On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:19:20 +0000, Neil Gould wrote:

Interestingly, most were saying that
GA was not a cause of airline delays, which was somewhat refreshing to
hear.

Yes, but at least one of the heads was repeatedly claiming that GA doesn't
"pay its fair share". The same head [I think] also kept trying to turn
away from "congested runways" towards instead "congested airspace". That
is a way to try to blame GA, I believe.

But I just IFRed into LDJ this morning. I was tootling along at my 120
kias with the airliners 1000 or 2000 feet above. They were on final for
EWR's 4R. I didn't cause them any delay; there were as many airliners in
trail as the runway would permit.

Congested airspace? In a way, I suppose so. Causing delays? No.

As for "fair share", I'd guess that putting one slow-mover on the visual
for an uncontrolled field is a lot less work than lining up those
airliners of different speeds to a single runway.

More, it is better for ATC and the airliners to have me a known target
that they can move around than a 1200 blundering around w/o talking. In
fact, I should get paid for the extra work of filing a flight plan (which
may seem trivial until one counts the 20 minute wait time on my cell phone
while an FSS recording tells me how important my call is).

One interesting bit of the article for me was a rational defense of
hub-and-spoke. Was the speaker wrong?

- Andrew