Air Transport Association, the airline industry’s main trade group, forecasts that a record number of airline passengers would fly during the Memorial Day holiday weekend and throughout the summer.
To minimize the weather-related delays, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is planning to expand the use of an air control strategy.
Airspace flow program introduced last year in seven high-traffic, air-travel regions in the Northeast allows the airlines to choose between flying longer routes to avoid stormy weather or accepting delays that are aggravating for fliers and costly for the industry.
There have been many delays and cancellations of flights due to winter storms that blasted Midwest and Northeast this February. Delays and cancellations caused million of dollars of losses and there was an overflow of customer dissatisfaction from the annoyed travelers that were kept on Jet Blue planes in New York for as long as 11 hours.
For the pragmatic approach to maintain high safety standards, FAA has been credited by Sid McGuirk, an associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. But the National Air Traffic Controllers Association says that the summer delays are inevitable as there is a shortage of air traffic controllers.
The association predicts that for the 10-day period around Memorial Day, 21.4 million passengers worldwide will travel on U.S. airlines and from June to August, 209 million passengers will travel which means up 3 percent from last year.
Including the parts of the South and Midwest, Airspace flow program will be used in 18 regions this summer.
This program is expected to minimize the delays and save up-to $100 million per year in reduced costs for airlines.
Source: MSNBC
