Stronger Protections For Endangered Airports, With AeroBlue
President Simeon Hitzel
ANN Daily Touch N Go: 06.04.08 (ANN's
Short-Form Daily News Program)
ANN Daily Aero-Briefing: 06.04.08
(ANN's Long-Form Daily News Program)
ANN Special Feature -- Stronger Protections For
Endangered Airports: 06.04.08 (ANN Special Report, with
AeroBlue President Simeon Hitzel.)
It's been unusually quiet lately on the FAA reauthorization
front. After what looked like an opportunity to finally get the
Senate to act on reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration,
settle the user-fee debate for a few years, and get next-generation
air traffic control underway, extraneous amendments and political
tantrums derailed the debate on Senate Bill 1300, and
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it from consideration.
"Airport planners are still building
airports with fancy architecture and lots of retail space, but the
low-cost airlines often won’t use them. And the low-cost
airlines are not necessarily small anymore; they are a growing
sector that represents the future. They want smaller, cheaper
airports that increase efficiency."
Source: Professor Richard de Neufville, with
the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Noting that leading low-cost
airlines with a preference for small, inexpensive airports are now
the largest airlines in the United States and Europe, de Neufville
says airport planners in major metropolitan areas need to accept
this paradigm shift and build flexibility i
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