Tag: FAA

OM in the News: Pilots and the Airline Capacity Problem

Airlines have complained about a shortage of pilots for several years, but they made it worse during the pandemic by encouraging pilots to take early retirement when air travel collapsed in 2020. About 10,000 pilots have left the field since then, reports the Telegraph Herald (Feb. 10. 2023).

Southwest Airlines has more than 700 planes but parks 40 to 45 of them each day because it lacks pilots to fly them. That amounts to more than 200 flights a day or 8% of Southwest’s flying.

United Airlines’ CEO said the lack of pilots will continue to prevent airlines from expanding as much as they would like to take advantage of strong travel demand. “Pilots are and will remain a significant constraint on capacity,” he said.

The pilot shortage is most severe at smaller carriers that don’t pay as well and serve as stepping stones to the big airlines. Many of them operate regional flights under the names of American Eagle, United Express and Delta Connection. Those carriers have parked more than 400 planes for lack of pilots, and air service is collapsing as a result. Regional airlines are short by 8,000 pilots and a dozen smaller cities have lost all air service — about 50 more have lost half or more of their flights — despite the broad rise in travel demand. (The median annual pay for U.S. airline pilots last year topped $200,000 by the way).

If a pilot calls in sick, often there is no one immediately available to replace him or her, and that is leaving tens of thousands of travelers stranded. The lack of pilots contributed to a 52% increase in flight cancellations last year compared with 2021.

The shortage started even before the pandemic. Over the past decade or two, industry officials warned it was coming as travel boomed and thousands of U.S. pilots approached mandatory retirement age. The Federal Aviation Administration raised that age from 60 to 65 in 2007, which just pushed the problem off for a few years.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Supplement 7 (Capacity and Constraint Management) provides what tips for when demand exceeds capacity?
  2. What is the solution for regional carriers? For the major carriers?

OM in the News: Amazon Gets U.S. Approval for Drone Fleet

Amazon’s latest drone is designed to carry packages weighing 5 pounds and fly a round-trip distance of 15 miles.

Amazon just received federal approval to establish a fleet of drones and will begin limited tests of package deliveries to customers in the U.S., reports The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 1, 2020).

The approval from the FAA is a milestone in Amazon’s push to use unmanned aircraft to deliver packages to global consumers. The company also has testing sites in Canada, Austria, and the U.K.

Routine drone deliveries to U.S. consumers are still years away, partly because the FAA needs to complete rules for remote identification of more than 480,000 drones currently registered for commercial operations, and issue separate rules permitting drones to fly regularly over populated areas. Amazon has now joined UPS and Wing (a unit of Google) in gaining approval to operate unmanned air fleets in the U.S. for tests involving customer deliveries. Amazon has sought regulatory approval for a broader range of drones and over a larger geographic area than its competitors.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made the ambitious prediction in 2013 that drone-delivered packages would arrive at the doors of customers in 5 years. Although the company completed its first test flight in England in 2016, the process has taken longer than Amazon expected.

Wing last year began to deliver food and other supplies to customers in Virginia. The company has been conducting tests in partnership with Walgreens and FedEx. UPS, which received FAA approval to set up an airline fleet last year, has been using its drones to carry medical supplies at a hospital network in Raleigh, N.C. Other companies such as Uber Technologies have also conducted limited drone-delivery tests in the U.S.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this delivery approach?
  2. Why does Amazon wish to enhance its shipping strategy?

OM in the News: Sleeping Air Traffic Controllers

In Chapter 15 (Short-Term Scheduling), we discuss what Three Mile Island and Chernobyl’s nuclear power plants had in common: drowsy “graveyard shift” workers trying to stay awake amid constantly changing work schedules. The same, of course, is true for pilots who often fall asleep in the cockpit on long hauls (like Atlanta-to-Mumbai’s 18-hour flight), just as it is for truck drivers, assembly line workers, and virtually anyone who is a sleep-deprived shift worker. Scheduling is a major problem in all firms with 24/7 shifts.

So when The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (April 14,2011) both reported that the lone air traffic controller at Reno Tahoe  Airport  fell asleep on the job early yesterday (and didn’t respond to pilot calls for 16 min.), it’s hard to be shocked. (Of course, we hope the situation is rectified before the POMS Meeting in Reno in a few weeks).

It was the 5th time in the past 3 weeks in which controllers were found to be sleeping. The most memorable one was at Washington’s Reagan National Airport on March 23rd, at midnight, forcing pilots of 2 passenger jets to land on their own. The recent incidents are just “the tip of the iceberg”, says a Boeing safety exec.

 “We absolutely cannot and will not tolerate sleeping on the job”, says the FAA administrator. The solution:  a 2nd employee will be added to the late shift at every airport that operates overnight. But inconsistent work schedules contribute to fatigue, and the FAA is for the 1st time, trying to fashion a program to allow controllers to take naps.

Discussion questions:

1. Have any of your students worked late shifts and what is their opinion of the problem/solution?

2. How do pilots  and airlines handle the fatigue factor?