Mark,
Now why do you think this was instituted? Could there be just too many a/c in the air space making it very high risk in severe weather conditions????
What's more important...on time, or safety? There is so much traffic in EWR, PHL, LGA, JFK.
Your CEO is purchasing more RJs. Hint...you need to get the RJs out of the sky and bring in bigger a/c that carry more folks to their destinations.
Do you really want to know why this policy was instituted? Because a group of executives from the majority of the "legacy" carriers felt that they were being unfairly penalized for having high density operations at high density airports while the "newbies" were using alternate airports with little effect. The theory is, if there are weather constraints in a sector, then every one that operates in that sector should be effected. (Seems logical) So, in the past, when carriers that operate in LGA and EWR are being crushed with ATC due to SWAP (Severe Weather Avoidance Procedures) B6 was operating in and out of JFK with little or no delay. All three airports technically use the same airspace and weather that effects 2 of the airports, should effect all three. Same can be said for US at DCA, UA at IAD and WN at BWI. US and UA would get crushed with ATC issues at DCA/IAD, but WN would operate in/out of BWI with no restrictions. All of the flights technically operate in the same airspace, so why isn't the pain shared by all.
There were some benefits to how things operated yesterday. Usually in these types of events, arrivals are favored over departures to avoid diversioins and to keep the arrival rate inflated. This eventually causes a gridlock situation at airports like PHL and LGA. Yesterday, flights were departing the gate and 10-15 minutes later, they were off the ground. Some of that could be contributed to the type of weather event, or it could be that the flow of traffic in the airspace allowed for rerouting around the weather events. I guess we will see how this plays out in the next several events.
I do agree with you that we need more larger airplanes and less RJ's in the Northeast, but ultimately, when we had more large jets and less RJ's, ATC was still an issue. This isn't something that just cropped up in the last couple years.
Another issue with the sector programs versus the individual stations having programs is that you could have both! Last night all traffic from Lake Ontario thru Central PA to the MD/WV boarder and to then east to the ocean were restricted. So, you were given delays up to 2.5 hours if you were destined to that area. Then BOS had a delay program which increased delays bound for BOS even further. So during an event, you could have sector delays and then get caught in a ground stop or ground delay program that would increase delay times.
I am not sure what the answer is. I do understand the theory behind the new ATC initiative, but not so sure I agree. We will have to have a few more "events" to see how it all plays out. Needless to say....it is going to be a very long summer so plan accordingly.
Well I'm not all of them, and I'm not totally ex YET, but to avoid PHL, which I will never connect through that POS, I end up on UA via ORD.
This is something that I need help understanding. ORD has one of the worst performance records that I can think of. Aren't you trading one headache airport for another? Connecting in airports like ORD, ATL and EWR have to be just as bad as connecting in PHL. Just based on ATC/Weather issues, ORD gets to be much worse then PHL. How many people here have sat in PHL, PIT, CLT or DCA trying to get to ORD and find the flights are 2, 3, 4 hours late? Same with ATL and EWR.
PHL may be no peach, but it is definitly not much worse the other major connecting hubs. If you were to compare PHL to a hub like DFW, DTW, IAH, CLE, DEN, PHX or LAS, then you would have a much stronger arguemnt.
