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FAA Software Aims to Make Flights Easier
coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week expanded a program that it says will reduce flight delays during the peak summer season. The Airspace Flow Program gives airlines the option of either accepting delays for flights scheduled to fly through storms or flying longer routes to maneuver around them. The agency said that it rolled out a new software program that ensures airports impacted by bad weather receive the maximum number of flights that can safely fly to them."
they aren't flying through storms, they fly AROUND storms- they aren't stupid. their choices increase from just straight up delays to either flying around a storm or a delay [they didn't do this already?] it is a good improvement- the delay could be a lot less and if it works well things will get better.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Is flying through storms all that good of an idea? Really?
"Flying through storms" isn't an accurate description - it's what happens when the mainstream press reports on a technical issue.
Nobody flies through thunderstorms. At least knowingly and on purpose. You fly between them (or over them if you're not stuck in a A320.)
Delays happen in the summer because the traffic trying to pass an area or line of thunderstorms enroute has to squeeze into the areas between cells. Controllers have to maintain a specified spacing between aircraft, so when you have less space for traffic, you have to accept less traffic.
In the past, the FAA would hold aircraft on the ground to keep traffic at a rate the affected area could handle. As I read the summary, it looks like they're going to give airlines the option sitting it out on the ground (rate limiting) or of rerouting well outside of the affected area - effectively a choice between a departure delay or a longer route with ahe increased fuel burn.
Choice is good.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Actually, you're probably correct.
The outbound flights (at the airport with bad weather),
will be the ones that are delayed, instead of other
flights whose destination is the airport with the bad
weather being delayed.
Ever sit on the plane at the gate for hours
because of bad weather at your destination?
Hot, no drinks, no food, no information, and
you can't go back inside the terminal.
With this plan, it will be the other way around,
because it will mess up less airports.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
http://www.fcw.com/article81246
I don't fly that often, but my dad is a retired airline pilot so I get to see the industry from a different angle..
Three years ago my family traveled to Ft. Bragg to see my brother off to the Iraq war (he's fine after serving two tours - he's now in the Army Reserve). On the way out, my mom (like my dad and brother, a military veteran) was stopped by the TSA because she set off the metal detector. She explained to the officer that she had a metal valve in her heart after a recent surgery. The officer told my mom that regulations required a pat-down search in that circumstance. My mom offered to show the officer the scar in private to avoid a strange person touching the still-healing scar, but the officer was adamant that the rules be followed. Add to this the fact that the airport is a two-hour drive and the flight left at 6AM and you get a fairly stressful situation.
We spent a few days with my brother before he left for war, and on the way back my mom tried to be pro-active by telling the officer in Raleigh about the artificial heart-valve before she went through the metal detector. This time the woman doing the searching had a really nasty attitude (especially for 4:30 in the morning) and not only patted down my mother with her dirty gloves but actually made my 57 year-old mother take off her shirt not in a separate room but behind s flimsy screen adjacent to the security checkpoint.
Yeah, "petty tyrants" sounds about right to me. Underpaid and overworked, too.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
Please turn in your geek card on the way out.
Anybody that has passed intro stats at any level knows (or should know) that effect size and statistical significance are two completely separate measures. You can have a 2% improvement that is highly significant or you could have a 20% improvement that isn't - without the actual data you cannot know.
Now, the question you are trying to ask is if, in medical terms, a 9% improvement is clinically meaningful. If I can show a new drug lowers blood pressure by 2mm hg every single time, the improvement will be statistically significant, but not in any way useful. Just yesterday I was running a hierarchical regression where the final predictor only improved the fit of the model by 3.3%, but the change in fit was certainly significant (p=.004)
If you want to use the word significant as a synonym for meaningful that's ok I guess (I wouldn't). But please don't add the word "statistically" to the phrase in an attempt to make yourself sound smarter. It just makes communicating statistics to the public that much harder for those of us that actually do it for a living.