TERMINAL CHAOS: Why U.S. Air Travel Is Broken and How to Fix It (Library of Flight Series) | 
| Authors: George L., Ph.d. Donohue, Russell D., Iii, Ph.d. Shaver
Creator: Eric Edwards
Publisher: Amer Inst of Aeronautics &
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $26.96
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 84525
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1563479494
Dewey Decimal Number: 387.70973
EAN: 9781563479496
ASIN: 1563479494
Publication Date: May 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
In total passenger miles, air travel has never been more popular. But as any frequent flyer knows, air travel problems are growing even faster long lines, lost luggage, overbooking, flight delays, and serious safety issues. And instead of doing something about it, the traveling public seems simply to be sitting down, buckling in, and allowing itself to be treated like sheep.
But it doesn't have to be this way. There are solutions to our air travel problems, real solutions that can make real differences. And they don t require 15 years to implement.
With decades of experience in civil aviation and policy, Drs. George Donohue and Russell Shaver are well qualified to assess the problems in the system and to offer responsible, workable solutions. Dr. Donohue, the current Director of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research and a Professor of Systems Engineering at George Mason University (GMU), has extensive high-level experience at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Shaver, formerly a senior RAND Corporation research analyst and now a visiting research fellow at GMU, served as chief scientist for policy analysis at the MITRE Center for Advanced Aviation System Development.
The stories they tell are compelling. They are high-profile horror stories passengers stranded for hours on the tarmac, flights canceled for bad weather when there s not a drop of rain anywhere near the flight path, and an overall sense of apathy and obstructionism among those responsible for managing the industry. Interestingly, these problems are not the inevitable result of the size or complexity of the U.S. system. Air transportation in Europe, with almost identical air traffic control systems and safety standards, is far better. Amsterdam moves 30% more passengers than Newark, but the average flight delay is an order of magnitude lower. In addition, a European Passenger s Bill of Rights giving distressed passengers the right to substantial and immediate compensation has been a powerful incentive for non-U.S. airlines to maintain their schedules.
The Causes
So just how did we get where we are in the U.S. system today? Donohue and Shaver cite multiple reasons for the chaos we now face. These causes include airline deregulation, multiple governmental agencies with no central oversight or responsibility, multiple corporate entities with conflicting agendas, and a technologically outdated air traffic control system. Even more importantly, there seems to be a complete absence of advocacy for the customer the passengers. The authors also explain that our air travel problems, if left unaddressed, are on a direct course to greatly impact the overall U.S. economy and harm our global competitiveness. In 2006 alone, the delays and cancellations cost U.S. travelers an estimated $3.2 billion. And in 2004 and 2005, the U.S. tourism industry is estimated to have lost $98 billion in revenue due to our air travel mess.
The Cures
Fortunately, Donohue and Shaver don t leave us in this state of chaos. Their provocative analysis not only identifies the causes and extent of the problems, but also provides us with a course heading that will put us on the path to recovery. The solutions they propose include holding the government decision-makers responsible, expanding the capacity of airports and airplanes, modernizing the air traffic control system, and implementing what the authors call the 30% solution to significantly reduce congestion.
In short, this book should be read by every airline passenger traveling in or through the United States. As a country,
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Great book. July 3, 2008
The author really understand the complex issues that are crippling our nation's air traffic system. Very evident that he wants to spark change through this book. We can only hope that things will get better before they get worse!
 As the son of an oncologist... June 30, 2008
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
...let me tell you how you should treat that pancreatic cancer. Ms. Barlow...I mean really...get ahold of yourself.
This book claims to have its fingers on the pulse of the US ATC system, then it claims to be able to prescribe treatments for what ails the system. But it never considers the possibility that its diagnoses may be faulty. Any Doctor worth listening to will encourage you to get a second opinion for major illnesses. Any Doctor who discourages a second opinion should be ignored.
This book claims to diagnose major problems in the health of the US ATC system and prescribes, ever so quietly, privatization as the cure.
But on what does it base its diagnoses? A comparison to the European system and the allegation that the duration of a flight from NY to Chicago was 1/3 less fifty years ago. Well what a happy coincidence - the European system today is handling about the same volume of traffic that the US system handled fifty years ago!
To my knowledge the controllers' union has NEVER alleged that the US has the safest ATC system in the world - that is a claim touted many times by the FAA before Congress.
The authors of this book are well-known advocates of privatization - and not just of air traffic control.
The fact of the matter is there is only so much airspace over this great country of ours, and only so many runways. Whether the system is run by a corporation or the government, that fact will not change. Between the airlines, the regulators, the passengers, the municipalities, the noise activists, the environmental activists and the trade unions (and I don't mean to diminish the right of any of those groups to have a say in the system) - we have the air travel system in this country we deserve. Placing it in the hands of a corporation won't change the dynamics involved - just who is controlling the purse strings.
Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. This book is a perfect example of that axiom.
 Great book in which ATC is but one part of the problem June 26, 2008
8 out of 19 found this review helpful
As a daughter of an ATC veteran, I know what I am talking about.
Yesterday, one review of this book appeared in which ATC/NATCA took some knocks. What did they do? Same thing they always do, deflect responsibility and attack the messenger. So all of a sudden, 4 poor reviews of the book appear from pro-NATCA people.
Until the first review appeared, NATCA was quiet. Yesterday, the NATCA blogs and mailing lists got busy, telling everyone who could to post negative reviews about the book.
That's the NATCA way, deflect responsibility, protect members at all costs, plausible denial, etc., etc.
NATCA members work hard. The bad part is their leadership is empty. We need more automation and fewer controllers, and that is what they are scared about.
As for me, I am reading this book, and it is excellent.
Truly mind-boggling. Incredibly shoddy and out-of-date research. June 26, 2008
9 out of 19 found this review helpful
I can only say that if the rest of the book is as rife with errors as are those portions whose true facts are known to me, it is inconcievable that the authors updated any of their research for at least the past five years in compiling this incredibly inaccurate missive.
First of all, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (union), as described in Chapter 6, cannot possibly be an impediment to new technologies because they have been excluded from ALL technology projects for years. Indeed, the FAA no longer even negotiates with NATCA the impact and implementation of such projects. NATCA is now completely out of the loop. Additionally, since removing controllers from technology projects, the Federal Aviation Administration has not fielded even one piece of substantially new technology either on time or within budget. And projects with which NATCA previously collaborated under the previous administrator have fallen into such disarray that many facilities badly in need of upgrades have had them cancelled. Case in point: Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, which was finally being deployed in an acceptable form under the previous administrator, but which has been all but cancelled with just a mere fraction of the total installations previously called for since controller input was no longer solicited.
The authors then go on to refute NATCA's claim that the U.S. runs the safest ATC system by stating that Europe's hull-loss rate is .032 per million departures versus .049 in the U.S. While this is technically true, it is also highly misleading. First of all, Europe does not have a thriving General Aviation community, a category which makes up the vast majority of aviation accidents. Secondly they totally ignore other, much more telling data. For instance, there has not been a single midair collision in this country involving two radar identified aircraft in positive controlled airspace for decades. Let us compare this to Europe, where in early July of 2002 an understafed privatized Swiss control facility managed to put together at 36,000 feet over Germany a Tupolev TU-154 carrying 69 passengers and crew (including 45 schoolchildren) and a DHL B-757. So shoddy was the Swiss firm's practices that four of its managers were found guilty of manslaughter as a direct result of this accident.
If this is the kind of privatized air traffic control system the authors wish the U.S. to emulate, then one can only conclude that they either have not sufficiently studied the topic, or they travel exclusively by automobile.
 Waving the you-know-what flag June 26, 2008
11 out of 20 found this review helpful
What is the difference between Schiphol, Amsterdam's international airport, and Newark?
If you noticed that Schiphol has six runways and Newark only has two, congratulations. Apparently the authors didn't, and left that out of their factors for comparison. Funny, because a runway is needed every time an aircraft takes off or lands, that they didn't think of it as miraculous that Newark can move 66% of the passengers that Schiphol does with only 33% of the runways - and with LaGuardia (14.4 miles west) and JFK (18 miles west) traffic climbing and descending through essentially the same airspace. Schiphol has no such limitation, but had 4,000 fewer traffic movements, i.e., aircraft taking off and landing. By themselves, the major national airports of western Europe compare to individual metropolitan airports of the U.S., but no European metropolitan airport is half as busy as BWI/DCA/IAD, or EWR/JFK/LGA, or LAX/LGB/BUR.
While we're discussing the difference between ourselves and Europe, let's ask ourselves what it costs to move more than twice the airplanes Europe in its entirety does: according to a Lufthansa spokesman, an average of $380 for the same Airbus that Lufthansa pays European air traffic authorities (hyper-efficient, quasi-governmental corporations, natch) $667 to take off, fly and land as of mid-June, 2008.
What is the same? Runway capacity. Here as in Europe, the average speed of a passenger jet in the last ten miles of its approach will be somewhere around 150 miles an hour, or 2.5 miles per minute. Most major airports use this separation interval because they have done a runway occupancy study, validating that an average of 50 seconds or less was required for a landing aircraft to exit the runway. If something goes wrong for the preceding aircraft (e.g., blown tires or locked brakes), then that 10+ seconds becomes the margin of safety for the following aircraft to increase power and thus altitude. Take that away, and if the following aircraft commits to landing before the first aircraft leaves the runway. . .well, it might work out. Shame if it didn't. Be aware that the Federal Aviation Administration writes its air traffic rules in response to people actually dying, instead of the hypothetical possibility they will.
The one thing with which I agree is that there is not enough concrete to suit the demand. Based on the math above, a runway dedicated to arrivals can process a little more than 60 in an hour, to say nothing of the gate availability once an aircraft has landed. Subterranean airliner parking is probably cost-prohibitive, even when compared to eminent domain actions in New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles. So what do you do? Accept that there are physical limits to the number of airplanes that can land at a given airport at a given time, but build a traffic management system that keeps the flow as close to capacity as possible at all times. That's an information analysis challenge, not addressed by any of the major technology changes proposed currently by FAA.
There is no Moore's law for airport capacity, and there certainly isn't any information technology that expands gate or runway capacity more than 5% of current figures. The authors concede this, and their "30% solution" is that we (a) use only the biggest jets possible at the ten busiest major metropolitan airports, (b) auction off slots for takeoff and landing, which reverses the biggest gain made for consumers in deregulation; (c) allow the airlines an exception to price collusion laws, with the government's blessing to price hikes on the consumer. So shall we treat them like a public utility, too important to fail, at all times, or just when the fourteen layers of management can't get enough profit out of their businesses to assure a profit without government bailouts and discounted loans for reorganization?
If you're going to wave your hands and say, "Technology fixes all," at least tell me what you expect technology to fix before I believe you. What fixes the problems with landing two non-formation passenger jets on the same runway simultaneously? What makes a passenger jet immune to turbulence, lightning and hail damage, and therefore capable of flying through thunderstorms that airliners avoid today?
In sum, the book sees much of what is wrong with the industry, and marching us back towards regulation across the industry (instead of just EWR, JFK and ORD) may be the only sensible thing to do. But before we assume that the supply of airspace and concrete is more flexible than we think today, we should be able to answer some of these questions in terms of the physics which limit the supply.
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