Runway Capacity, Safety and Airlines -- Seriously, read this.

[Superman]

Originally Posted by Martin Smith

Free markets do allocate scarce resources better than centrally planned ones. The debate on that front ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The problem here is somewhat of a "tragedy of the commons". The airlines are acting in their own self interest (as we would expect them to do). The airlines are sharing a publicly-owned resource (the airport), and it is being managed by a government agency (air traffic control).

That's when things get sticky.

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.

[Tim Hancock]

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.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

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.