Flights through, to and from Florida are being delayed by a significant amount, just in time for the summer travel season, thanks to a dramatic increase in private jet flights, space launches and military flights. The delays have gotten so bad that Federal Aviation Administration officials in the Sunshine State met this week to figure out what to do about the growing traffic jams.
FAA uses 22 Air Traffic Control Centers for handling complex mind-shaping task of interval routing 45,000 daily flights over US airspace. The agency recorded a 7% drop in flight numbers nationwide, with the exception of the Jacksonville, Florida branch, which actually increased by 5%.
Some service providers are canceling flights because of traffic issues, despite needing to offset revenue after COVID-19 lockdown dampens demand, according to Bloomberg:
The facility reported 8,935 delays lasting more than 543,000 minutes – the cumulative equivalent of more than a year – in March alone. That’s the third-highest number of delays at any FAA Center since 2017 and the most since the start of the pandemic, according to FAA data. Delays have increased in the region since October.
Chartering and private flights are driving most of the increase in flights. At Palm Beach International Airport, charter and private flights in March rose 65% to 12,239, compared with 7,412 in 2019.
Peter Maestrales, chief executive officer of charter brokerage Airstream Jets, said private jet traffic has increased during the pandemic as consumers avoid packaged commercial jets.
“Palm Beach is usually a pretty quiet airport,” says Maestrales. “It’s unbelievable now the departure delays, and the number of planes parked on the runways out there.”
But it’s not just the wealthy with private jets who are slowing down everyone else’s travel. Cape Canaveral is once again a happening point; The 17 launches so far in 2022 are considered the busiest in decades. Bad weather, like a hurricane that canceled more than 10,000 flights last month, and military exercises have also forced controllers to close large swathes of Florida’s airspace for extended periods of time.
To try and combat commercial flight delays, the FAA is taking a page from New York’s books to address sky congestion, as well as promising more staff at its Jacksonville branch., low but still within the guidelines. It can take years to fully train new controllers, this should be as close to the Clan Navigator as you can get out. Sand dunes.
