FALTERING AIRPORTS

Four years ago [AtE Dec. 1980] I recommended one of Prof. Cesare Marchetti's brilliant papers, "The Evolution of the Energy System and the Aircraft Industry (Chem. Econ. & Engrg. Review, May 1980), in which he found that the increased demand for travel will eventually approach the present energy and engineering limits (fuel per passenger mile). By the turn of the century, he predicted, we may expect changes (hydrogen synthesized by microorganisms?) which cannot now be foreseen, but which will revolutionize aviation.

Meanwhile, strains are appearing at another part of the system: delays of flights and of ground transportation at airports. Here, too, the Office of Technology Assessment has produced a 257-page report (Airport System Development, August 84, $7.50 from US GPO, Washington, DC 20402, stock no. 052-003-00960-9) at the request of a House committee.

The possible technological measures to reduce delays include more intensive computer use in airport control, airspace control and traffic management, more independent parallel runways, and reduced separation of aircraft in their final approach to the same runway. For instrument approaches, the separation required by present procedures is 3 nautical miles, though with good visibility 2 nmi are not uncommon, implying a possible delay reduction. The limiting obstacle is the time needed for the preceding aircraft to leave the runway, which depends on taxiway design and other factors capable of improvement.

Many more technological improvements are possible, and they form the most interesting chapter of the report; the remainder, devoted to economic and institutional issues, considers market solutions only as an extreme option and lists arguments against them. (Theoretically, the OTA does not recommend, but only discusses options, leaving decisions to the Turkeys.)

Prices set by a market of competing cities (and by the demand for landing times) would result in a highly efficient system, possibly one of main and "reliever" airports. As in all market economics, the cost would be borne by the beneficiaries.

The arguments presented against these solutions are drole. Shifting some of the traffic to off-peak hours could be achieved by charging higher landing fees during peak hours, but the surcharges "would have to be set so high that they would be politically unacceptable." [For price is not the level at which supply and demand attain equality: it is the level that a bureaucrat finds politically acceptable.)