Here at T2 we have been a big critic of the current "market" based system for allocating Air Space resources such as ATC.
The big airlines have launched into this using a somewhat lame metaphor. Welcome to the party boys! A new website has been launched http://www.smartskies.org/ which aims to put the blame for ATC gridlock at the door of Corporate Jet users.
Not so fast everyone. Surely Delta and others are just as conflicted. Since Delta's Elite service is actually part of the enemy of this community. http://www.airelite.com/ So is Delta speaking out of 2 sides of its mouth. You betcha. But lets not stop here. One of our other gripes with the US Airlines is their diversion of resources by using more smaller planes (IE less Air Space efficient) aircraft to service domestic points. We have a raft of studies that show the air traffic (measured in aircraft movements) is increasing much more rapidly vs total passengers (RPMs). Yes Delta - your mainline fleet reassignment has resulted in more planes in the air which are less efficient. I am just picking on Delta because they are being a particular hypocrite in this debate.
Moral of the story - let he that is innocent cast the first stone.
But the real urgent issue is a full and open debate on the true cost of the Air Space. For that I believe the smartskies.org website is a useful forum for the debate. So everyone - lets have a full and sane (that means rational) debate and come to a long term solution. The old devil worship of General Aviation should not be sacrificed at the alter of public opinion. The FAA needs to fix what is broken and to use a rational pricing mechanism that recognizes the true cost of the Air Space, the runway space and the bits in between.
Cheers
Timothy
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