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A Legend Lost… Aloha Airlines Suspends Service

March 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Aloha Airlines, a long-time mainstay of Hawaiian inter-island air service announced on Friday that it was suspending all passenger flights as of March 31st.  The surprise came amid growing fuel costs and lower airfares due to fierce competition in the Hawaiian market.Aloha Airlines 737-200

 The last year has been especially hard on inter-island carriers since the start of go!, an inter-island carrier launched by Arizona based Mesa Air Group.  Since go! started flying, inter-island fares have dipped to as low as $10 one-way, a price matched by all carriers in an attempt to retain customers.

Unfortunately Aloha has also retained an older fleet of aircraft that it uses to island-hop.  These aircraft burn more fuel and require more maintenance hours than their newer counterparts which has resulted in higher operational costs.  Even with successful cargo operations, Aloha has been unable to turn a complete profit and saw a loss of over $78 million in 2007 alone.

The bankruptcy filing also comes amidst a lawsuit Aloha filed against Mesa Air Group, alleging it used confidential information when starting go! airlines.  A quote from Mesa’s CFO stated: “We definitely don’t want to wait for (Aloha) to die, rather we should be the ones who give them the last push.” 

A sad moment indeed.  Good luck to all of the Aloha employees affected by this unfortunate event.

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FAA Needs to Stop Whining and Start Acting

November 9, 2007 By Leave a Comment

For the second time in just a few months, a major air traffic control facility has lost all air-ground and ground-ground communications. This morning, an unidentified outage occurred at the Jacksonville Center facility in Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville Center handles the major traffic routes between Florida and further North up the east coast. It is the 7th busiest air traffic control center facility in the country.

Not long ago the Memphis Air Traffic Control Center lost all of its communications as well, blocking a major portion of US airspace and causing the delay and diversion of hundreds of flights bound for its airspace. This outage was caused by the cutting of a telephone line to the center facility.

These two outages are the face of a much larger problem that the FAA has chosen to ignore and not fix for the last few decades. The air traffic control system in this country is outdated, unreliable, and subject to complete failure from even the smallest of problems. Complete outages are rare, but it’s the every day problems that put lives at risk.

Almost daily, radio transmitters fail, lines go down, and failures occur. Often radio transmitters become so hard to understand that pilots have to report them to controllers to be fixed. In addition, pilots may radio air traffic control several times before they are heard. Air traffic control instructions are also frequently not heard due to weak transmissions and static.

To compliment the problem, air traffic control staffing is becoming an issue and more controllers are working longer hours. Fatigue is simply intolerable in a profession where thousands of lives can be at risk. Controllers may forget to give clearances or not notice discrepancies due to fatigue. In addition, one air traffic controller may only control a small number of aircraft at a time. This means that if staffing continues to be reduced, flight delays will escalate since fewer aircraft can be in the sky at any given time.

The solution that the FAA has been unwilling to accept is the addition of funding for hiring controllers and upgrading systems. Instead it has been pouring money into a “free flight” program by which aircraft would monitor each other for conflicts and the system would be operated off of satellites. There are some places where more automation is good, air traffic control is not one of them. Every day pilots and controllers make mistakes. It is the vigilance of both parties that has allowed the United States to have the safest air traffic control system in the country.

By removing the human link of observing flights across the country, the FAA risks significant safety deviations due to automation failure and human error on the flight deck. Computers fail, plain and simple. There is not a computer in the world that will not fail at some point because of an error the designer could not plan for. If the air traffic control system in turned into an airplane autonomous system, the possibility of failure is increased because of the increase in computer reliance. Also, the number of eyes watching the sky will be reduced, therefore lowering the possibility of conflict being resolved in time.

The FAA needs to take its funding and upgrade radar sites, radio sites, and controller equipment in air traffic control facilities. By sticking with what works, the FAA will continue to be able boast the safest skies in the world.

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ATC Staffing Shortages Causing Delays

October 2, 2007 By Leave a Comment

The AP reports today that according to the National Air Traffic Controller’s Association (NATCA), the FAA is running dangerously short on air traffic controllers and will continue to do so with projected retirements topping 1,300 next year. For it’s part, the FAA has hired over 1,600 controllers in the last year to overcome these problems but faces an uphill battle.

It takes on average about 3 years for an air traffic controller to become fully certified in a facility and be able to work independently. During these three years, at least one other controller must work with the “trainee” to teach them local policies, ensure compliance with regulations, and monitor their ability. Even after a controller becomes fully certified at a facility it takes many years before they have acquired the knowledge to become truly proficient at their job.

This shortage is also one of the reasons why this summer’s delays have been some of the worst on record. Fewer controllers means that more airspace must be combined and handled by one controller. One controller cannot handle the amount of air traffic that multiple controllers can and therefore limits the number of airplanes that be in his airspace. Considering that a majority of shortages are in places like New York and other high density airspace, this has a tremendous impact.

The FAA has known for quite some time that it was going to start running short. Retirement is the main reason for controllers leaving the job, and it is fairly easy to predict when someone will retire when a mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers exists. The question then is why the FAA has dragged its feet for so many years. There were large periods of time where the FAA did not hire any air traffic controllers, even knowing that it would take many years to train new controllers and that this would cause a squeeze on resources.

The answer is that the FAA wants to go to a satellite based air traffic control system. This system which among airline circles is known as “Free Flight” (FAA calls it NextGen) would rely on GPS positioning and equipment on-board aircraft that would monitor other aircraft locations to avoid conflict. This sounds like a wonderful idea, but it has its shortcomings. The first is that computers glitch, and aboard technologically sophisticated airplanes, they glitch enough that a fully automated system could barely be trusted. Second, the air traffic control system is so fluid that many times controllers handle requests that need immediate attention and decisions to re-route airplanes are more instinct than science.

The FAA needs to take the billions of dollars it is spending on the Free Flight program and invest them in upgraded air traffic control facilities and more air traffic controllers to watch the planes in the sky. The system is proven and effective.

Union Blasts FAA for Controller Staffing (Yahoo! Business)

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