Attila™ vs. The Global Economy
Over central Virginia, the chime announcing an incoming message from company operations sounded in the cockpit. Looking at the ACARS screen, we saw that our aircraft had been assigned a one-minute change in arrival time at the 40-mile gate to Atlanta’s terminal airspace. Attila™ was alive.
This Attila™ … … not that one.
Attila the Hun
Attila the Process. Courtesy ATH Group.
Background
The first priority of ATC is to maintain safe-separation distance between aircraft. It does this through a stringent architecture of command and control, which rations aviation infrastructure for the purpose of safety. This has historically, and necessarily, relegated economic efficiency to a lesser priority. While this architecture has been sufficient for increasing U.S. economic growth for the past 50 years, it is no longer sufficient for increasing growth amid the globally constrained resources of the 21st century. Accordingly, a method must be found for providing safe aircraft separation and economic efficiency. Read on…
V1 is on sabbatical until December 1.
Until the end of November, I will be focused on completing my pending qualification for Captain with the world’s largest air carrier. I’ll be looking forward to picking up my blogger’s pen again in early December. I’m very sure there will be no shortage of topics to discuss regarding the design of economically efficient air travel for the 21st century.
Safe flying all.
Update – Where did your pilot sleep last night?
After posting a July 24th commentary about an airline employee trailer camp in a Los Angeles Int’l airport parking lot, V1 transited that airport two days later. Attached are two photos of the camp, visible just over the runway blast fence. Both photos were taken from the cockpit while holding short of runway 25-right at LAX.
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- LAX trailer camp (1)
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- LAX trailer camp (2)
As stated in the originating post on this subject (below), V1 does not normally comment on this type of aviation matter in this blog. However, the existence of this trailer camp, comprised of commercial pilots and other airline employees at the end of one of the world’s busiest runways, portrays the evolving systemic dysfunction in the U.S. air transportation system, and is therefore appropriate for commentary here.
As market cost pressures combine with powerfully entrenched interests and federally imposed inefficiencies on the air carrier industry, airlines must extract an ever-greater quantity of operational readiness and compensation from their employees. Accordingly, the ‘LAX trailer colony’ is an example of how air carrier employees must balance the costs and inefficiencies of the system by accepting increased degradation of their off-duty time.
As previously stated, V1 maintains that the solution to this persistent spiral will not be found solely in the federal fabrication of more aviation capacity through the creation of ‘NextGen’. Rather, what is needed, is an economically self-sustaining solution, which will provide America with an air transportation system that posseses the potential to evolve with the demands of the 21st century. V1 continues to propose that this solution can be found in the free-market allocation of aviation infrastructure in the form of a ubiquitous utility and a tradable commodity.
My best regards,
SRD
Copyright © 2009 by Scott R. Davies. All Rights Reserved.
Where did your pilot sleep last night?
Following is V1′s commentary on a July 20th article featured in the L.A. Times. Written by Times reporter Dan Weikel, the article showcases a trailer and RV camp comprised of airline workers living in an LAX parking lot, at the approach end of one of the world’s busiest runways. V1 does not normally detour into these kinds of issues in the aviation industry, as they are not directly related to the inadequacy of federally supplied ATC. However, the glaring demonstration of this parking lot colony as a symptom of a dysfunctional air transportation system deserves commentary here.
Airport Parking Lot is Home Away From Home For Airline Workers
It seems this article demonstrates just one more example of the pilot profession morphing into a vagabond lifestyle. It may be argued by some stakeholders in the commercial aviation industry that these pilots are receiving quality rest in-between duty periods, while living at the end of one of the world’s busiest runways. But it must be maintained that the February 12th Colgan Air 3407 catastrophe is a prime example of the dangerous fatigue this type of living can heap on an exacting profession.
With images like the one portrayed here, it is no wonder that the industry see’s difficulty in recruiting the next generation of pilots. Slowly, over many years, we have witnessed the many different ways individual members of the profession have been forced to accept ever-lower standards of living in order to support the operational and financial integrity of the air transportation system. And in the workplace, we see implementation of band aid-like measures to allow pilots to perform the physiological workload of more than one individual. In the vacuum of willing applicants which the culmination of these measures produces, we see the early efforts to recruit comparatively inexperienced entry-level pilots which are changing the intrinsic quality of the margin of safety.
There are no easy answers to these challenges. FAA administrator Randy Babbitt is off to a good start in the wake of the Colgan mishap, as he is calling for a single level of safety throughout the industry. BUT, he was part of that same effort almost 15 years ago as the national chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association after the American Eagle 4184 crash near Roselawn, Indiana. And the industry continues to demonstrate the same symptom of dysfunction.
So, if history is any measure, we can expect the expenditure of a lot of words and gestures in the direction of these issues – and little measurable change. V1 offers two causal reasons for this gradual degredation of the air transport industry and it’s inability to fix itself:
- There continues to be a dearth of true leadership, among the many entrenched stakeholder groups in this dysfunctional system, with the vision, power, and desire to effect real change.
- The changes which are necessary call for a complete redesign of the 20th century air transportation system, so that it may meet the demands of the 21st century.
Lacking a clear acknowledgement of these two causal reasons among public policy leaders, and an accountable committment to overcome them, we can expect the same debilitating lack of progress that we have continually witnessed in the past.
V1 continues to offer that the way forward is the free market re-allocation of equity stakes which are horded by the collection of federal agencies and commercial special interest groups comprising the industry. This is discussed in our research proposal; The V1 Concept of Air Transportation Management.
My best regards,
SRD
Copyright © 2009 by Scott R. Davies. All Rights Reserved.
“Well, the earth isn’t spinning backward, but it seems that’s been the direction of progress in air traffic management for the past 58 years. The short answer, once again, is that the monopolistic supply of federal aviation infrastructure is incapable of efficiently accommodating free-market air carrier demand. So in a sense, ATC has been going backward, in comparison to the free market.” – V1
A faulty inference.
A few days ago, USA Today columnist Bill McGee wrote about the increased amount of time it takes to ‘fly’ between certain metropolitan areas. (Think Flight Times Are Being Padded? They Are.) V1 salutes Mr. McGee as an accomplished aviation writer. However, after pointing out that ground delays and congestion are the main culprits of longer ‘flight’ times, Mr. McGee’s article delves into an examination of how pilots and air carriers can manipulate their operational times in order to meet DOT on-time criteria. Even if this were holistically executed in a world of telemetric reporting via ACARS 1, Mr. McGee took a turn in the wrong direction while trying to nail down the true causal factors of his core subject. In addition, V1 takes exception to the inference in the title of the article – that air carriers are attempting to hide increased ‘flight’ times from their passengers. Read more…
The hidden cost of the ‘taxi delay’.
While our crew waited for our aircraft to arrive at JFK yesterday, the plane itself was already on the ground. However, it was parked on a taxiway for approximately 45 minutes as the crew waited for gate and ramp area congestion to clear. This type of arrival delay is not an ATC problem. It’s a problem with how individual air carriers manage their gates. However, due to this wait, our flight pushed 10 minutes late, which ultimately translated into arriving at our destination 35 minutes behind schedule.
For late afternoon departures out of JFK, each extra minute which is consumed getting off of the gate and into the departure queue, can expand a delay by a multiple. As is the standard (and very outdated) method of handling outbound traffic at airports all across America, aircraft are not sequenced for takeoff until the cockpit crew calls ground control for taxi to the runway. Any time which is spent trying to push-back from the gate, start engines, and leave the ramp area, does not count until the radio transmission calling for taxi is made. As a result, we were number 31 for the runway once we got clear of the ramp and were put into the departure queue by ground control.
At over-consumed airports such as JFK, where taxi delays like this can be anticipated as part of standard operations, extra taxi time is built into the flight’s published transit time to the destination. This allows flights to arrive ‘on time’ at their destination even though it may have required an extended amount of time to actually get into the air at the point of departure. In other words, the cost of an ‘on time’ arrival is shouldered by the passengers in the form of planned taxi delays. Our planned taxi-out time for this particular flight was 55 minutes. Actual elapsed time was 1 hour 10 minutes. So, the late departure off the gate cost an additional 15 minutes in taxi time, fuel, and passenger productivity.
On the other end of the transit to San Diego (SAN), we were instructed to descend far in advance of our optimal descent point due to conflicting traffic ahead in the Los Angeles sector. This resulted in a descent out of our 36,000 foot cruise altitude (FL360) all the way down to FL280. That’s a relatively low altitude at which to be ‘driving’ along while still 130 miles from the destination. It requires a greater specific fuel consumption rate. And it results in a slower true airspeed and a slower ground speed; the last of which directly effects arrival time for passengers. After several assigned airspeed reductions at low altitude to accommodate other arriving traffic, we touched down 24 minutes behind schedule, but didn’t get to the gate until 37 minutes behind schedule due to ramp and gate area congestion.
The takeaway:
V1 proposes that if four dimensional trajectories (4DT’s) from the departure runway to the destination final approach fix were commoditized, the cost and profit incentive would allow for a complete shift in the dynamics which determine how aircraft taxi to meet a takeoff time. As a commodity, a 4DT would be determined at the time of purchase. It would be built, bid, and transiently ‘owned’ for the optimal consumption of resources by aircraft type, forecasted meteorological conditions, and passenger and freight load. Therefore, since conflicts would be built into the price of the 4DT at the time of purchase, optimal trajectories would be immune from the vagaries of random ATC corrections for altitude, course and speed, due to conflicting traffic. This model is addressed at length in V1’s independent research proposal, The V1 Concept of Air Traffic Management.
Your comments and replies welcomed.
My best regards,
SRD
Copyright © 2009 by Scott R. Davies. All Rights Reserved.
Twas the night before the Super Bowl …
January 31, 2009
Excerpt -
“It is an unfortunate yet common occurrence in commercial aviation that passengers rarely know the detailed reasons which interact to cause a disruption to their travel plans. This is another such case. It illustrates the disconnect which exists between the cost accounting for operating an airport and for operating the commercial air carriers which consume the airport’s services. Lacking this economic bridge, the entire U.S. economy pays the price of the resulting dysfunction through lost economic productivity and unexpected costs at the hands of the air transportation system.”
Departing: John F. Kennedy Int’l, New York City (JFK) 7:15 p.m. EST
Arriving: Portland Int’l, Portland Or. (PDX) 10:50 p.m. PST
The details
At the time of departure from JFK, the reported weather at PDX indicated 2 miles of horizontal visibility under a cloud ceiling approximately 500 feet above ground level. The weather was no great cause for concern for completing the flight as scheduled; as these conditions were above the minimum ceiling and visibility requirements for executing the standard Category I instrument landing system approaches (CAT I ILS) to any of PDX’s four runways. (See Table 1 and plan form view of PDX, below.) In addition, the weather at PDX was forecast to improve substantially by the time of our scheduled arrival 6-1/2 hours later.
Table 1. Approach procedure weather minimums by runway.
| Runway | 10 R | 10 L | 28 R | 28 L | ||||||||
| Criteria | VIS | RVR | DA | VIS | RVR | DA | VIS | RVR | DA | VIS | RVR | DA |
| CAT I | 1/2 | 1800′ | 200′ | 1/2 | 2400′ | 263′ | 3/4 | 4000′ | 250′ | 1/2 | 2400′ | 283′ |
| CAT II | N/A | 1200′ | 100′ | N/A | ||||||||
| CAT III | N/A | 600′ | 50′ | |||||||||
RVR: Runway visual range. The minimum runway surface visibility for conducting the approach; measured along the length of the indicated runway. RVR controls the decision to conduct the approach. Prevailing visibility (above) serves as ancillary information.
DA: Decision altitude. The minimum altitude for visually acquiring the runway threshold environment when the aircraft is established on the glide slope and course depicted on the published approach.
Portland International Airport, plan form view. (Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc. publications)
However, in the event that visibility and ceiling conditions degraded, the contingent possibility of diverting to an alternate destination would be elevated due to the fact that PDX’s only approach procedure which could accommodate very low visibility conditions was posted as being out of service that night. This was the Category II & III ILS approach procedure to runway 10-right (10R). Several construction cranes approaching 200 feet in height had been erected, presumably for an airport construction project, approximately 1600 feet to the north side of runway 10R. Another 190-foot crane was in place one mile west of the approach end of runway 10R. The presence of these cranes infringed upon the obstruction clearance criteria for the CAT II & III 10R approaches, rendering each of these procedures unusable. In keeping with the cautious nature of aviation – and with federal regulations – enough fuel was loaded for weather-related contingencies. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) was selected by our dispatcher as a suitable weather alternate, where the pre-departure conditions were clear and forecast to remain that way.
While our flight was enroute across the continental U.S. and southern Canada, the weather did not improve at PDX as forecast.
At 9 p.m. PST, the hourly report from the PDX automated terminal information system (ATIS) indicated the prevailing horizontal visibility at the airport had degraded to 1/8-mile in fog with a vertical visibility, in the fog, of 100 feet. (The next lower increment indicated by this system is 0 feet). The 9 p.m. ATIS also indicated that the temperature/dew point spread was zero, at 1° C each, and that the wind was perfectly calm. In addition, it was night time. All of these indicators pointed to continued conditions of fog until at least one of them changed – most presumably by the sun coming up! Adding to the situation, PDX is located on the southern shoreline of the Columbia river. We could anticipate that the cold moist air in the river valley would continue to lie in the vicinity of the airport, and be turned to fog by the zero-degree temperature/dew point spread throughout the night. Corroborating this was an updated weather forecast which we had obtained enroute, indicating the weather would remain at 1/4 –mile visibility and a 100 foot ceiling until ‘lifting’ to 1-mile and a 200 foot ceiling at 8 a.m. the next morning. This would still be below the weather minimums required by all of PDX’s CAT I approach procedures.
At 10 p.m. PST, the hourly PDX ATIS indicated the prevailing visibility had decreased to 1/16-mile in fog, but that the wind was now out of the west at 5 knots.
At 10:10 p.m. PST, a ‘special’ ATIS report indicated the visibility had increased to 1/8-mile. Shortly after this time, we began our decent for the airport with the full intention of remaining in the area until our fuel situation required that we divert to SEA. We were now also in communication with the Seattle Center sector controllers who were now relaying the PDX runway visual range (RVR) information to us. (See Table 1, above.) As opposed to the prevailing airport visibility which is indicated on ATIS reports, RVR is a much more critical and instantaneous measure of visibility along the length of a specific runway at surface level. The lowest RVR allowable for any of PDX’s CAT I approach procedures is 1800 feet, which also happened to be for runway 10R. As we descended for PDX, the RVR’s being relayed to us by Seattle Center and then by Portland Approach Control were fluctuating between 1000 feet and 1400 feet. Too low for CAT I, but well above the 600 foot minimum criteria for a CAT III approach – had it been available.
As we slowed and configured the aircraft on the downwind leg for a possible approach to runway 10R, the RVR decreased to 900 feet. Flight crews are legally bound by federal regulations not to initiate an approach to a runway which is below weather minimums for the type of approach being attempted. We had two options at this point. We could hold with the 15 minutes of holding fuel that we currently had and hope (against ALL indications) that the RVR would increase above 1800 feet, or we could divert to SEA now. Our dispatcher was naturally encouraging us to hold, since all other company aircraft scheduled to land at PDX that night had already diverted to SEA. This was understandable as the aircraft we were operating was the last hope the company had for maintaining some portion of flight schedule integrity the following morning out of PDX. And since the stage length from JFK to PDX had been so long due to the 100-knot-plus winter headwinds experienced enroute, once we landed in SEA we would no longer have sufficient time within our federally stipulated 8-hour daily maximum flight time, to refuel and attempt a return to PDX.
Aviation safety is not built on hope. Flight crews are charged with making the absolute best decision with the information they have at their disposal. The possibility of getting close to SEA and wishing we had that 15-minutes of fuel that we would have burned ‘hoping’ for a higher RVR at PDX is not something we wanted to experience.
With the RVR at 900 feet (700 feet too low) we chose not to ‘hope’ for better conditions in 15 minutes. We turned north and picked up a clearance to SEA. We safely delivered our passengers to an unplanned destination at 11:44 p.m. PST (2:44 a.m. body-time for the flight crew.) Ten hours later, we ferried an empty aircraft from SEA to Orange County Airport, south of Los Angeles. This particular aircraft, like the one we had landed at SEA the night before, had been displaced from the revenue operation due to the weather conditions at PDX the night before. Our first task that day was to get it back to a place in the operation where it could once again be put into revenue service. The cost of flying an empty Boeing 737-700 from SEA to Orange County? Approximately $4000 in direct costs for fuel and pilot wages alone.
The take-away
It is an unfortunate yet common occurrence in commercial aviation that passengers rarely know the detailed reasons which interact to cause a disruption to their travel plans. This is another such case. The aircraft had arrived in the PDX terminal area at the appropriately scheduled time. It was properly equipped to conduct a CAT III approach, which was needed due to the prevailing weather. The cockpit crew was properly licensed, trained and experienced to conduct such an approach. The CAT III navigation equipment in the runway environment was operable – but the procedure itself was rendered unsafe and therefore unsable due the presence of idle construction cranes. The operable condition of that approach procedure would have facilitated the expeditious completion of this flight as planned and expected by our passengers. In addition, passengers expecting to depart PDX early the following morning (Superbowl Sunday) would not have arrived at the airport to discover there were no aircraft or crews waiting for them at the appointed times. Lastly, the airline would have been saved untold expenses for displaced passenger accommodations at SEA, extra fuel consumption for the multiple diverts to SEA that night, and administrative and operational efforts to recover the integrity of scheduled operations the following day; such as burning fuel in empty aircraft in order to place them back where they needed to be.
How could all of this have been prevented?
It’s a simple reaction to say that the construction cranes which caused this compound disruption should not have been left in place and idle during conditions of low weather AND over a pseudo holiday weekend. This assumes that the cranes were not actually left holding some critical structural element in place. Foregoing this assumption, a realistic inquiry would very possibly lead to the discovery of the high cost of removing and reestablishing such equipment once it has been put in place for the duration of a project, idle or not. So this leads to a simple cost analysis problem. Which costs more; the displacement of thousands of airline passengers, possibly a dozen or more aircraft (all air carriers included), and the down-line disruption of several dozen follow-on flights - or the temporary removal of idle construction cranes? I’ll hazard a guess that the cost of lowering construction cranes wouldn’t begin to balance the costs incurred by their presence when the weather deteriorated.
But if this is true, it leads to another more entrenched problem to solve. It illustrates the disconnect which exists between the cost accounting for operating an airport, and the cost accounting for operating the commercial air carriers which consume the airport’s services. Given the current economic structure for providing air transportation in the United States, there is no practical and proactive method for analyzing the balance of costs in a situation such has the one described above. Therefore, there is no direct incentive to minimize costs to all parties. Lacking this economic bridge, the entire U.S. economy pays the price of the resulting dysfunction through lost economic productivity and unnecessary costs at the hands of the air transportation system.
A proposed solution
It is past time that the United States commoditize its runway environment capacity.
Given a profit motive for ensuring the functionality of its runway environment capacity in all weather conditions, rather than operating under the federally taxed and centrally planned structure which is currently in place, PDX would have been able to compare the potential cost of lost revenue from diverted flights to the cost for proactively removing construction equipment which impeded the generation of that revenue. As a result, presumably the CAT III approach would have been available in this situation. The consequence for not having this economic structure in place was the transference of perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost and lost productivity to the air carriers, their passengers, and the general economy.
My best regards,
SRD
Copyright © 2009 by Scott R. Davies. All Rights Reserved.
