2 Images at Air Travel Convention: High Tech, Collapse of Public Trust
Two different images of the nation’s air travel industry emerge at the annual convention of the Air Traffic Control Assn., being held this week in Anaheim.
A walk down the exhibit aisles finds futuristic displays of aeronautical technology, with representatives of avionics manufacturers eager to demonstrate the latest in talking collision-avoidance radar or to show off a cockpit of the 1990s that would almost eliminate a pilot’s guesswork.
But in the technical sessions where aviation executives discuss trends of their industry, attention focused on what a former federal aviation administrator on Tuesday called “a public relations problem”: the collapse of public confidence in air travel.
As a result of chronic delays, increased reports of near-collisions between aircraft and the overnight mergers of regional carriers into airline conglomerates, “people have lost confidence in the government and in the industry,” said the former administrator, Langhorne Bond.
He expressed hope that the same market forces that have caused air transportation’s problems will right them.
But Bond--an architect of airline deregulation in the Carter Administration--and other experts seemed to offer few solutions to the crowded skies other than reintroducing features of the regulated air transportation system that was phased out nearly a decade ago: higher fares to discourage air travel and more direct routes between major cities, instead of concentrating flights to the airlines’ national “hubs.”
Another solution--the expansion of regional airports to ease the crowding of those at big cities--would involve cooperation between elected officials and local residents, who often dislike the noise and traffic that airports tend to bring.
Yet few voices at the convention--whose participants included Federal Aviation Administration officials, avionics manufacturers, military officers, commercial pilots and others involved in aviation--suggested that a reintroduction of federal regulation would solve the problem.
Charles M. Barclay, a vice president of the American Assn. of Airport Executives, said he feared “a reregulation may be in the cards if we suffer another group of delays.”
While observing that delays remain a problem, Barclay pointed to the airlines “record profitability” and the increased passenger volumes of recent years as evidence of “the success of airline deregulation.”
Al Lupinetti, a scientist with the FAA’s technical center in Atlantic City, N.J., agreed that “terminal areas are approaching maximum capacity,” but said that air safety has not been threatened as a result.
The more frequent reports of near-collisions are not a result of such events happening more often, he said, but reflect new aircraft-tracking technology’s ability to observe them better and the press’ heightened interest in reporting near-crashes.
In August, the FAA announced that a record 51 near-collisions were reported over the Los Angeles basin in the year following Aug. 1, 1986.
Lupinetti offered this advice to air travelers: “Calm down. The situation hasn’t really changed. You’re just more sensitive to it.”
The convention continues through Thursday, when FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor will speak.
