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At
Bacon’s Rebellion and SYNERGY/Planning
there has been extensive discussion of surface
transport – streets, roadways, tollways,
rails, waterways. There also is something
important about the future of Mobility and
Access to be learned from all the ink and bytes
spilled over the current air transport crisis.
Air
travel is a bellwether that will illuminate
fundamental truths about the escalating
Mobility and Access Crisis and the future of
transport via vehicles.
In
spite of huge, continuing, subsidies and no
attempt outside the European Union to fairly
allocate the environmental impacts of airplanes,
airline Enterprises are in deep financial
trouble. In the last few months half a dozen
airlines have filed for bankruptcy. Two major
airline Enterprises have agreed to merge to
avoid bankruptcy. “Analysts” are
predicting that many more “consolidations”
are on the horizon. (See End
Note One.)
Things
are not going smoothly for the Enterprises that
are still flying. Several major airlines have
grounded some or most of their flights because
they had avoided safety inspections. Between 12
March and 12 April, according to WaPo,
about 4,000 flights were canceled and 400,000
passengers stranded. Air worthiness of planes in
service came to light only after an FAA
inspector blew the whistle on one of the most
profitable airline Enterprises.
Last
week the FAA administrator was again on the hot
seat before congress because he was not assuring
citizens got what they want: cheap, safe,
on-time flights. Now the Secretary of
Transportation says there needs to be better
oversight.
There
have been some bizarre and disturbing events. A
pilot put a bullet through the fuselage of a
plane he was flying. A former air marshal has
called safety training a joke. There are a
number of disturbing trends: flight delays,
flight cancellations, over-bookings and an
increase in the number of bags lost or stolen.
All
the while, the price of air travel keeps going
up but not fast enough for airline Enterprises
to make a profit. Those who travel a
lot will tell you they are not enjoying what
they get for their money. The schedules, load
factors, seat design and staff morale/training
all make air travel a nightmare compared to the
days when we averaged four commercial flights a
week in the late '70s.
The
age of the current aircraft fleet and the
quality of the aircraft maintenance are the
prime drivers of discomfort and the prevalence
of Chronic Air Travel Disease. These realities
indicate that the airlines that have not yet
filed for bankruptcy are hanging on by their
fingernails. (See End
Note Two.)
Everyone
needs to face the fact that airline Enterprises
have not recovered from 11 Sept 2001, nor from
the dog- eat-dog competition that followed
deregulation. But continued regulation or
re-regulation will not solve the problem. Over
the past year, thankfully, there have been no
airplane fatalities but a lot of other things
have been going wrong. What is happening here
and how does it relate to Mobility and Access
via vehicles?
Airline
Enterprises have run out of rope. “Supercapitalism”-driven
competition has run the best minds in the
industry out of tricks: The reality is:
There
is no way to have “low cost, safe,
convenient flights.” No amount of
traditional subsidy or oversight can mask
realty. The only way that there can be safe,
on-time air travel is for every ticket to cost
far more than it has in the past.
But
there is a larger context. Always a master of
understatement, James Howard Kunstler puts the
context of air – and all vehicle – travel
this way:
“The
world is about to become a larger place again.
Globalism is toast. Caught up in raptures of
credit-fueled discount shopping, few Americans
realize how profoundly our society is about to
change. We are sleepwalking into a permanent
global energy crisis that will compel us to
live much more locally than we have for
generation. We face a desperate need to
reconstruct local networks of economic
relations – and we should have begun this
great task yesterday.”
The
solution to the air travel crisis – and to
Mobility and Access Crisis in general – is not
new technology, less government control, more
subsidies or money for more facilities. The
solution is coming to grips with the fact that
there will be less vehicle travel in the future
and that all vehicle travel it will cost much
more. That is especially clear for air
travel. There is brave talk about
innovation in aviation, such as smaller jets
flying from dispersed airports directly to where
travelers want to go. Great ideas but they omit
one thing:
The
Wealth gap.
Robert
Reich’s data in “Supercapitalism”
documents that fewer and fewer can afford the
shelter that is now available on the market,
much less flying off to Rio or to the Homestead.
(See “The
Sky Car Myth,” 15 November 2004.)
A
growing number of people have a problem just
paying for food. One reason is the diversion of
agricultural land from food production to the
production of fuel for vehicles.
The
bottom line is that in the future fewer and
fewer citizens will be able to afford air
travel. When the total cost of aircraft
operations – including environmental impact
– are fairly allocated almost no one will. The
Airline industry has not yet faced this reality.
We
all should have seen it coming. If you did not
hear the airplane door slam shut for all but a
few at the top of the economic food chain in
September of 2001, you surely heard it in
November of 2003 when the Concorde SST stopped
flying. (See End
Note Three.)
We
are not happy about the end of the age of
flight. We are thrilled that we were able to
live in the era of expansive flight
opportunities. We love to fly and have jumped
into every private, military and commercial
aircraft that was available to us. We worked as
aerial observer looking for fires and lost
climbers in Northern Rockies, we flew into most
places where one could land a Cherokee 6 from
Port Au Prince to St Kits and into almost every
commercial port from San Juan to Port of Spain.
We crossed the Atlantic and half the Pacific
over 30 times. Domestic flights for business and
pleasure numbered in the hundreds per year in
the '70s.
But
good things that consume a lot of energy are
coming to an end. Cumulative consumption has
burned through the Earth’s natural capital.
Citizens are facing the end of air travel as it
has been known it since World War II.
Air
travel reality is not a new topic in our
professional work. Following the October 1973
OPEC oil embargo, it should have been clear that
all vehicle travel – on land, water and in the
air – would change. During the '80s we worked
for clients who realized that Dulles Airport was
a critical economic engine for the northern part
of Virginia. We worked to secure the best
possible ground access, the best possible
terminal and the best possible air-side design
so these facilities could be married with the
best runways east of the Mississippi to create a
World Class airport. We represented client
interests on Dulles committees and task force
for 15 years. We co-chaired the Dulles Task
Force’s Airport Access Committee.
In
the '80s it was also clear that travel under
1,000 miles was most efficiently provided on the
ground and in shared vehicles – probably on
rails. Further, it was obvious that extra
airports were a waste. We worked for the
organizations helping former Virginia Senator
Clive DuVal II carry out his “support Dulles
for the economy and close National for safety,
noise and efficiency” campaign.
One
of our key strategies was to sell National
airport and use proceeds to build a
high-capacity shared-vehicle system to get
passengers and workers to Dulles airport.
During
the second week of September 2001 Linda and I
were in London. We were shopping on Regent
Street the day before our scheduled return when
a customer came into the discount china shop and
asked the clerk if she had heard that an
airplane had been flown into the World Trade
Center in New York. There was a Bang and Olafson
store a few doors down and we watched as BBC
broadcast the tape of the first plane and, as we
recall, saw the second plane live.
Needless
to say, we did not catch our scheduled flight
out of Heathrow the next day. If one has to be
stranded in a “foreign” region, London would
be a good first choice. Before the airplanes
were flying again we had lots of time in Hyde
Park and in nearby pubs to consider the skyways
ahead.
We
came home and renewed the suggestion that it was
time to rethink the whole idea of air travel and
unneeded airports. It seemed obvious that the
role of air travel had to fundamentally change.
Some did not even return our calls and others
suggested that it was “unpatriotic” to say
air travel would be impacted by terrorism. In
fact it was the economics and physics of air
travel, not terrorism, that doomed the golden
age of flight.
Since
2001 we, and others have not flown as we used
to. While the data is not well publicized, from
time to time one sees reference to “air travel
being almost back to pre-2001 levels.” On this
past Thursday, members of Congress were grilling
FAA administrator as to why he was “not
protecting the interests of air passengers.”
There is no way to “protect” air travelers
without charging them far more per passenger
mile – directly or indirectly. If the
costs are fairly allocated, the cost of air
travel will rise exponentially.
Historians
may determine that the current federal-level
governance practitioners, elected and appointed,
are the most incompetent since the
administrations of Millard Fillmore, Ulysses S.
Grant and Chester A. Arthur. The actions by the
Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Interior, Agriculture and
Homeland Security would seem support that
assessment.
On
the other hand, history may document that they
are simply ideologues who have been given an
impossible task – “give citizens what they
think they want.” In this case safe,
convenient air travel with low (“cheap,”
“reasonable”) fares, is just not possible.
The
same is true for quick, easy or affordable
“solutions” to ground travel congestion
given dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
It cannot be done.
James
Howard Kunstler’s words were directed at the
need for a new vision of Alpha Community
economics outlined by Michael Shuman in “The
Small-Mart Revolution” and the importance of
place advocated by Richard Florida in his new
book, the title of which is so bad we will not
repeat it in a Household-friendly column.
Did
someone say “Fundamental Change?”
--
April 21, 2008
End
Notes
(1).
A recent story on Consolidations in the
industry says it all: “Will Mergers Fly?
Airlines Want to Cut Costs and Lift Stock
Values, But Lawmakers Worry about Higher Prices
and the Potential of Loss of Jobs and
Service.” Guess what: Costs will be cut but
stock values will not go up, prices will be
higher, jobs will be lost and service will
deteriorate.
(2).
Among those who are forced to travel often
in small, “commuter” planes for long
distances, there is a rumor that there exists
something called Severe Acute Air Travel
Syndrome (SAATS) or Chronic Air Travel Disease (aka,
CATD). They claim it is a wholly preventable
wasting disease caused by the design and
maintenance of aircraft. SAATS or CATD is
thought to be most often spread by “small
airplanes.” “Commuter” aircraft are
pressed by competitive pressures into long haul
service for which they were not designed.
Cramped cabins, high load factors,
under-capacity air handlers and long flights
result in every passenger sharing every virus
and every bacterium that any passenger has
encountered in the past month. Poor maintenance
means these pathogens are shared with every
passenger who has been on the plane over the
past two months.
(3).
“Space travel” is the epitome of
conspicuous, wasteful consumption for those at
the top of the economic food chain. See
“Still
No Exit,” 2 July 2007.
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