Air Traffic con-trick?

For all the talk about the need to be environmentally aware, there is a silent conspiracy preventing real savings in emissions. Our antiquated air traffic system has changed little in the last 50 years and when ‘improvements’ are proposed, they are minuscule and dwarfed by the rate of growth.

So who are the conspirators? I call them the unholy trinity: major (ex-State) hub airlines, large hub airports and state sponsored air traffic control (ATC). They share a longstanding and unspoken mutual interest to maintain the status quo.

This triumvirate of vested interests has been painting a rosy picture about air traffic, despite what we have all known for years, that the air traffic system is hopelessly inefficient, delay ridden and expensive.

National (en-route) ATC organisations regard the major airlines operating from large hub airports as their primary customers – and they shape their business accordingly.

Airlines have been padding their timetables for years to cover up the inefficiencies of an ATC system that is comparable to a crude video game (keeping the dots apart).

Compare any schedule today with a similar schedule of 20 years ago and you will discover how delays have been systematised and hidden, while ATC organisations speak of “minor delays” of less than a minute, when they should be apologising for unnecessary delays of 20 minutes or more in every short-haul journey.

Why would major airlines hide inefficiencies in the ATC system? Simply because they benefit from a system geared to their needs that discourages competition from new entrants. Any pain is spread around and affects smaller players more.

Though point-to-point operations are more efficient (witness the low-cost carriers), large airlines thrive by transporting passengers to their hubs, where they connect to onward flights to their final destination, often flying many thousands of additional miles!

It must be a source of great amusement to large hub operators, when the environmental lobby blames low-cost carriers for carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, governments lack both the understanding and the motivation to remedy this situation. In general they are more interested in the easy option of raising revenue from ‘green’ taxes, rather than pushing structural change to eliminate wasteful inefficiency.

Open skies agreements offer some prospects for change, but large airlines have many monopoly advantages embalmed in existing bilateral agreements. Air traffic organisations have their own self-serving imperatives and airports really don’t care how far or how inefficiently their passengers have travelled – as long as they visit retail.

Air traffic could be a whole lot more efficient. Imagine a system that favoured point-to-point travel; had automated support to remove holding patterns; did not force aircraft to taxi for half an hour at take off and landing; and allowed aircraft to climb and cruise at optimal rates on optimal routes and then descend at minimum engine settings.

Such a system would be hugely more efficient than that operated today – perhaps 25% or better. These efficiencies would systematically benefit all traffic, whether new aircraft or old.

What is more, it would reduce the amount of anti-aircraft ‘ammunition’ available to green campaigners.

Of course new concepts and automation would be required to make this happen, but nearly all the issues involved are well understood.

If ‘green’ taxes are to be applied, they should be proportional to the ratio of the distance actually travelled divided by the great circle distance between the start and end journey points? That would be an effective tax on inefficiency.

National ATC organisations should be made to account for their failure to improve the efficiency of the air traffic system, the extra distances flown and the additional fuel costs they impose.

Next time someone talks about our crowded skies, take them outside and ask them to look up and point out which bits are crowded. The answer is surprisingly simple – the skies are not crowded at all, only the hubs are. Time for change.


Kim O’Neil
Advanced Aviation Technology Ltd.
Guildford, Surrey, UK.

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