General Aviation - bully of the skies

Today I was flying back from Calgary on United Airlines. While taxiing out to take off for the first leg to Chicago, I started thumbing through the latest issue of United's magazine: Hemispheres. Just a few pages in I saw a title that smelled funny to me: "Smart Skies".

In it, the the President and CEO of the ATA made his pitch to the random United Airlines passengers to support their Smart Skies initiative - not to be confused with NASA's educational site.

Reading the write-up made me a little sick to my stomach (as did the cutesy video). It worries me greatly to think that his arguments are being read by people who have no other knowledge on the subject. All they see are the false arguments that supporting massive tax increases and user fees against general aviation will get their plane to their vacation spot faster and/or cheaper. He even threw in "it will help the environment" by letting his airliners burn less gas; maybe that was a hat tip to Mr. Gore.

He implies that most delays are caused by "ATC issues". Bullsh*t. We experienced hours of delays going to Calgary due to - can you guess? Weather! Guess what caused yet another delay coming back today? Hmmm. Got it yet? Weather!

And our experience was hardly unique. The DOT tracks reasons for delays. Weather is by far the top dog followed by volume.

Guess who makes up the volume that affects the commercial flights? Other commercial flights. The hub-and-spoke system at its best - providing congestion and layovers. At least those hubs end up large enough to have 6 Starbucks - in Terminal 1. Plus there's the added bonus of feeling like cattle!

To read about more problems with the ATA's stance check out Alliance for Aviation Across America pages. One in particular picks apart their cute little video.

And help out our biggest guns in the battle against these lies: join the AOPA (worth it for their magazine alone) and sign the petition!

Edit - June 6, 2007: Looks like AOPA just noticed the article as well.

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