Could Technology End Airline Delays?
Are you a fed up air traveler? You’re not alone. Delays and cancellations seem to have become the rule this year, but there is a better way. Technology and free markets could vastly improve air travel, if politicians will allow them to work.
It’s become popular to blame air travel woes on deregulation, just as California pundits and politicos are blaming a freer energy market for rising electric bills. In both cases, competition and free markets are unjustly taking the fall in public commentary. California eliminated some restrictions on the sale of electricity. But state government and the Feds continue to regulate energy production, while environmental groups block the creation of new power plants, which makes it difficult and costly to generate electricity. If it costs a lot to generate power, you can only squeeze so much savings out of new marketing rules.
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Radar to help pilots avoid birds
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C.: A trailer with antennas and wires temporarily parked on base awaiting transit to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, might not look like much, but it could save the military lives and money when it gets shipped later this spring.
The trailer contains a Merlin Aircraft Birdstrike Avoidance Radar System that will alert pilots and air traffic controllers to the presence of birds near one of the U.S. military’s busiest airfields in Afghanistan.
While currently used at some stateside Air Force bases and international airports, the installation of the bird detection radar at Bagram Airfield will mark the first use of this technology in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, said Gene LeBoeuf, the chief of the Air Force Safety Center’s Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard, or BASH, team.
Having bird detection radar at Bagram Airfield is a result of three years’ of effort between the Safety Center’s BASH team, headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and the U.S. Air Forces Central Command Safety Office at Shaw Air Force Base.
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Do technology standards make sense for airlines’ attempts to differentiate?
GDS executives are calling for the development of technical standards for the booking and processing of airlines’ unbundled fares, ancillary revenue and other sales innovations.
Sabre chief Sam Gilliland raised the issue at November’s PhoCusWright conference.
But other industry players are saying, “Not so fast.”
“Standards are good, but let’s all keep in mind that this is about differentiation,” Suzanne Rubin, American Airlines’ managing director of merchandising and distribution strategy and president of AAVacations, said. “We don’t want something that puts us right back into the same box of commodity product.”
Gilliland has warned that the merchandising trend could become “e-ticketing 2.0.”
Electronic tickets made their debut in 1995. Many passengers resisted using them because if a flight was canceled, they had to stand in line to have a paper ticket issued and endorsed to another carrier.
The airlines quickly realized that e-ticket adoption would increase if that hurdle were removed, yet the first interline e-ticket agreement was not signed until 2002. It covered two airlines.
Early adoption of standards would have eased the transition to universal electronic ticketing, but some industry participants say merchandising is a different animal.
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne, managing partner of T2Impact, a business accelerator for travel distribution, said, “Airlines are saying that this is not a standardized service and should not be covered by standard rules that somebody mandates.”
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