Good news! There are no more crowds at the mall.

Bad news! No one is buying anything and everyone's losing their jobs as a consequence.

Gotta love this economy.

I think I've spoken with that Gate Agent before! Is that Seattle?

And if the flight has to be held waiting for 4 to 8 hours after leaving the gate to achieve "on-time" so what???

This is more proof that the problems with airline delays have more to do with overscheduling of runway capacity than anything else.

My opinion- flights are all on time all of a sudden because airlines are heavily padding their schedules, so what used to be (for instance) a one hour flight is now scheduled to take one and a half or two hours. As an example, when we recently flew cross-country, we were delayed an hour waiting for connecting passengers. Somehow, we still managed to arrive 10 minutes ahead of schedule.

Obviously this is better than always being late, but I don't think it's the right solution...

@Joe_Bloe: Was it ever a question that it was something else? Well, technically it's more than just runway capacity. The FAA's been saying for years the airports and the current airports and way of handling traffic is strained and unable to support the number of flights efficiently.

@danep: They've been padding the times since the late 90s. I think this really the result of seriously cutting the number of flights - I missed a connection the last time I flew and the next available flight was eight hours later because the airline had cut three daily flights on that route.

@bainelaker: It probably is. I checked United's website and Flight 260 is from Seattle to Washington Dulles.

@bonzombiekitty: Right, FAA's been saying that, but what I'm saying is it's just the runways. ATC scales very nicely. Ask Don Brown, retired safety representative at Atlanta Center.

@danep: They're also slowing down to save gas.

@Joe_Bloe: Well now we just have absolute proof that the delay problems were due to incompetence. Just in case anyone doubted it. Most people understand two things can't take up the same space at the same time... but not the airline industry.

@narq: Is "incompetence" quite the right word, though? These weren't empty flights on the runways, and clearing up the bottleneck means either cutting back on passengers (thanks, recession!) or airport expansion. So absent a recession, you'd either get to booking farther in advance and tolerate longer layovers or pay in taxes for an airport expansion.

"Airlines Fail To Kill Passengers 2 Years Running" - it may have taken less than a week for this headline jinx to work, but hopefully no one was killed in this crash today (right now) of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

Airlines need to think about safety, rather than packing the air full of flights.

US Airways Flight 1549 will not be on time today!

I hope no one was injured in that crash.

@noasalira: the airlines cant do much about birds flying into the engines which may have been the cause of this crash...we'll see.

@danep: My opinion- flights are all on time all of a sudden because airlines are heavily padding their schedules

You are right. I fly in and out of Philly all the time. I've made it in an hour and 15 minutes (Thanksgiving Day 2007) and back in about 1.5 to 1.75 hours of flying time.

They schedule 2+ hours for the flight. Why? Philadelphia International ground traffic is THE WORST.

@Adrienne Willis: they might want to look into that whole "bird flying takes down plane." Because, you know, birds are in the air, planes are in the air, could be an encounter now and then...

@narq: Incompentance? How about physical constraints on the airports/runways. My former home airport, Philly International, was built when jets were smaller. They expanded the runway, but the new longer & lower takeoff path comes very close to large ships going up the Delaware. So the planes and ships try to coordinate, and you end up with 15 minutes every hour when there are *no* takeoffs or landings so ships can pass. Awkward situation, but hardly incompetance.

@floraposte: Exactly.

@noasalira: I believe airports already take care of bird populations around the immediate landing/taking off areas. It would be up to Boeing, Air Bus and the rest to figure out a way to keep birds out of the engines during flight.

Apparently the pilot/s managed to save many lives by avoiding land, and the rescue going on now is fighting against the plane being sunk and dragged by the current. So far, it seems that everyone got off the plane but searching continues. Amazing that it is still floating.

Safety -- skilled pilots, equipment maintenance, and innovation to improve, are things easily lost in the shuffle for bigger profits. I avoid typical chinatown-buses for a reason.

@floraposte: Exactly. If anything, they were doing too well. It's not incompetence. It's the fact that air travel is the most competent form of long distance travel in the country. It'd be nice to have a coast-to-coast express train system, but right now we have Amtrak which needs to go on poorly maintained tracks designed for freight rather than consumer transit. They do have a 77 MPH train, but there's only 22 miles of track that's good enough for it to go that fast. This is all in the northeast corridor, making more useful for commuters than travelers.

But, of course, demand is higher than what the airlines can supply, and even they can't always make it without subsidies all the time. Thus, we have tight schedules that fall apart when even the smallest thing goes wrong.

@noasalira: I think they're still plenty safe, or at least safer than they've been historically. Consider that the chances (according to Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt) of dying in a plane crash, hour per hour spent in a plane, are the same as dying in a car crash, hour per hour in the car. The reason you hear astronomically lower percentages of death in a plane is because most people spend more time driving a car than sitting in a plane. Two years without a fatality is great, and shows existing safety protocols work.

I want to know where these on time flights are so I can try them!

Going home for Christmas my ATL-EWR flight was canceled and I was put on an ATL-LGA flight that was 90 mins late. On the return, my EWR-ATL flight was an hour late.

I can't remember the last time a flight I have been on has been on time. I know that I have never been on an on time flight between Atlanta and NYC.

@danep: But at least you now would know that a flight will ultimately get you to your destination at a specific time. I am happy to see a 2-hour block of time even if the actual flying time is 75 minutes. Because, let's face it, ground traffic can still delay you. Considering all the things that can happen to delay a flight from getting to a destination, the padding makes sense to me. If a delay was a rare happening then the padding would be wrong. But we all know that there's more likely to be a delay somewhere along the line.

@floraposte: But the airlines were still major contributors to that problem -- their recent shift to small commuter jets clogged the runways with 60- to 90-seat jets instead of 150- to 350-seat ones. And to make matters worse, when there's a hiccup in fuel prices, those thirsty jets become ridiculously expensive to operate.

Still, is incompetence the right word? Maybe not, but when a cash-strapped industry's answer to every problem is "buy a new fleet", it comes close.

@ElizabethD: Emtpy, closed down malls are a depressing thing to look at...

@noasalira: My cousin maintains and repairs airplanes and he's shown me what happens when a bird hits a turbofan. Something even the size of a pigeon can do considerable damage. Airports actively try to keep birds away from the runways and approach paths but sometimes, something slips through.

@TVarmy: Ehh...actually that's not quite accurate about Amtrak. It isn't so much that the lines are poorly maintained, but that the freight railroads who host Amtrak just don't want to spend the money to support the higher speed trains. Since a particular line may only see two passenger trains a day (one in each direction,), who can blame them? Nationwide, there is actually a ton of track capable of supporting passenger trains up to 79 mph; the top speed on the NE Corridor is 120 iirc.

But the fundamental problem with airline delays is there is just not enough concrete to support the number of airplanes trying to get into some of these airports. Until someone "gets it" and either starts building more runways or the airline lobby stops whining about slot auctions, you are going to have delays.

I never have understood why people get on planes so much. I haven't been on a plane in over 3 years. The less people feel the need to jump on a plane, the better it'll be for really necessary air travelers.

@sleze69: But fun to explore!

I wish I had been on one of the on-time flights in November. Every flight I have been on since July was 45 minutes - two days late.