IATA slots possible link fu
Sep. 2nd, 2023 02:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutA. and I were watching TikTok and one of those It Went Viral Here Is an Update things went by. It involved a United flight from Newark to Rome (Italy) that sat on the tarmac for 4 hours, went back to the gate, let 3 people off, encouraged everyone else to stay on because they were gonna leave soon, sat on the tarmac another couple hours and eventually canceled the flight 7 hours after planned takeoff time. The viral folks did get a different flight out of a NYC airport the next day, got to Rome, did their trip, had to buy new tickets for out and back again because the return flight was also canceled on them and United told them they would rebook but then apparently did not.
There were a variety of people who apparently social media’d about this event. It’s a terrible thing to have happen and there were further statements about no food or water provided (which is a violation of law) while on the tarmac. All in all, it is yet another horror story in support of I’m Never Ever Gonna Fly United Again, of which there are too many to count, and it isn’t just United altho they are definitely pretty high on the shittiest of airlines list.
A. and I discussed this and she wanted to know why (legacy) airlines are like this, and I got to thinking, you know, I don’t really know. I mean, I _think_ it is because they have Mostly Monopoly because of slot allocation, but I’m not 100% certain how that works.
https://www.iata.org/en/programs/ops-infra/slots/slot-rule-reform/
This is an absolutely crystalline instance of Status Quo Bias.
IATA is a trade association of airlines. There is a wikipedia entry. It’s worth reading.
I sat around thinking about that slot rule reform piece at the IATA website for quite a while. Walked around thinking about it. Lay in bed thinking about it. Talked my poor husband’s ear off about it. And I have come to some conclusions.
Slot rules are only a problem at overburdened airports. We don’t _really_ want to fix this problem by having lots more airports / space at airports, because Climate, but also because people who live underneath flight paths in and out of airports have trouble sleeping and there are racial issues there. The balance between new entrants and existing players and competition and choice and wtf is all just a bunch of self-serving garbage slamming the door closed behind the existing players and forcing new entrants to be _extremely_ innovative to survive at all.
Why are some airports so overburdened? I mean, you could get into it about hub and spoke and routing systems and the failure to upgrade computer systems (because it is expensive and quite hard). I also think, tho, that a big chunk of the problem is our centralization as humans into a comparatively small number of highly networked large urban agglomerations. We do that because people do business between those points, because people have family in or accessible to those points, and those points build up cultural capital (stuff to do, things to eat, places to go, things to see) that makes those points ever more attractive.
I suppose here is where I must mention Schelling points.
But fuck all that. I think the real issue is the Grand Tour. We need to create alternatives to the points on the Grand Tour and work to build cultural capital around those alternatives to the points on the Grand Tour. It’s not that hard. We visited the Eise Eisinga Planetarium in 2004, and then again in 2023. It’s a wildly different experience (except the room itself of course hasn’t changed), as it quit being a sleepy, regional destination and started to be a Pan-European and even World destination. Leavenworth, WA was put on the map by the railroad, and then the railroad moved, and if it wanted to still exist it needed some sort of replacement mission.
From the wikipedia page: “The entire town center is modeled on a German Bavarian village as part of a civic initiative that began in the 1960s. The area is a major, four-season tourist destination with festivals nearly every month and a multitude of events year round.”
There are _really_ nice resorts and hotels there.
What would the world be like if no matter where you lived, you could get in a car, or on a bus or train, and in an hour to a day’s travel-on-the-ground (I’m okay with boat, altho Jones Act), you could be in a destination that was like Franeker or Leavenworth in 2023 — you can park, the crowds are not bonkers, maybe you have to buy timed entry tickets for a major attraction but there’s plenty of interesting stuff to do and good food to eat and places to go and things to see. A lot of PNWers my age probably remember driving down to DisneyLand when it was like that and wow is it not like that now. What would the world be like if that’s what we all did when we recreated, instead of getting on a plane?
I’m not saying we should ban planes. I’m not saying you can never get on a plane to fly across a continent or an ocean to meet with people who you love but whose lives are centered somewhere a long ways away from yours. I’m not saying people should never fly from one place to another because of the needs of management and governance whether that is public or private.
But I’m finding myself having to explain to people why I’m driving to Pennsylvania and exploring Bucks County with my sister, or why I keep going back to the same places on the other side of the country or an ocean. I love travel, and I specifically love regional travel, and I keep doing much bigger, longer distance, get-on-a-plane travel and when I think about why, I’m not overjoyed with my answers because the answers sound like I’m succumbing to peer pressure. Justifying it with, well, I learned a lot is not particularly satisfying.
I have friends that will not fly for a variety of reasons (which I fully support). I am aware of the whole Flygskam thing. And also, I do point out there are some real difficulties in taking a Euro trend where there’s a whole lot of rail options and oh-so-much to do and see within a comparatively short drive. OTOH, there’s a whole lot in a lot of the United States to do within a not-honestly-that-much-longer drive. Flygskam might help with the airline assholery. At an absolute minimum, it would reduce the number of times in your life you had to deal with it.
There were a variety of people who apparently social media’d about this event. It’s a terrible thing to have happen and there were further statements about no food or water provided (which is a violation of law) while on the tarmac. All in all, it is yet another horror story in support of I’m Never Ever Gonna Fly United Again, of which there are too many to count, and it isn’t just United altho they are definitely pretty high on the shittiest of airlines list.
A. and I discussed this and she wanted to know why (legacy) airlines are like this, and I got to thinking, you know, I don’t really know. I mean, I _think_ it is because they have Mostly Monopoly because of slot allocation, but I’m not 100% certain how that works.
https://www.iata.org/en/programs/ops-infra/slots/slot-rule-reform/
This is an absolutely crystalline instance of Status Quo Bias.
IATA is a trade association of airlines. There is a wikipedia entry. It’s worth reading.
I sat around thinking about that slot rule reform piece at the IATA website for quite a while. Walked around thinking about it. Lay in bed thinking about it. Talked my poor husband’s ear off about it. And I have come to some conclusions.
Slot rules are only a problem at overburdened airports. We don’t _really_ want to fix this problem by having lots more airports / space at airports, because Climate, but also because people who live underneath flight paths in and out of airports have trouble sleeping and there are racial issues there. The balance between new entrants and existing players and competition and choice and wtf is all just a bunch of self-serving garbage slamming the door closed behind the existing players and forcing new entrants to be _extremely_ innovative to survive at all.
Why are some airports so overburdened? I mean, you could get into it about hub and spoke and routing systems and the failure to upgrade computer systems (because it is expensive and quite hard). I also think, tho, that a big chunk of the problem is our centralization as humans into a comparatively small number of highly networked large urban agglomerations. We do that because people do business between those points, because people have family in or accessible to those points, and those points build up cultural capital (stuff to do, things to eat, places to go, things to see) that makes those points ever more attractive.
I suppose here is where I must mention Schelling points.
But fuck all that. I think the real issue is the Grand Tour. We need to create alternatives to the points on the Grand Tour and work to build cultural capital around those alternatives to the points on the Grand Tour. It’s not that hard. We visited the Eise Eisinga Planetarium in 2004, and then again in 2023. It’s a wildly different experience (except the room itself of course hasn’t changed), as it quit being a sleepy, regional destination and started to be a Pan-European and even World destination. Leavenworth, WA was put on the map by the railroad, and then the railroad moved, and if it wanted to still exist it needed some sort of replacement mission.
From the wikipedia page: “The entire town center is modeled on a German Bavarian village as part of a civic initiative that began in the 1960s. The area is a major, four-season tourist destination with festivals nearly every month and a multitude of events year round.”
There are _really_ nice resorts and hotels there.
What would the world be like if no matter where you lived, you could get in a car, or on a bus or train, and in an hour to a day’s travel-on-the-ground (I’m okay with boat, altho Jones Act), you could be in a destination that was like Franeker or Leavenworth in 2023 — you can park, the crowds are not bonkers, maybe you have to buy timed entry tickets for a major attraction but there’s plenty of interesting stuff to do and good food to eat and places to go and things to see. A lot of PNWers my age probably remember driving down to DisneyLand when it was like that and wow is it not like that now. What would the world be like if that’s what we all did when we recreated, instead of getting on a plane?
I’m not saying we should ban planes. I’m not saying you can never get on a plane to fly across a continent or an ocean to meet with people who you love but whose lives are centered somewhere a long ways away from yours. I’m not saying people should never fly from one place to another because of the needs of management and governance whether that is public or private.
But I’m finding myself having to explain to people why I’m driving to Pennsylvania and exploring Bucks County with my sister, or why I keep going back to the same places on the other side of the country or an ocean. I love travel, and I specifically love regional travel, and I keep doing much bigger, longer distance, get-on-a-plane travel and when I think about why, I’m not overjoyed with my answers because the answers sound like I’m succumbing to peer pressure. Justifying it with, well, I learned a lot is not particularly satisfying.
I have friends that will not fly for a variety of reasons (which I fully support). I am aware of the whole Flygskam thing. And also, I do point out there are some real difficulties in taking a Euro trend where there’s a whole lot of rail options and oh-so-much to do and see within a comparatively short drive. OTOH, there’s a whole lot in a lot of the United States to do within a not-honestly-that-much-longer drive. Flygskam might help with the airline assholery. At an absolute minimum, it would reduce the number of times in your life you had to deal with it.