Airlines to face new fines

The Obama administration has notified airlines that beginning 120 from now they will be fined more than $27,000 per passenger when an airliner sits on the tarmac for more than three hours.

The new rules released by the Transportation Department would prohibit airlines from leaving passengers stuck on a runway for more than three hours, and would require that passengers be provided snacks and water during such delays. Airlines would be fined $27,500 per passenger for violations. Currently the Transportation Department issues fines for tarmac delays on case-by-case basis.

Exemptions from the fine will be allowed for safety or security reasons.

I'm undecided whether the fines will be a good idea. On the one hand, a lot of delays like that really are the airlines' fault. Consider, for example, morning departures from Los Angeles.

At any given time, the most number of runways dedicated to take-offs is two. But if you look at airline schedules, there are currently more than 35 take-offs scheduled for 8 a.m. each morning. Assuming at least a two- to three-minute minimum time separation between each take-off, you don’t have to be a member of Mensa to figure out that a lot of folks will not be taking off at 8 a.m.

So why do airlines schedule so many flights to leave at exactly the same time, knowing that it is impossible for all them to do so?

Continue reading after the jump.


The reason is competition, and not just competition among the airlines on the whole, but competition at the actual  boarding gates. Of the three dozen flights scheduled to take off at 8, only a handful will actually do so at or very close to that time. The competition between the 35 gates to be first to roll from the gate is doubtless intense because the earlier a plane rolls, the earlier it will actually take off.

But every one of those 35 planes can be counted as on time for departure even if most of them spend more than an hour waiting in line to take off. An airliner's departure time is not related to the time it lifts from the ground. An on-time departure is accomplished when the captain releases the aircraft's parking brakes within a small +/- window of the scheduled departure time, as signaled by the "Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (or ACARS)."

This computer transmits the "out", "off", "on" and "in" times for the flight. The "out" time starts when the captain drops the parking brake with the main cabin door closed. The "in" time is recorded as the last time the parking brake was applied. The main cabin door opening sends a signal that transmits the "in" time. Unless the captain reset the brake while waiting for the door to be opened, that time is what is recorded

So, the door may open 20 minutes after scheduled arrival, however the time that is transmitted may very well be D.O.T "on time" if the last application of parking brake was within the time limits. Once the chocks are in, the brakes are then released (they can get hot otherwise), so if it takes 10 minutes to open the door after that, the time that is recorded will still be the last time the parking brake was set. That said, you can have an "on time" departure as well- even if you sit at the gate for half an hour, because as soon as the brake is dropped the flight is "out".

So an airliner's captain can order the cabin doors shut, unset the parking brake then the plane can spend 30 minutes sitting at the gate and another 90 getting to the active, and it will still be counted as on time departure.

Now, I have sat on a tarmac for a long time awaiting departure, though I fly very rarely nowadays. Nonetheless, I am not so sure that fining airlines for tarmac time is such a great idea. Not all the delay time is the airlines' fault.

Air routes are extremely crowded. The morning and evening routes times are pretty much maxed out on most main routes. If a flight is to be added, it won't be during times most people want to fly and so may not be profitable for the airline.

So, knowing that the scheduled departure time is likely to be only casually related to the takeoff time, why doesn't an airline simply reschedule its 8 a.m. flight for, say, 8:30 or 8:45? Because that would be surrendering the playing field to its competitors. It's a game of chicken: who will blink first? And every airline says, not me.

Every airline departing from LAX knows its liner might be the unlucky one that waits 90 minutes or more to get to the front of the line to take off. Suppose, though, that a bad day comes with the new fines in effect and a liner sits for more than 2.5 hours. The captain will have to decide how likely he is to take off within 30 minutes. Say he carrying an even 200 pax. That's $550,000 in fines if he estimates wrong. Presumably he'd be consulting with corporate on the decision, but the odds are that the joint decision will be to contact ground control to ask to return to the gate and deplane.

But that airliner won't be the only one seeking to return. How many more - a dozen? Think of the management problem that gives ground control. At what point does it simply deny permission? (In fact, can it deny permission?) So now there are potentially hundreds or more than a thousand of passengers returning to a terminal already mostly filled with pax awaiting boarding their own flights. (And this assumes that there is a vacant gate for a tarmac sitter to return to.)

An old rule of economics is, "That which is subsidized increases." What the new fine schedule may well do is subsidize flight cancellations nearly every day or very long at-gate delays. That will be more comfortable for the pax, but it doesn't get them where they want to go any better. Airlines, facing repeated and possibly unendurable fines may well start cancelling some routes altogether. But the corresponding demand won't decline. Fewer seats flying with same demand for them means higher fares.

Or maybe not. But the possibility seems pretty high to me. Looking out for the consumers' interests shouldn't include creating conditions for higher fares.