With all of the recent talks dealing with the airline industry, you might be wondering what it all really means. There are often conflicing reports, and they vary nearly daily, depending on your source. A lot of times it refers to the Airline Industry having “Major Delays” and problems. When you really think of it however there are many factors that come into play when operating such a large industry and network of airlines and their planes.
First of all, think about the amount of people that the Airlines (all over the world) move in one day! Yes that number is very large, and even though you may not fly everyday, or much at all, many people rely on it. Now think of one nuisance snowstorm that hits, say Denver Colorado. This causes hundreds of delays which then leads to delays in the next city. This is just logical thinking and it makes sense to many people, but yet our Government here in the United States seems to think that there is some problem with our system. Well yes there is, and that is the fact that it is very much overloaded. What is the answer? Chances are you won’t find an easy one but there are several breakthroughs in modern technology that can help to ease this overload.
Now back to the delays caused by that snowstorm I mentioned earlier. Idealy a plane would take off from one destination and land in another, and then return again to its origin. This is not always the case however because there are simply not enough planes, or the plane is already assigned to another flight and so on an so forth. The Airlines are going to start to be penalized for this!? Are you kidding me?
Ok, so they take a hit and have to pay money to the government or back to the passengers delayed. Even with some government money behind the process, couldn’t this money be much better spent upgrading the entire Airline Network? Was it the airlines’ fault that it had to snow in simply one location to cause delays elsewhere? Last time I checked this is an act of nature, and there is simply nothing that can be done about it. What other industry is penalized in this manner? If your going to start taking money for senseless things like this, from the already financially unstable airline market (in some cases) then you are asking for trouble.
What does this lead to in the future? Well simply stated it will kill the industry. And this would cause shockwaves in many other aspects of our everyday society as well. Think of the effects before you make the cause. There are much bigger problems to be dealt with, other than delays. This penalty type system (if instituted) could lead to airlines taking unneccesary risks in certain weather conditions and situations that would maybe otherwsie not be taken. A fix right now?, maybe not but help to update the entire airline system and then we’ll be getting somewhere.
written by Reid
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