Reason Foundation - Authors > Viggo Butler

Increasing Airport Capacity Without Increasing Airport Size

info@reason.org (Viggo Butler) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:00:00 EST

John F. Kennedy International Airport could reduce delays and increase capacity by adding a new runway between two existing runways. And San Francisco International Airport could safely operate simultaneous approaches to its parallel runways in low visibility conditions, reducing delays and nearly doubling the airport's bad weather capacity, according to a new study by the Reason Foundation.

Rethinking Checked-Baggage

bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) info@reason.org (Viggo Butler) — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

Current law mandates that all checked bags at 429 passenger airports be screened by explosive detection systems (EDS) or alternative means by December 31, 2002. Because it will not be possible for manufacturers to produce the number of EDS machines required by that date, nor for airports to design and build the major facility modifications that would be needed, the Transportation Security Administration has called for an interim approach using a combination of EDS and explosive trace detection (ETD) machines. Both the original mandate and this interim approach to meeting it are seriously flawed.

EDS is a flawed technology. Its error rate (false-positives) is nearly 30 percent, and its throughput is a low 150-200 bags per hour under real-world conditions. Meeting the 100 percent inspection requirement solely with EDS, when taking into account peak-load conditions, machine down-time, and other constraints, would require over 6,000 machines, at a total cost of $12 billion ($6 billion for machines and $6 billion for facility modifications). TSA’s proposed alternative—ETD—is even slower than EDS, and is much more laborintensive. An all-ETD system would cost $3 billion, would require 50,000 people to operate, and would require more space than an all-EDS system. The only other approved alternatives—hand search and dogsearch —are also slow and very labor-intensive.

TSA’s estimated budget for this year is $8 billion—to cover all security threats to all modes of transportation. It will soon become part of a $37 billion Department of Homeland Security, which will address all domestic security threats. To focus up to $12 billion on inspecting airline baggage seems hugely disproportionate, given the enormity of the task of defending this country against terrorism here at home.

Congress should revisit the baggage-inspection issue, drawing on the experience of Europe and Israel, which have many years of experience in dealing with terrorist threats to aviation. The two key points guiding this rethinking are:

Baggage-screening technology is a field that is in flux; much better systems are likely to be available in the next few years, making it unwise to make multi-billion-dollar investments in mediocre technology today.
The focus of baggage inspection should be shifted from detecting objects to identifying high-risk passengers—and matching inspection technologies to those risk groups.

In the technology area, Congress should appoint a Blue-Ribbon Committee to provide technical expertise to TSA in the airport security field. This committee should review new baggage-inspection technology that is coming into use, or being approved for use, in Europe. Some of that technology appears to offer a better combination of performance and cost than EDS and ETD for mass-baggage screening, at least on an interim basis. But the committee should also recommend high-priority investments in research and development on advanced explosive-detection technologies that could replace the current generation of EDS machines.

Congress should also mandate a shift of focus in baggage and passenger inspection, making the detection of high-risk people the guiding principle. That means using the computer-assisted passenger pre-screening (CAPPS) system and a registered traveler program to sort passengers into at least three different risk groups—and matching baggage-inspection technologies appropriately to each group. Slow and costly technologies like EDS and ETD would be used for all passengers in the highest risk groups and on an onexception basis for others. As in Europe, baggage processing would involve several tiers or levels, with all bags going through relatively high-speed Level 1 inspection, but only questionable bags or those from highrisk passengers going on to Level 2 or Level 3 inspection.

To implement these changes, Congress would have to take the following steps:

Extend the deadline for 100 percent checked-baggage inspection to December 2004;
Have TSA approve a shift to a multi-tiered (in-line) baggage inspection system;
Create a Blue-Ribbon Commission on airport security technology to make recommendations on both immediate and medium-term R&D investments; and
Encourage FAA to certify additional baggage-inspection technologies for implementation between now and December 2004, such as some of those approved for use in Europe.

Don't Destroy Aviation for Illusion of Security

bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) info@reason.org (Viggo Butler) — Thu, 20 Sep 2001 00:00:00 EDT

Knight Ridder News Wire

Commercial airlines have resumed flying with three pages of new federal security requirements. A whole raft of new provisions - no cars within 300 feet of terminals, no curbside or hotel baggage check-in, limits on electronic tickets, detailed searches of planes before every flight - will do little or nothing to make air travel safer. Ironically, these well-intended "feel-good" measures may inadvertently achieve one of the terrorists' goals by crippling our aviation industry.

When Wall Street reopened last Monday, airline stocks plummeted. Almost all of the major carriers have cut flight schedules. Continental plans to lay off 12,000 employees. U.S. Airways expects to cut 11,000 jobs. And this could just be the beginning. Prior to the bombings, U.S. airlines were on the way to losing $ 2.5 billion this year. Between the shutdown and the new restrictions and their impact, that number could easily double by year-end. That's likely to mean more airlines going under, reducing the extent of competition. And less competition means higher airfares.

There's no doubt that aviation security needs to be dramatically improved, but it can be done without destroying the airlines and affordable air travel. None of the pre-existing security measures prevented well-trained, suicidal fanatics from getting on flights with legal knives, gaining control of the cockpits, and turning the planes into manned cruise missiles.

Thus, our first priority must be making airplanes defensible. That means armed sky marshals on as many flights as possible, adding more secure cockpit doors and selectively arming crew members.

It's on the ground where the danger of costly, but ineffective regulations is greatest. Before piling on new mandates, the present airport security system needs to be rethought. Both the General Accounting Office and the Department of Transportation inspector general have issued scathing reports on airport security.

One Federal Aviation Administration official said that Boston and Newark "leak like a sieve." In 1999 federal agents were able to sneak through security doors 46 times at four major airports and walk around on the tarmac or board planes unchallenged.

But as these reports make clear, the biggest holes in the system are behind the scenes, not in the flow of passengers through metal detectors at screening points. And airport security should become the sole responsibility of the airport operator, not fragmented among the airport, the major airlines and numerous contractors.

Further harassing passengers with bans on curbside check-in and making them stand in endless lines despite using e-tickets has made the delays at airports much worse. Yet these measures would not have stopped the terrorists. Better technology for screening all bags and detecting even ceramic knives under people's clothes, as well as high-tech systems for positive passenger identification, would be far more useful than inane security questions and more requirements to wait in long lines.

Sensible changes like defensible airplanes and smarter airport security will modestly raise the cost of flying, but probably by no more than a few dollars per passenger per flight. But measures of the kind proposed and instituted since this tragedy could cripple the airlines by cutting into both leisure and business travel markets.

These pointless regulations have added several hours to already long and tiring trip times. Growing numbers of business travelers will decide that's the last straw - and make fewer airline trips. And while business travelers make up only one-third of airlines' passengers, they pay two-thirds of all the fares.

Even worse will be the impact on what the industry calls leisure travelers - ordinary people flying to visit relatives or take vacations. The requirement that each plane receive a thorough security inspection before each flight will destroy the ability of low-fare airlines like Southwest to turn around a flight in 20 minutes. That means a 737 that now makes 10 flights per day will be able to make only seven. So today's affordable fares will have to be raised. And there goes the ability of many families to get together for the holidays.

We must make sure that airplanes cannot be commandeered and turned into manned cruise missiles. But that can be done by making planes defensible and by taking reasonable steps to improve airport security. It does not require regulations that cripple the airlines and make flying unaffordable for ordinary Americans.

Robert W. Poole, Jr. directs the Transportation Studies Program at the Reason Foundation. He advised the White House Domestic Policy Council and several members of Congress on airport security improvements following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Viggo Butler recently served on the Federal Aviation Administration's Research, Engineering & Development Advisory Committee.

Airline Deregulation

info@reason.org (Viggo Butler) bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) — Mon, 01 Mar 1999 00:00:00 EST

Executive Summary

In the 20th anniversary year of airline deregulation, air travel is again at the forefront of public policy. Policymakers have been besieged with a variety of complaints: that business fares are up, some smaller cities are not receiving the kinds and amounts of air service their residents would like to have, that small start-up airlines can’t compete effectively, as well as continued consumer complaints about congestion and delays. A variety of solutions have been proposed, including, for the first time since 1978, federal control over some of the prices charged and routes served by major airlines.

Any return, however, to a regulatory system that has the government micromanaging routes and services would be misguided. Such a “solution” would do little to improve air travel and would cause significant harm to consumers. Despite the criticisms, airline deregulation has provided—and continues to provide— enormous benefits to the average traveler. Economists from the Brookings Institution and George Mason University have estimated that consumers save some $19.4 billion per year thanks to the lower fares resulting from a competitive airline marketplace. American cities have been offered much greater air travel access, thanks to an aviation marketplace in which airlines are free to provide service when and where demand exists, without having to seek permission from central planners. Millions of Americans began to fly for the first time in their lives. Airline deregulation democratized air travel in America.

There are, of course, serious problems remaining. But these problems stem not from too much reliance on market forces, but too little. In deregulating the airlines in 1978, Congress unleashed market forces on one segment of the air-travel system—but failed to free up the critical infrastructure on which the airlines depend, namely the airports and the air traffic control (ATC) system. These essential elements of the air travel system remain not only government-controlled, but government-owned.

Not surprisingly, problems emerged when a consumer-responsive airline industry placed demands on a still bureaucratically controlled infrastructure. The problems typically have been blamed not on the infrastructure managers, largely invisible to the traveling public, but rather on the airlines themselves. This is unfortunate. Instead of reregulation, today’s real policy challenge should be to remove the remaining government interventions in aviation infrastructure that restrict competition and hinder the growth of new forms of airline service.

The benefits of such reform could be substantial. For instance, new technology exists which could produce up to a 50 percent increase in capacity at congested airports like LaGuardia and Washington National, and which could greatly expand the number of air routes between cities. But these new technologies are only likely to come about in a timely fashion if the structure and funding of today’s obsolescent air traffic control system is dramatically changed. As the National Civil Aviation Review Commission found, the ATC system must be turned into a businesslike organization, funded directly by its users.

Another key policy reform is for airports to be free to expand their capacity directly, rather than wait for the FAA to make runway grants or to install upgraded landing equipment. Congested airports should be allowed, for instance, to levy market-based access charges during peak hours, with the revenues earmarked for capacity-enhancing investments within the same metro area. Reliever airports in the Chicago, New York, and Washington areas could provide nonstop regional jet service to supplement service offered at the existing congested airports.

In short, technology and intelligent policy changes can give us a much higher-capacity, more-competitive airline market. Policymakers should resist the temptation to micromanage who flies where. Instead, they must finish the job they started in 1978, by freeing up aviation’s infrastructure to cope with a dynamic, evolving aviation marketplace.

Reinventing Air Traffic Control

info@reason.org (Viggo Butler) bob.poole@reason.org (Robert Poole) — Wed, 01 May 1996 00:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

Recent and pending congressional efforts to reform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will fail to solve the underlying structural problems of air traffic control (ATC). Procurement and personnel reforms, while useful, are not likely to change the FAA's bureaucratic corporate culture. And they do not address the inherent problems of the ATC system being part of the federal budget process, subject to external micromanagement, and subject to a conflict of interest between safety regulation and ATC operations.

Canada has now joined 15 other countries in fundamentally restructuring its ATC system, by 1) divesting it to a newly created corporation, 2) funding it entirely by user fees, and 3) subjecting it to arms-length safety regulation. Data from other restructured ATC systems reveal major gains in efficiency, reduced flight delays, reductions in operating costs, and significant progress in technological upgrades.

Canada is selling its ATC system to a not-for-profit corporation (Nav Canada) set up and controlled by the major aviation stakeholders: airlines, business aircraft owners, pilots, air traffic controllers, and the government (which is also a user of the system). This was a consensus approach developed by the aviation community itself, as the best way to resolve the same set of structural problems that beset the U.S. ATC system. Their guiding principle has been “user pay means user say.”

A U.S. adaptation of the Nav Canada model offers several advantages over current House and Senate FAA reform proposals, as well as moving beyond the Clinton Administration's failed government-corporation proposal. As an independent nonprofit corporation, it would give meaningful control of the system to its users, all of whom would be represented on its board of directors. Independent of government, it would develop a commercial corporate culture, like those of overseas ATC corporations. ATC funding would keep pace with the growth of aviation, no longer held hostage to the federal budget process. User fees would be reasonable, tempering cost-allocation with ability-to-pay. For example, a typical Learjet in business use would pay only a bit more or a bit less in annual user fees than it used to pay in fuel taxes, which would be abolished. Air safety would be improved, thanks to both arms-length regulation by the FAA and the rapid modernization made possible by a revenue-bond funded modernization program. This approach would permit the abolition of the passenger ticket tax, with the remaining FAA functions funded by general federal revenues.

The United States should follow the example of Britain, Germany, Switzerland—and now Canada—in fundamentally restructuring air traffic control. A not-for-profit user-controlled, user-funded corporation is the best way to address the ATC system's fundamental problems.