August has proved to be a frustrating month to travel, and a meter showing the rapid increase in delays of flights throughout the years. In August, nearly 30 percent of the flights were delayed, which ranks as the worst on-time arrival performance since 1995, when they began keeping record. The on-time arrival rate went from 75.8 last year to 71.7 this year. These new delays are increasing customer complaints, which almost doubled to 1,634 in August, compared to the 864 in August of last year.

The government has been listening to the figures and has formulated some plans of action to help decrease the number of delays and complaints. The government is considering forcing carriers to shrink their flight schedules, also considering making them pay more to fly during peak travel periods, but some say this won’t help minimize delays, but merely result in higher fares. Recently Bush signed a spending bill to keep Cabinet departments running at current level through November, so until then, the Congress will try to raise taxes and fees to pay for upgrades to the air traffic control system. With these possibilities, the airlines are battling corporate jets and small plane operators over how they will share the cost.

The airlines and the FAA are also pressing for the building of a satellite-based air traffic control system. This system would cost about $15 billion and take close to 20 years to complete. By year 2025, they predict a double in airline traffic. This control system is known as NextGen, and the FAA already awarded ITT Corporation a $1.8 billion contract to build the first portion of the system. They also have a goal for all planes to be equipped with the navigation technology by the year 2020.

So, if the government and FAA are un-successful, it may prove more difficult to fly with ease. But out of all the bad records recently, a positive one arose; the rates of mishandled baggage fell from 8.1 reports (out of 1,000 passengers) a year ago to 7.6 reports this year. So, at least there’s some light to be found within the flying records this year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 8:44 pm and is filed under USA, Air Schedule Delays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.