The Washington Post published an editorial on August 22 with its take on this summer’s airline delays. A letter to the editor on September 1 had another take.

Now our own Wendell Pope offers his view:

My reaction was the same concerning congestion in the national airspace system. The biggest problem by far is runway congestion so why is this ADS-B project being presented as a solution? My cynical side sees this as a way to funnel big contract money to contractors rather than dealing with the political hot potato of building more runways. ADS-B technology is great, but this is not a solution to airline congestion problems.

Another interesting aspect of this congestion issue is whether the big increase in the use of regional jets over the past 10 years is partly to blame for the concrete squeeze. The argument goes something like this. RJs use up lots of runway, about as much as larger traditional airliners and much more than the turboprops they replace. Turboprops can typically use shorter runways that are unsuitable for jets. Also there is a sense that RJs have substituted for larger airliners and it would take approximately 4 fifty seat RJs to carry the passengers of 1 B767. So as RJ flying is increased mostly replacing turboprops and substituting for some larger airliners there is great pressure put on runway resources.

I think there is a substantial amount of accuracy to this argument particularly concerning RJs largely replacing turboprops. That said, with the introduction of 100+ seat RJs the definition of an RJ is blurring and making me a little nervous (the B717 I fly seats 117 passengers). I don’t think of the B717 as an RJ but a B767 driver might think it is. Maybe it’s time to move to the B737!