numerous excuses, the Alliance for Aviation Across America prepared a "delay excuse checklist.""


I'm half tempted to send the ATA my photos from taxiing around La Guardia when we're number 50 for takeoff and ask them to count the number of GA aircraft in front of us. Usually it's somewhere between 3 and 0 (and I don't think Falcons and Gulfstreams are slowing my 1900 down too much).
[/FONT][/FONT]

 

[NC Pilot]

I'll remember this as I am waiting at N57 this weekend for at least 1/2 hour trying to get a clearance from Phili Approach. And they don't like it when you pick up your clearance in the air, although I did it once when they would not even pick up the phone for clearance delivery.