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.
