Essay: ON FLYING MORE AND ENJOYING IT LESS

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Fortunately, money is starting to pour into the airports. According to the Air Transport Association, 18 airlines will spend $1.5 billion on new airport facilities between now and 1972, another $1 billion by 1976. The airlines have also agreed, albeit without joy, to legislation that would establish a federal Airports/Airways Trust Fund similar to the Highway Trust Fund. Airway users would—very properly—be charged. Taxes on passenger tickets and cargo waybills would also increase.

Under the proposed laws, about $1 billion would be spent on things that every prophet in aviation has been crying for. The number and size of feeder and hub airports would be expanded. The facilities and manpower of the air-traffic control system would be increased, with many controllers' functions automated in the process. As a result, air traffic would be packed more closely—but would move faster and more safely than ever before.

The architects of the "Air Traffic Congestion Relief Act of 1969" intend to impose stern method on the spending. They would require every state to set up a planning agency for airports and would empower the Civil Aeronautics Board to regulate airlines' schedules. In other words, if Congress passes the act, an ambitious and overdue program of catching up with well-defined needs will start. But is such a catch-up program a real solution?

Unless Washington goes further, even improved air transport systems will soon be outmoded. State planning bodies will undeniably unsnarl some of the overlapping, bickering jurisdictions. But what aviation needs most is precisely what it has received least of—a national perspective on a national problem. To get it, the Department of Transportation (DOT) should establish a permanent National Planning and Coordinating Division.

Toward Transport Integration

Surprisingly, many members of the aviation industry agree on the need for governmental control. Intensely competitive aviation leaders see that their ability to come up with a good product and sell it is being sabotaged on the ground. "For the first time in our history," says David S. Lewis, president of McDonnell Douglas, "we are inhibited by a systems problem." What is needed is a systems approach—a hard analysis of every factor bearing on airports, airways, air-traffic control, even the airframe industry. The new division's job would be to define the problems, weigh possible solutions, and pass along specific recommendations to DOT, Congress and business.

Equally urgent is the planning of a national, integrated transportation system. Most of the components exist: highways, railroads, waterways and airports. They have to be tied together, and efficiently coordinated. Big new airports should have runways specifically reserved for planes going to and coming from feeder airports. They should also connect with wide freeways, quick hydroplanes, efficient monorails and commuter railroad lines refurbished with the public weal in mind.