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Tag: flights
Airline Tarmac Rule Leads To More Delays, Study Says

Airline Tarmac Rule Leads To More Delays, Study Says

By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

One of the nation’s toughest passenger rights laws — a rule that fines airlines for stranding fliers on an airport tarmac — may actually increase passenger delays instead of reducing them.

That is the conclusion of a new study by professors from Dartmouth College and MIT. The good news, according to the study, is that the 2010 law can be modified to reduce passenger delays.

The focus of the study is the so-called tarmac delay rule, which gives the U.S. Department of Transportation the authority to fine airlines up to $27,500 for each passenger on a domestic flight who is stranded on an airport tarmac for more than three hours. The time limit is increased to four hours for international flights.

The rule was adopted after blizzards on the East Coast in 2006 and 2007 left passengers stranded on planes for up to 11 hours.

But the new peer-reviewed study, which used algorithms to analyze airline flight data, concludes that airlines are now more likely to cancel flights that are delayed to avoid being fined by the Department of Transportation, thus creating more passenger delays.

For every minute the rule saves passengers from being stuck on a tarmac, passengers are delayed three minutes on average because they have to book new flights to get to their final destinations after their original flights are canceled, according to the study.

“There is no surprise that sometimes when you try to do something good you have these negative effects,” said Vikrant Vaze, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering.

Previous studies have concluded that flight cancellations are more likely because of the tarmac rule, but the Dartmouth-MIT study says it is the first study to analyze the actual effect on passengers.

The study concluded that passenger delays can be reduced if the tarmac rule is modified to increase the tarmac time limit to 3½ hours and if the law applies only to flights scheduled to depart before 5 p.m., when passengers have more options to rebook.

Kate Hanni, a passenger-rights advocate who helped push for adoption of the tarmac rule, rejects the findings of the Dartmouth-MIT study, saying she believes that the universities are biased and accept funding from airlines.

She blames the passenger delays on airlines that schedule more flights per day than can be accommodated by the airports.

Vaze said the study was funded by a research branch of the Federal Aviation Administration and “was not funded in any part by any airline, major or otherwise.”

TRAVEL SITE ARRANGES HOTEL ROOM-SHARING

Short-term rental sites such as Airbnb can save you a few bucks on your lodging costs, but now a Seattle marketing producer has created an online company that may cut your hotel bills in half.

The catch? You have to share your hotel room with a stranger.

Bryon Shannon, who founded the Winston Club in November, said he created the website so that travelers who are visiting the same town can split the cost of a hotel room. Joining the club is free, and you get to accept or reject the roommate that the club chooses for you, based on biographical information provided by club members.

Winston Club makes its money by collecting a share of the room charge just as other hotel booking sites do. So far, the club has agreements to operate in hotels in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore. Shannon declined to say how many travelers have used the Winston Club so far.

Although saving money is the primary goal of club members, Shannon said many members join to make friends or meet new travel companions. The service is popular, he said, with business travelers, especially self-employed workers or owners of start-up companies who are on a tight budget.

“We’ve noticed that business travel is one of the loneliest things,” Shannon said. “It’s a great option for people who are frustrated by that.”

©2016 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Simon_sees via Flickr

 

Fire At Air Control Facility Halts Chicago Flights

Fire At Air Control Facility Halts Chicago Flights

Chicago (AFP) – Air traffic was temporarily halted at two major airports in Chicago early Friday, after a fire broke out at a radar facility run by the Federal Aviation Authority, officials said.

Dozens of flights into and out of the city’s bustling O’Hare and Midway airports were cancelled, as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze at the FAA’s facility in the town of Aurora.

Local news reports said authorities suspect arson as the cause of the fire.

Local news reports said officials arriving at the site found an adult male suffering from an apparent self-inflicted wounds. The man is being treated at an area hospital, reports said.

Officials said the fire, which erupted shortly before dawn, has been extinguished and an investigation launched.

Authorities said operations at the FAA’s Aurora center, which is responsible for guiding high-altitude air traffic into and out of Chicago’s airports, would be taken over by other air traffic sites in the region.

O’Hare, the second-largest airport in the United States, carries more than 15 million passengers each year.

©afp.com / Scott Olson

Melanoma Risk Is Higher For Flight Crews That Work At 40,000 Feet

Melanoma Risk Is Higher For Flight Crews That Work At 40,000 Feet

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

Attention pilots and flight attendants: For your safety, please fasten your seat belts, note the location of the aircraft’s emergency exits — and be sure to apply plenty of sunscreen to reduce your risk of melanoma.

When it comes to the risks of flying, skin cancer may not be the first health hazard that comes to mind. But a new study in JAMA Dermatology says that pilots are 2.22 times more likely than folks in the general population at large to be diagnosed with melanoma. For members of the cabin crew, the risk was 2.09 times greater.

Melanoma is the sixth most common cancer in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. Although other types of skin cancer are diagnosed more frequently, melanoma is more likely to be fatal, the American Cancer Society says. An estimated 76,100 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma this year, and about 9,710 will die from it.

Dozens of studies have examined melanoma risk in flight crews, since working at 40,000 feet means greater exposure to cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation. For the new study, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco combed through data on 266,431 participants in 19 published studies to see whether the danger was real — and if so, how big it was.

They found that for pilots and flight attendants, the risk of developing melanoma was more than double the risk seen in people who worked on the ground. However, only pilots faced an increased risk of death from the cancer — their mortality risk was 83 percent greater than for those in the general population. (For those who worked in the main cabin, the risk of dying from melanoma was actually 10 percent lower.)

The study authors noted that exposure to cosmic radiation is not likely to be a factor for melanoma. Many studies have measured the cosmic radiation that finds its way into a plane, and the amount is “consistently below the allowed dose limit of 20 mSv/y,” or 20 millisieverts per year. (A typical American is exposed to about 3.6 mSv per year, according to this report from the Environmental Protection Agency.)

UVB radiation probably isn’t the culprit either, since fewer than 1 percent of this radiation can penetrate aircraft windshields, the researchers wrote.

UVA, on the other hand, can penetrate glass, and the higher a plane flies, the more intense UVA radiation becomes. When planes fly above clouds or snow-covered mountains, they are exposed to even more UVA reflected from below, the researchers wrote. Studies of cells in lab dishes and in animals show that UVA damages DNA, causing the mutations that can lead to cancer.

It’s possible that when they are on the ground, pilots and flight attendants are bigger fans of activities that would increase their risk of melanoma, such as frequenting tanning salons. So far, there’s no hard data suggesting that this is the case, the UC San Francisco researchers wrote.

Instead, they noted that multiple studies have found that the more hours a member of the flight crew spends in the air, the more likely he or she is to be diagnosed with melanoma.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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‘Miracle’ Flight Survivor Says PTSD Related To Her Firing

‘Miracle’ Flight Survivor Says PTSD Related To Her Firing

By Mark Washburn, The Charlotte Observer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A survivor of the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight has filed suit against Staples, alleging the office-product giant fired her in part for taking extended leave because of PTSD related to the crash.

Denise Lockie of Charlotte, a passenger in seat 2C when the New York-to-Charlotte U.S. Airways Flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009, says in the suit that she received notice of termination during unpaid leave for treatment of anxiety and acute stress.

Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., did not respond to a request for comment.

In the suit, filed in Mecklenburg Superior Court, Lockie says she was fired in retaliation for seeking leave and because she filed a workers’ compensation claim related to the crash.

Lockie says that after the crash, she began to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks related to flying, though she continued to work full time and flew frequently as an executive for Staples. On one occasion, she says, the jetliner she had boarded had to return from the taxiway to the LaGuardia terminal to let her off because she suffered a panic attack.

In the suit, filed by attorney Sean Herrmann of Van Kampen Law, Lockie says she was treated for acute stress disorder and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after the crash and has been under psychological and psychiatric care since January 2009. Since the crash, she says, she hasn’t been able to fly in bad weather, on prop planes, or at night.

In December 2012, the suit says, Lockie went on a six-month leave prescribed by her psychologist to “fully recover from the trauma related to the crash.” Six months later, an extension was sought in the leave, but Lockie instead received a form letter from COBRA telling her that it was her new insurer because she’d been terminated. Staples notified her a few days later of her firing, the suit says, which Lockie says violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Flight 1549, which lost both engines when it flew into a flock of Canada geese after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, was bound for Charlotte with 150 passengers and a crew of five. Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was able to coax the 50-ton jetliner onto the Hudson River near the ferry docks, and all aboard were rescued.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found no one to be at fault in the extraordinary incident and no lawsuits were ever filed against U.S. Airways, the plane’s manufacturer, Airbus, or any other entity involved in the flight. After the NTSB findings, passengers were offered $10,000 in exchange for release against future claims.

Photo via WikiCommons

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