An Analysis of the Topic of the Weather Delays

We seem to have heard so much more about them in recent years. Is the getting worse? Are the newer planes less able to stand the rough weather than the planes of the past? Maybe travelers just complain more What is the reason for the 70% increase in flight delays and 23% increase in cancellations blamed on the weather since 1978? Are the airlines just using weather as a catch all to cover other problems and keep themselves covered under the statemeant you cant control the weather.

I will attempt to answer these questions along with a few others in this report but, the question that cannot be escaped from beginning to the end seems to be Is the weathe rreally that bad? Lets start with why have the flight delays increased so much since 1978.It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and for many, it still is one of a short list of good ideas to come from the Federal Government Airline Deregulation.

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This allowed for more competion between airlines in more ways than ever before not only could they compete for customers on strictly a customer service stand point but also for the price of fares and the amount flights offered to the more popular destinations.

Up until this DEREGULATION, the Federal Government through the Department of Transportation strictltly controlled the amount of flights an airline could schedule and the amount they could charge for these flights. Weather or any other problem could only have a limited effect on the flight schedule as only about one third as many flights were scheduled then as are scheduled today? Then what is considered by many to be one of a long list of oversights by The Federal Government nothing was done to the air traffic control system to account for the inevitable increase in passengers and flights scheduled.

Much of the U.S.Air Traffic Control System was then and is now operating on World War II era technology with most of the updates coming only as needed to accommodate either the Cold War or NASA. Some twenty-two years latter the inevitable is now upon us .Consider this in the year of deregulation(1978) there were 250 million passengers carried by the US airlines in 1999 this number topped 650 million. All other factors being equal this would result in more passengers being delayed or canceled just by the growth of travel. Why does the older equipment cause so many problems ?The main reason is system overload with no more flexibility available in the system.

Many passengers can easily become baffled as they stand in the terminal at JFK in New York looking at clear blue sky out the window and seeing a clear report from THE WEATHER CHANNEL for their destination city such as Atlantas Hartsfield Airport while hearing over the public address system that their flight is being delayed for weather. The causes could be many and the effects rippling over to tomorrows flight schedule easily disrupting thousands. How can this be? Lets start with our 8:15AM departure flight from New York with scheduled 10:25AM Atlanta arrival We will call this flight A.

A small line of thunderstorms developed anywhere along the crowded, narrow airways between these two cities and flights are going to stop, but not because the storms are so dangerous even if they were very powerful with heavy rains and severe lightning with deadly microburst and macroburst and cloud tops reaching some 60,000 feet into the stratosphere it would seem to many reasonable thinkers and most of our stranded passengers to simply fly around these storms. So why not? Here is where our outdated Air Traffic Control Systems really shows its age so to speak. As unbelievable as it seems in this modern age many of the Air traffic only so many flights would be able to be tracked by any system but, our present system is limited by the number a planes a given controller can track at a given time.

Planes today are also forced to maintain a specific distance between other aircraft which no one thinks is a bad idea but as many critics contend this area should be expanded in the vertical and horizontal plane and tightened, during such time as severe storms, also the airways (highways in the sky) could be widened to accommodate the same distance of separation and eliminate the so called ants in a row procession. Many of todays modern aircraft have radar avoidance systems far superior anything available to air traffic controlers. This coupled with onboard weather radar and lightning indicating systems make the need for such constricted airways obsolete.

So the answer to the question of Are modern aircraft more susceptible to rough weather? is an unmistakable Actually quite the opposite is true, if the outdated ground resources were updated than there would be far fewer delays just by the increased latitude afforded to flight crews to simply fly around the relatively small storm systems which account for up to 45% of all weather delays. The Air Traffic Control System Center in Herndon, Va. is the final word when it comes to airlines getting the go ahead run to take off on routes with trouble along the airways. One thing that is particularly troubling is the major source of information when comes to weather in The Air Traffic Control System Center is The Weather Channel .

Our pilot for flight A has almost no latitude to move around these storms after the plane is airborne so flight A and its passengers sit and wait. Even after the storms clear Flight A is a long way from off the ground as any dispatcher from any of the major airlines will tell you now comes the tricky part. You may get a tentative clear for Take off from The Air Traffic Control System Center but at an airport as busy as J.F.K. you could still be hours from take off due to the huge back log of flights that have been created by the delays all along the eastern sea board by these small storms. Now comes the next question. Are many of todays airports inadequate?Thats usually an airline industry standard to little ramp space, to little tarmac, and not enough room at the terminal. All of which maybe true but all of which would no doubt be used to capacity in good weather making this a mote point no matter what the infrastructure of any given airport.

Lets say Flight A is able to get airborne by12:30 PM well they should be on the ground in Atlanta by 2:40 P.M. right? Well they maybe should be but dont you bet on it and here is why.Unfortunatly for our passengers on flight A were not the only ones bound for Atlanta that were delayed by weather so now they will be placed in a holding pattern 150 miles from Atlanta only to be moved to a closer and smaller circling pattern 100 miles away this will be repeated at least 2 more times before they are on the ground. Now comes the ripple effect.

Our dispatcher on the ground is planning to use the crew from flight A to continue on to Tampa on a plane arriving from California whose crew day(amount of time Pilots co-pilots and other in air flight crews are allowed to be on duty in a 24 hour period) is about to expire fresh crew arrived at 9:00 A.M. scheduled to take the aircraft from flight A and a new load of passengers in bright flowered shirts to Hawaii, with an 11:15A.M. take off we will call this flight H. Flight Afinally arrives in Atlanta at 4:15 P.M.the crew from Flight A wont be able to make it to Tampa before their crew day is over and the crew for flight H cant make Hawaii so the only option is to send the crew from flight H on to Tampa and cancel flight H.Not only does this news come to the dismay off all our flower shirted friends but now a plane scheduled for an early take off from Hawaii tomorrow morning wont be there and many unhappy passengers bound for the Continental US wont have a plane when they arrive at the airport in the morning or a hotel room to go back to as their vacation is undoubtedly over.

Our final question is one that has caused much debate from the worlds leading scientist down to its many farmers. Is the weather getting worse? According to my research the answer is yes to some degree it is .I believe these changes in our climate are mainly due to what is known as the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect. The theory basically is the warming of the earths atmosphere by absorbing and emitting infrared radiation while allowing short wave radiation to pass through coming from the sun and trapping long wave radiation inside thus resulting in an increase in overall temperature. The primary gases responsible for this inside the earths atmosphere are carbon dioxide and water vapor.

These two along with several other trace gases do not allow energy radiated to Earth by the sun to be returned to space resulting in a net gain of heat energy leading to a net gain in temperature. This can only result in a climatic change in major storm systems location and frequency along with the global wind patterns that steer them. This could easily be the cause of increasing tornadoes and severe thunder storms seen recently across the continental US and around the world in the past decade. Another factor could be the cycles of El Nino and La Nina, although these events have been occurring for centuries their singnifigance and effect on the environment seems magnified in recent years.

El Nino an as yet unexplained warming the south Pacific ocean occurring at irregular intervals between two and seven years. At first glance this may seem like it would not be a problem for anyone outside of the geographic area of the South Pacific, but it actually has an effect on weather around the world. This unusual warming of these tropical waters add increased warmth and moisture to the atmosphere In the United States for example this can and usually does lead to an increase in rain fall and thunderstorms. During this same time the jet stream over North America moves further south than normal thus making, it more difficult for tropical storms to develop in the Western Atlantic Ocean.

However, the increase in the tropical water temp in the South Pacific result in an increase in tropical storms in that area. La Nina on the other hand is almost the exact opposite including an unseasonable cooling of the South Pacific waters and an unusual warming of the tropical waters the Atlantic which increases hurricane activity there There are clearly no easy answers to the numerous problems causing delays for frustrated passengers and airline employees alike across the nation, but there are things that can and should be done for the benefit of everyone. First by even the most conservative estimates the air traffic control systems need a complete overhaul to bring the dated equipment on the ground up to an even par with with the new hi-tech jets they track. Second airways can and should be widened to allow pilots the flexability to simply fly around smaller storm cells to keep traffic moving.

Third airline passengers and flight crews alike would do well to remember this the weather we are dealing with here and no day of vacation or business trip is so important that the lives of hundreds aboard a jumbo jet should be risked just to get off the ground on time. Lastly and perhaps most often lost in the discussion, our planet and its weather systems were not designed by man, but an almighty creator. With each new understanding there will no doubt be new complexities better understanding of the weather will no doubt lead to better forecasting and result in more efficient flight scheduling .Man has his limits and the weather certainly does not, so as always we will continue to work around it.