A study conducted by the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress noted that U.S. air traffic delays in 2007 alone cost the economy as much as $41 billion. This figure included $12 billion worth of lost time costs for passengers and $19 billion in increased operational costs for the airlines. Over time, these losses have exceeded the losses from hurricanes.
While the focus has been on fining airlines and new tarmac-delay rules, funding for the new air traffic control system has been delayed from more than two years. The most important thing our government can do and the one thing that every branch of government and every regulatory agency agrees needs to be done, is still mired in bureaucratic never-never land.
We need the new air traffic control system to start operating as soon as possible. Unfortunately, our current system is failing everyone in this issue.
In order to dramatize the issue, the Joint Economic Committee compared losses from air traffic delays to the losses sustained by hurricanes over an eight year period. Even discounting the air-traffic losses, the delays ended up being a larger economic factor than hurricanes such as Rita and Katrina.
…even if the economic costs of air traffic delays are only $15 billion per year, for the years 2000 through 2008 those costs still would have added up to more economic damage than the hurricanes that struck the United States during that same interval, Maxson said. While storm damage was about $131 billion during that nine-year period — including damages exceeding $90 billion in 2005, the year of Katrina and Rita, and the nearly $20 billion burden caused by the four hurricanes that raked across Florida the previous year — air traffic delays would have cost the economy about $135 billion, Maxson estimates.
After several decades working in a variety of jobs as a newspaper writer, event publicist, communications specialist, and marketing director, Karen Cummings is now “retired” and working on Travelers United’s social media and newsletters in addition to occasionally contributing a travel-related article to TU’s blog. She lives close to her family in Fryeburg, Maine, and travels as often as she can.
