Gubmit does not control the number of runways. Taxpayers do. And they are in the mood to say "no." Therefore, taxpayers prefer crowded airports with too few gates, and too few runways. Gubmit would be happy to clear up the congestion here, and on our public roadways. All they need is a green light from voters. Until that happens, gubmit will do the best they can with your voter decisions.

Supe which is it? The dastardly evil airlines are making huge amounts of money because they have the audacity to sell tickets, or are they barely getting by and need to keep selling tickets to survive?

Simply put, more and more people are flying commercially. We therefore need more BIG airports to handle the increased volume if we want to solely rely on the large aircraft. Building BIG airports is not cheap.

The small jets are the answer IMO, because they open up a bunch of airports that the heavies simply cannot use. I bet ten years from now, there will be thousands of them providing service from little airports all around the country.

All the fleet mix estimates I've seen tend to support Tim's prediction here.

More smaller regional jets, fewer big jumbo, long-haul type jets.