About that plan to "speed up" Thanksgiving air travel...preposterous

[ProSense]

About that plan to "speed up" Thanksgiving air travel

18 Nov 2007 06:15 am

Sorry to ring in the Thanksgiving travel week on a discouraging note, but: the plan announced with fanfare from the White House last week, to reduce airline delays by opening up military airspace, is preposterous. It will not make the slightest difference in airline delays or the general neuralgia of Thanksgiving travel. You think the media were gullible about Administration claims five years ago? Gee, it's good to see that that will never happen again....

What's wrong with this plan?

1) Military airspace is not that big a factor in NYC area or BOS-WASH corridor travel, which is where the worst of the delays originate. The FAA has a great little website, here, which shows you the status of "special use airspace" pretty much in real time. Here is how it looked mid-afternoon Friday EST last week -- a busy travel time!



It's not worth explaining all the details here, but the main point is: there aren't that many "special use" areas near the big East Coast airports. And the one that looks biggest -- the brown thing off Long Island, which says ZNY (meaning that its airspace is controlled by "New York Center") -- is a "warning area," which differs from those off-limits to airliners and is way out over the ocean anyway.

more

[hisownpetard]

1. That whole thing, with Bush going on tv to announce his brilliant plan to alleviate holiday

air travel problems, seemed totally bizarre to me. I wonder when some reporter is going to come out
with what the real reason was for that weird move. Whaddya think?

[TomInTib]

2. I was thinking about this when the idiot was blathering away on my teevee.

They can put every available commercial aircraft in the US in the air, but what are they going to do when half of them are on the tarmac?

And the BS claim about utilizing military airspace was just that - BullShit.

The bastards consistently rely on the shameful overall ignorance and naivete` of the Amerikan Publik.

KnR

[Wiley50]

7. I agree. Too many of us are very naive

Hope you are feeling better

[rocktivity]

3. There has got to be an ulterior motive

For instance, if commercial flights can use military space, will the military flights be using commercial space?

:shrug:
rocknation

[TomInTib]

6. I don't think so.

Noise (db) levels, if nothing else. Military craft have no noise-suppresion systems.

This whole proposal is bullshit.

The problem is not with lack of available airspace.

The problem is traffic on the tarmac, coupled with skeletal equipment/crew on the ground.

I was at JFK during the Valentine's Day debacle and United had one pushtruck equipped with snowchains.

One.

And its pushrod broke when it hooked up to our plane.

Took me 26 hours to get from NYC to Vegas.

[TahitiNut]

4. "HE MADE THE PLANES RUN ON TIME!!"

Now ... just where have I hear that before??? HMMMMM? :eyes:

Every time I think it can't get even more weirdly reminiscent, Bushoilini gets even more whacked-out weirder.

Just for the record, it was a total fabrication then just like it's a total fabrication now.

[Junkdrawer]

5. Are US Nuclear Energy Plants Off Limits?

That red dot in PA seems close to Three Mile Island. :tinfoilhat:

[Historic NY]

8. I have to laugh, military air space..................

we couldn't get fighters up in time to chase down the 911 jets because bases have been closed down. The reason the system is broke is because its underfunded, and there are now too few controllers to keep up with those retiring. Old St. Ronnie took care of that in his day. So much for infrastructure improvements. I guess out over the wheat fields is protected military air space.

[MiniMe]

9. I posted this earlier, but watch this video

First of all, its a riot. But it goes over what this does...absolutely nothing.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2309266&mesg_id=2309266