Quick Recap:
The Thanksgiving Meltdown
That Didn’t Happen
The holiday is over. The scenes of mass confusion and huddled masses yearning to enplane flights massively delayed were not to be.
Every year, without fail, the national media goes into hypercycle – predicting chaos at airports. They stupidly – and I do mean stupidly – assume that there will be a crush of passengers causing gridlock in the skies above America.
‘Course, they don’t bother to understand two basics: first, flights today tend to be close to full just about all year long. Thanksgiving is not the huge bump they mislead people into believing. The second is that there are not materially more airliners in the air over the holiday – certainly not to the extent that will choke the ATC system anymore than it is normally.
Gotta remember – a few years ago one network sent a top correspondent to the FAA center in Virginia, so they would be the first to let the public know when and where Thanksgiving flight delays were developing. She sat there like a potted plant all day.
But do take a look at current media stories. It seems that the new focus is on whether the nation’s in for another Southwest meltdown over Christmas. Understanding the facts behind what happened last year and why isn’t necessary.
Anything for a story.