March “lion” slams east coast

by Tom Johansmeyer on

From New Hampshire to the Carolinas, March came in, as the saying goes, like a lion. Snow, sleet and wind gusts reaching 30 mph have lead to for motor vehicle deaths, school closings and chaos at airports.

More than 900 flights have been canceled at New York area airports (JFK, Newark and LaGuardia). Hundreds more at Logan International Airport in Boston never left the ground, where the airport closed for more than half an hour to clear a runway. In Philadelphia, more than 40 people were stranded overnight.

Even the bus operators got into the delay and cancellation game. Greyhound and Peter Pan scrapped trips into and out of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

So, get comfortable. It’s going to take a while to sort this mess out.

Are the trains in Spain faster than the planes?

by Jeremy Kressmann on

If you’ve ever had a chance to travel around Europe, you’re probably familiar with its various high-speed rail networks. In France, the TGV and AGV lines whisk passengers between Paris and points beyond including Brussels and Lyon at speeds over 200 miles per hour. And in Spain, the AVE rail system connects Madrid to Seville and as of 2008, to Barcelona as well.

According to a recent post at Wired, the new high speed link between Spain’s two biggest cities has had a dramatic effect on the country’s transportation network. In 2007, the airline route between Madrid and Barcelona was the busiest in the world, carrying over 70 percent of the passengers traveling between the two. Yet upon the opening of the new Barcelona rail line last year, that percentage has already dropped to 60 percent, and experts predict the number of plane and train passengers on the route will be equal within the next 2 years.

Aside from the obvious environmental benefits of traveling by rail instead of air, there’s a significant convenience advantage as well. As heavy airplane traffic continues to choke airport runways worldwide, it’s likely many of us will be turning to the railways for trips shorter than three hours. And when you think about it, by the time you’ve made it through TSA clearance, located your gate and fought for an overhead bin spot, your quick two hour plane trip has often turned into four or five. Here’s hoping the U.S. continues to look into similar high-speed rail solutions like Acela. It’s no AVE yet, but certainly a good first step.

[Via PSFK]

Your ticket was expensive and your plane crowded, but at least you took off on time

by Josh Lew on

Is there an upside to the fact that the airline industry is struggling? Perhaps you can feel smug knowing that the CEOs of legacy carriers will probably be taking home six-figure bonuses this year, instead of the usual seven or eight digit haul (“Ha, greedy bastards finally got what they deserve,” you might say to yourself).

But all you smiling, glass-half-full folks out there can take comfort in this: airlines have the highest on-time percentages they’ve had in a long, long time. According to USAToday, 86% of all flights were on time during the month of October. That is compared to 78% during the same month of 2007.

A plane is considered on time if it reaches its destination within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival time. I assume they mean less than 15 minutes later than scheduled; although I’m sure there is the odd person out there who might be put off by arriving 15 minutes early.

So look on the bright side of air travel. You may have to spend more for your ticket and your plane is bound to be crowded and, perhaps, noisy. But at least you have a good chance of getting where you are going on time.

Virgin America Delays Start of Service from O’Hare

by Josh Lew on

Virgin America has been flirting with Chicago O’Hare for several months now. The airline had hoped to launch its service in the fall of ’08, but, obviously, that isn’t going to happen. Now Virgin is telling fans that the first take-off from the famously busy airport will be in Spring of next year. Fair enough. It hasn’t been a good year for airlines. Why not back off and wait for calmer skies?

But the delay has nothing to do with economics. At least, that’s what Virgin is saying. Rather, the failure to launch from ORD is due to the high demand for gates at the airport. O’Hare was not able to provide the gates that Virgin wanted because they are already being used. That is not a new scenario for those familiar with the airport. Even hyped and hip airlines like Virgin have to wait in line like everyone else. But don’t fear, jet-setting hipsters of Chicago, Virgin America will be losing its O’Hare cherry soon enough.

FAA systems outage causing nationwide delays this afternoon

by Scott Carmichael on

If you are heading to the airport this afternoon, then you may be in for a nasty surprise. The FAA’s “NADIN” system based out of Atlanta, is experiencing an outage. This system (National Aerospace Data Interchange Network) is the big computer responsible for processing flight plans from every flight in US aerospace. Delays are increasing all across the FAA map.

At the moment, Chicago Midway is seeing delays up to 90 minutes, O’Hare is almost at 75 minutes, and most other East Coast airports are all at 60 minutes or more.

As the delays increase, the systems outage will have a severe knock on effect for the entire country, and things are bound to get worse.

This is not the first time the FAA has had an outage in its NADIN system, last year the system grounded flights across the country for close to 6 hours, and the FAA has not been able to trace the cause of the problem. The NADIN computers were designed back in the early 80’s, and are slated for replacement later this year. Of course, none of that will be of any help if you are sitting in a departure lounge reading this.

As with all delays, I suggest heading to the airport on time as well as contacting your airline. Chances are that your plane might still leave the gate on time, but you may end up being held in a holding pattern on the tarmac for several hours while controllers manually process flights. Be sure to pack something to read!