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Air Travel’s Costly Future
June 09, 2010

ANYONE who flies regularly knows that the state of air travel is bleak, so it may be encouraging to hear that the federal government has put together an influential group to suggest ways to fix the industry’s most pressing problems.

The Future of Aviation Advisory Committee held its first meeting in Washington late last month, and while, yes, other blue-ribbon committees have been convened in the past, the Transportation Department has been more aggressive lately about tackling long-ignored challenges.

Among the issues the group is charged with addressing: maintaining passenger safety and a qualified workforce, ensuring the industry’s financial stability while preserving competition and minimizing aviation’s environmental impact.

Made up of a mix of airline and airport executives, aircraft manufacturers, employee representatives, analysts, academics and one consumer advocate, it is a fairly balanced panel, though perhaps passengers got short-changed. (Every other interest group has at least two people on the 19-member committee.)

More notable was the fact that these are people who rarely gather around one table, let alone in public with reporters present, and many are rivals in other settings. As Hubert Horan, an airline consultant who is not on the committee, put it: “These people have been fighting and debating for years, and there are conflicts between all of their interests. What is the process for coming up with some resolution where they all agree on something?”

While the daylong meeting did not answer that question (there will be four more meetings before the end of the year, when the committee is expected to submit its suggestions), the discussion provided a rare peek into how industry insiders see the future of air travel.

Source :- http://travel.nytimes.com