WASHINGTON – Rising jet fuel prices are being cited by airlines as the reason for cancelling service to smaller U.S. cities, but an increasingly broken air travel system is as much to blame, according to a new book by a former high-level Federal Aviation Administration official.

“When it comes to air travel today, everyone has a horror story,” writes George Donohue, in the understated opening line of his new book, “Terminal Chaos.”

An associate administrator for research and acquisition at the FAA from 1994 to 1998, Donohue offers a detailed explanation of both the causes of and solutions to an aviation system in crisis. Today’s mess of delays, cancellations and airport chaos are the product of more than two decades of bad decisions, he said.

In an interview, Donohue argued that today’s rising fuel prices are providing political cover for legacy airlines like American, United and Delta to retool and go after their smaller, more profitable competitors like Southwest Airlines. Part of this retooling is halting less profitable service to smaller airports like Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Chattanooga, Tenn., New Haven, Conn. and Hagerstown, Md.

“I think the failure to fix the system is going to lead the legacy air carriers to chase after the low-cost business model and they will go only for the business flyers and the big markets. Low cost leisure air travel (for passengers) has come and gone,” Donohue said.

Airlines are reducing their unionized workforces, cramming passengers onto smaller planes and reducing the number of seats available. That will lead to more passengers on fewer flights, for which airlines can charge higher ticket prices. And although there will be fewer airports served, there will also be more traffic on the larger, already congested airfields.

“Our policies have set the system up to not be able to accommodate a large network of inter-city transportation, and we’re seeing it with mergers of airlines,” said Donohue. “I don’t think this is a temporary economic-downturn issue.”

I think it goes to the heart of it – that our air transportation policy is broken.”

“Terminal Chaos” details the ways in which Donohue and co-author Russell Shaver III believe the air travel system is broken. This includes how the FAA and airlines work collaboratively to make optimistic assumptions about weather that result in routine over-scheduling of flights, followed by a domino effect of departure delays and flight cancellations.

There are numerous unsettling surprises for regular flyers in the book, including the fact that very little of aviation communications involves digital data transfers like those used by cell phones and the Internet.

Donohue argues in “Terminal Chaos” that those iPods, cell phones and laptops you are ordered to turn off during takeoffs and landings actually don’t interfere with airline navigation systems.

“The FAA has never been able to confirm these fears, thus private pilots routinely use their computers close to navigation equipment without any problem,” he writes in a chapter entitled “Passengers Who Act Like Sheep Will Be Treated Like Sheep.”

“The federal government cannot compete with the private sector for competent engineers. The government can’t compete with Nextel and AT&T and Verizon and Sprint for the qualified engineers to do modern information technology,” said Donohue, who advocates having the private sector play a greater role in modernizing aviation communications. “We’re working with a system that is adequate for the 1950s.”

—

TALK BACK

Donohue will answer questions from readers on the McClatchy Washington bureau website. To ask him a question go to: www.mclatchydc.com

To ask a question about this story or any economic question, go to McClatchy Newspapers’ Economy Q and A here:

http://tinyurl.com/46eam4

—

(c) 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau on the World Wide Web at www.mcclatchydc.com.

AP-NY-07-06-08 1803EDT