Yesterday brought news that the US Department of Transportation is moving forward with a plan to auction off up to 10% of the takeoff and landing spots at New York’s three busiest airports: JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. Essentially, the DOT intends to cap the number of flights at the airports to increase on-time operations (too many flights can lead to major backups when problems arise) and auction some of the slots (all of which are currently free) to ensure that they are used by the airlines that value them most. In response, there has been an immediate outcry from airlines, the Port Authority, and some politicians all claiming that the DOT is overstepping its authority and that the plan will raise fares at the airports. Other options like more runways and better air-traffic control technology exist to improve on-time operations, but proper pricing seems like an important and valuable part of any proposal. In fact, pricing may work better in the long term than these other options: you cannot increase capacity forever, and technology improvements will eventually yield ever-smaller gains.
To elaborate, it should be noted that while the New York airports are important because of the large market they serve, they are also deeply interconnected to a broader national air and ground transportation system. Improving the performance of these three airports is crucial because their backups cause roughly two-thirds of flight delays around the country. The DOT believes the auction plan will cut flight delays at LaGuardia by 40%, which will create positive impacts felt around the nation. (For a neat map of global plane traffic check this out.)
There are obvious complexities to properly pricing airports, especially involving equity issues like ensuring flights to small markets (a 747 flight to Los Angeles with hundreds of passengers on-board can pay more for a flight slot than a small plane headed for upstate New York), and a large cause of air-congestion is weather related, not due to capacity constraints. But at airports facing capacity-based congestion problems, the pricing of slots or of certain routes will likely yield benefits – especially if pursued in conjunction with an integrated ground transportation policy. For example, one way New York could ease congestion is by reducing the numerous flights to Boston and Washington, DC, via a better and faster train system to connect the cities.
There are major political problems to implementing pricing at airports, and it is unclear if the DOT plan will be implemented in the end. But the fact is that flight congestion and delay is a major problem that imposes high costs on passengers. Solutions are needed. Technology improvements, capacity additions, effective pricing, and a more integrated air and land transportation system are all important parts of a comprehensive answer. Yet each of those pieces also has some merit standing alone. Given that a comprehensive solution seems unlikely any time soon, the question becomes whether a partial solution is better than nothing at all.
-Daniel Lewis
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