FAA On Travel Delays: Get Used To It 720
coondoggie writes "The term sequestration has certainly become a four-letter word for many across the country — and now you can count business and regular traveling public among those hating its impact. The Federal Aviation Administration today issued a blunt statement on the impact of sequestration on the nation's air traffic control system, which this week begain furloughing about 10% of air traffic controllers for two days or so per month. It reads as follows: 'As a result of employee furloughs due to sequestration, the FAA is implementing traffic management initiatives at airports and facilities around the country. Travelers can expect to see a wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather-related issues. ... Yesterday more than 1,200 delays in the system were attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furlough.'"
U.S. Democrats and Republicans spent the day using the FAA's statement as political fodder rather than working on resolving sequestration.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
The idea was that if the cuts were applied equally to every program, deals could be made to eliminate some programs to prevent cuts to the truly vital ones (in a sense, forcing choices about what really is vital by acknowledging that there is a finite amount of money to spend). Unfortunately, the goal of neither side was a balanced budget. Rather, cuts were maneuvered to impact the most visible programs so that both sides had fresh mud to sling.
Get the facts (Score:3, Informative)
Before you go blame the administration for ensuring the cuts went to essential services instead of extraneous expenses, read this [washingtonpost.com].
Opportunity in Disguise (Score:3, Informative)
Do private airports and charter planes have to put up with this bullshit?
Seems to me this creates a golden opportunity for someone with a small fleet of private planes. Imagine if you're a business traveler, and you need to fly somewhere 1000 miles away. A commercial plane could make the trip in about an hour and a half, if it could magically take off and instantly reached its cruising altitude and could land as fast as it could crash. The reality is that such a flight takes long enough, that if you also add all the bullshit you have to go through, including navigating traffic to the massive airport, finding your way through the airport, being humiliated and insulted by half-wits with metal detectors and x-ray machines, running the risk that you'll be pulled aside to have your asshole violated so they can pretend you'll be safe when you finally get on the airplane, and then you have to wait another 20 or 30 minutes after you are finally permitted to "deplane", waiting for your luggage.
Then, assuming you are allowed to get on the plane, after potentially being anally violated, if you're lucky enough to reach your destination, and manage to be reunited with your luggage, (and of course, provided some thief at the T"S"A hasn't stolen your property out of your luggage,) you will have spent hours of your life and risked the same repeatedly. Also, you will have exposed yourself to hundreds or thousands of other peoples' secretions, breathing a bunch of random strangers' coughs and sneezes, all the bacteria and viruses, as well as experiencing enough stress in a few hours to take several days off your life expectancy... and that's all if nothing goes WRONG.
On the flip side, imagine if the alternative existed, you drive to the airport, which is closer because it's local not regional, maybe you even drive almost right up to the plane. Then you get on the plane and after a few minutes (rather than hours) you take off. Sure the plane doesn't go as fast, being a prop-plane, taking three or four hours to make the same trip, but after you land, you have your bags right there, and can immediately leave the airport. From the moment you get in the car to go to the airport, to the moment you leave the distant airport, you might spend less time flying in a small, private or charter plane.
Makes me wish I had a small fleet of private planes.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually not uncommon in systems with little buffer. If a highway is right near a critical point of congestion, 4% more traffic can result in 40% longer commutes.
Re:Sequestration is what the pubs want (Score:5, Informative)
the admin who wont call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack simply because it goes against his political agenda?
You are likely referring to the Boston bombings; as I understood it, Obama didn't use the term "terrorist" specifically ON the day of the bombings, and has ever after. I'd say this is simply him doing his due-diligence in not jumping to conclusions, as at the time no one knew if the explosions weren't simply a gas line exploding. If anything I'd want more of politicians and news stations taking a deliberate and thorough approach to things, rather than going all reddit on us and pointing fingers and making sensationalist claims. Each to their own eh?
Litle reason to stop sequestration (Score:3, Informative)
There is little reason for current incumbents to stop sequestration, as most incumbents live in safe, gerrymandered districts and work for the ultra-rich, not the citizens.
The correct response would be to do away with the TSA, which has never been effective (speaking from my days in counter-terrorism ops and as a combat field engineer) and to allow the rural and small airports to go to more automated flight operations. But this would affect the tax-subsidized Takers in rural and suburban America who depend on the taxes from the job-creating efficient Blue cities that subsidize the Red sloth.
Another correct solution would be to replace increases in jet travel with high-speed trains on the growing West Coast that creates more than 40 percent of the US GDP.
But since the West Coast only gets 6 senate seats out of 50, even with so much population, don't count on that.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:2, Informative)
Let's pretend this is a programming project. You have yearly budget for a salary of three contractors and you have an unmodifiable scope.
All of the sudden, the higher-ups mandate that you spend 10% less on the project. What are you going to do? The answer: give the contractors fewer hours and push the deadline back. This is exactly what the FAA is doing.
I love how in your comment you specify that there are "specific programs" that could be cut without elaborating on what those actually are. Without details, you're just an anti-tax troll that wants a solution that most benefits you without thinking about any of the real consequences.
Summary is Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Hi. I'm a contractor working for the FAA.
ALL controllers are having their hours reduced by 10%. This comes out to 1 day per 2 week pay period, or the approximately two days per month in the summary. It's not 10% of controllers being affected, it's all controllers being affected by 10%.
And for those of you saying "Why didn't they cut other, less important budgets?"
Well, it doesn't work that way. Every account was cut 10% across the entire FAA. This is incredibly stupid, by the way, since the much of the FAA's labor is paid for via levies on airline tickets, and so it shouldn't be affected by these general fund shenanigans (as an aside, this is why we got furloughed two years ago, because Congress wouldn't renew the airline ticket levies for political reasons). But, hey, Congress... You get what you pay for.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
If you think the GOP is the only problem here, then you're also part of the problem.
Re:Summary is Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
That's not how sequestration works. Every program was cut 10%. The DoD is avoiding furloughs by laying people off, most likely.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, it was the GOP that wanted to cut all tax rates but keep it "revenue neutral" by ending some deductions. The problem was that they could never specify what deductions they wanted to end. When economists tried to make head or tails out of it, they only way the GOP plan could work without blowing up the budget was if they eliminated deductions that would disproportionately affect the middle class. There simply weren't enough high end deductions that could be eliminated that would pay for the revenue that would be lost by the tax cuts. The end result is that while the GOP sounded like they wanted to lower taxes, the effective taxes for the middle class would actually go up.
Re:Two separate fights (Score:5, Informative)
meanwhile, we have "certain" (code for "important") people flying their asses all around the theater (commercial flights) for three weeks straight, getting paid full TDY, etc... why use that expensive video teleconference suite when you can fly to hawaii, bank some per diem, and accumulate frequent flyer miles?
everything is for show. ever since the GSA vegas debacle, public spending has been curbed, but still runs rampant in private. i used to have pride in working for the government and armed forces, now i am demoralized, ashamed, and actively looking for non-civilian non-government jobs.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:2, Informative)
The issue is that they can't agree on what to cut. The GOP refuses to cut things that support the military industrial complex and generally things that subsidize the rich. The Democrats are slightly less dedicated to social programs that actually help people. Then there's the various facilities and industries that are located in one or another state.
Between all of that, it's unlikely that you'll get much in the way of cuts.
Not that it really matters because the RWNJs will complain about the crushing levels of taxation no matter what it actually is.
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sequestration is a gimmick (Score:5, Informative)
But, what's worse is that the spending hasn't been on anything which benefited the average citizen, it's mostly on things that benefit the rich.
Bush did pass the drug benefit bill [wikipedia.org] when he was running for re-election, which of course was also a big payout for the drug companies. While I was looking that up, I checked to see who sponsored the bill, and it was the Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert [wikipedia.org], who was implicated [vanityfair.com] in a Turkish bribe by an FBI whistleblower who was subsequently fired. Hastert later retired and went on to earn $35k per month as a lobbyist [thehill.com] for Turkey.
Words fail me.
Re:Some math ... (Score:2, Informative)
Your math is wrong. The entire workforce, with few exceptions, is being furloughed 10% through the end of the fiscal year. Not 10% of workers for 2 days a month. 10% of time is roughly two days per month for basically 100% of workers.
It's a workforce reduction of about 10% for about half of the year, or about 5% for the year. There aren't many FAA employees who qualify for overtime pay in the first place, so that proposition is right out.
The sequester was designed to do exactly this. There was a plan to lessen the impact on employees, but it was never approved.
Re:Sequestration my butt (Score:5, Informative)
What? Who mods up this shit?
2011 budget - $9.79 billion (http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/faa_fy_2011_budget_estimate.pdf)
2013 budget - $9.70 billion (http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.dev/files/docs/faa_%20fy_%202013_budget_estimate.pdf)
1% real reduction, or about a 5.5% reduction adjusting for inflation. And that's before the sequester.
2011-2012 flights - 738,143
2012-2013 flights - 743,569 (http://apps.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml)
Traffic increased about 0.75%.