Try to relax and appreciate the miracle of modern air travel.

Annie Jacobsen has some thoughts on the death of Carol Ann Gotbaum, the 45-year old woman found dead in an airport holding cell at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport an hour after being arrested on a disorderly conduct charge:LetÂ’s be……

Say what??

Well then here’s hoping I get stuck in rush hour traffic later today so I have time to return my voice mail messages.

Couldn’t you have made your point without that style of inflammatory, over-the-top rhetoric?

The airlines are America’s favorite punching bag — not entirely without reason; they are, for the most part, noncommunicative fortresses. But they are not nearly as evil as people make them out to be. As for those stories of passengers trapped on tarmacs for hours at a time, they are certainly the rare exception in a system that sees more than 30,000 daily departures.

If you’re interested, here are a few articles I wrote on flight delays, as seen from the inside…

Anatomy of a delay…
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/03/23/askthepilot225/

“Passenger Bill of Rights” and other bad ideas…
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/03/02/askthepilot223/

The art and science of weather delays…
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/02/22/askthepilot222/

At the same time, the poster above is correct about carriers scheduling too many departures at airports that cannot handle them, and portioning their overal capacity into smaller and smaller planes operating more and more flights. Here’s a pair of columns I wrote on that topic…

Congestion and chaos, part 2. RJs and regional airlines
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/07/13/askthepilot238/

How the airlines’ schedules are killing you.
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/06/01/askthepilot234/

Best regards,
Patrick Smith

http://www.askthepilot.com

AND they use smaller planes, ’cause they’re cheaper to operate. Larger planes would relieve a lot of the congestion. But again, what do they care? They don’t pay for the traffic controllers, or the lateness. They pay a tax on each passenger, not on each plane.

They are the perfect example of the Tragedy of the Commons.

I keep saying that someday, somewhere, *somebody* inside the business is going to figure this out, and they’re going to take everybody else’s lunch money for a long, long time. I don’t know when or how they’ll do it (I guess I’d be an airline mogul otherwise, eh?), but I’m sure someone will. This kind of disconnect between suppliers and customers is *so* egregious that it calls out for an entrepreneurial solution.

I think the real first step is to open up a bidding system for flight slots at the airports — ie, deregulate the system that is choking the arrival/departure schedules and *begin* to let the market sort itself out.

bottom line: if we had centralized regulation of the internet, it would never work — and so it is for airlines as well. Of course heading in that direction will mean failed airlines and travel chaos until the market sorts itself out. But that is *precisely* what is needed, as the airlines right now have absolutely NO REASON to listen to their “customers.” Failure is the only thing that will eventually cause them to hear us.

Jeff, Sounds like a good description of journalism during the decades of dominance by government-licensed/regulated broadcasters and one-newspaper towns. It IS all about competition, and our news is now getting much better because of it. So let’s start thinking about how to get airports out of the hands of those who thwart competition — municipal politicians who control airports, federal TSA agents who engage in acts of theater and not security, and FAA bureaucrats who select the industry’s winners and losers. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)

If such a venue already exists, what is it?