Former FAA official says air-travel system a mess

WASHINGTON — Airlines cite rising jet-fuel prices as the reason for canceling service to smaller U.S. cities, but an increasingly broken air-travel system is as much to blame, according to a new book by a former high-level Federal Aviation Administration official.

"When it comes to air travel today, everyone has a horror story," writes George Donohue, in the opening line of his new book, "Terminal Chaos."

An associate administrator for research and acquisition at the FAA from 1994 to 1998, Donohue offers a detailed explanation of both the causes of and solutions to an aviation system in crisis. Today's mess of delays, cancellations and airport chaos is the product of more than two decades of bad decisions, he said.

In an interview, Donohue argued that rising fuel prices are providing political cover for legacy airlines such as American, United and Delta to retool and go after their smaller, more profitable competitors such as Southwest Airlines.

Part of this retooling is halting less profitable service to smaller airports like Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; New Haven, Conn.; and Hagerstown, Md.

"I think the failure to fix the system is going to lead the legacy air carriers to chase after the low-cost business model and they will go only for the business fliers and the big markets. Low-cost leisure air travel [for passengers] has come and gone," Donohue said.

Airlines are reducing their unionized work forces, cramming passengers onto smaller planes and reducing the number of seats available. That will mean more passengers on fewer flights, and airlines can charge higher ticket prices.

Although there will be fewer airports served, there will also be more traffic on the larger, already congested airfields.

"Our policies have set the system up to not be able to accommodate a large network of intercity transportation, and we're seeing it with mergers of airlines," said Donohue. "I don't think this is a temporary economic-downturn issue. I think it goes to the heart of it — that our air-transportation policy is broken."

"Terminal Chaos" details the ways in which Donohue and co-author Russell Shaver believe the system is broken. This includes how the FAA and airlines make optimistic assumptions about weather that result in routine overscheduling of flights, followed by a domino effect of departure delays and flight cancellations.

There are numerous unsettling surprises for regular fliers in the book, including the fact that very little of aviation communications involves digital data transfers like those used by cellphones and the Internet.

Many of Donohue's views are shared by Mary Schiavo, who was the U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general from 1990 to 1996.

"The system is very, very broken. And unfortunately the problem with the broken system starts at the top," said Schiavo, now an attorney in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

After the deadly May 1996 ValuJet crash in Miami, the position of FAA administrator was made a five-year job in an effort to depoliticize it. But Schiavo said it's evolved into a revolving door from government to industry lobbying.

The last FAA administrator, Marion Blakely, quit last year to head the Aerospace Industries Association, an aviation trade group. The agency since October has had an acting administrator, Robert Sturgell.

"They're devoted to swinging into government and lining up to be a lobbyist. I don't know if we can even begin fixing the system without fixing the FAA," said Schiavo. "You need to hire someone who, at the end of the job, is ready for retirement and not looking for the next post. You make tough decisions in Washington and you make the industry unhappy."

Donohue argues in "Terminal Chaos" that those iPods, cellphones and laptops you are ordered to turn off during takeoffs and landings actually don't interfere with airline navigation systems.

"The FAA has never been able to confirm these fears, thus private pilots routinely use their computers close to navigation equipment without any problem," he writes.