Airlines predict 38M passengers will fly for Christmas

The group that lobbies for airlines in Washington predicted Thursday that 38 million passengers will take flights over the Christmas holiday period. 


The projection represents a 3 percent increase over the number of passengers who took flights over the 2014 Christmas holiday season, which is defined as the period between Dec. 18 and Jan. 3, according to the Airlines For America (A4A) group.


The predicted growth in air travel comes as lawmakers are beginning to consider a new measure to reauthorize spending for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).


{mosads}A4A Senior Vice President of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Sharon Pinkerton said Thursday that the anticipated increase in holiday air travel shows the need for lawmakers to drastically reform the nation’s flight navigation system in the upcoming FAA bill.

“Airlines have been reinvesting in their product to the tune of $1.3 billion per month to transform the travel experience for our customers, and it is time that the government transforms the Air Traffic Control system, enabling more planes to fly more efficiently and reduce air traffic control delays,” Pinkerton said in a statement. 

“The U.S. airline industry and the more than two million customers we fly every day need a better alternative to today’s outdated, overburdened system,” she continued. 

Lawmakers are shifting focus from the recently resolved highway funding debate to a measure that would reauthorize the FAA’s federal funding, which is currently set to expire in March 2016. 

The measure is expected to contain a controversial proposal to privatize some functions of the nation’s flight navigation system, which has riled air traffic controller unions. 

The FAA has been planning for years to discard radar technology for a satellite-based flight navigation system known as NextGen. 

The agency says the new system will ease congestion in the airspace around busy U.S. airports by streamlining the arrivals and departures of flights. It also argues that navigating flights more efficiently will have environmental benefits because airplanes will use less gas and produce less smog.

The catch is that the NextGen system is expected to cost about $40 billion to complete and an original deadline of a 2020 nationwide implementation is rapidly approaching.

The airline group said Wednesday that the U.S. aviation industry is doing its part to keep up with the anticipated increase in demand for flights. 

“U.S. airlines are well positioned to serve the higher demand by adding flights and seats, deploying new and larger aircraft and boosting staffing,” A4A Vice President and Chief Economist John Heimlich said. “We attribute the increase to the improving economy and the fact that airfare remains affordable, having declined 4.3 percent through the first nine months of the year.”