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Modernizing our airports and air traffic systems certainly are important and necessary steps to chip away at our current travel crisis. However, there is a limit as to how many runways we can build and how many airplanes we can safely send up to the sky.

There is also an environmental concern or two. Jet fuel is expensive and it contributes to the carbon emissions that scientists say are causing our planet to warm up, perhaps irreversibly. Fortunately some important work is being done to replace petroleum jet fuel with vegetable-based fuel, though how quickly conversions will take place remains an open question.

The airlines, as usual, are victims of their own success. Air fares are relatively low, so people take advantage of them to go places. Naturally.

But though I read here that flights have been added, I actually believe it is quite the contrary. Consolidation between airlines and a trend to reduce flights after 9/11 have contributed to fuller flights. I hardly travel anymore in aircraft that have more than a handful of seats empty. More often than not, every last seat is occupied. And I definitely sense that fewer flight options exist than there were in the mid 1990s, when I did a fair bit of travel. My impressions may be off, but I don't believe there are more net flights today.

A lot of the delays today are caused by sheer incompetence at the airlines and airports. In addition, the air traffic control system is dangerously understaffed, and that is nothing new. Controllers have been sounding the alarm for some time now, but as is typical of our current administration, it has fallen on deaf ears. Unfortunately, this administration only seems to react when a catastrophe happens, only to bungle things and make matters worse.

I avoid air travel these days if I can do it by car. Of course, that is a poor solution. Highways are hopelessly clogged at certain times of the day, and in the Northeast corridor, where I live, there is no room to expand the infrastructure.

Our failure to invest in an efficient railway system years ago has a lot to do with our current crisis. In Europe and Japan rail travel is a viable, even attractive, option. I have traveled from London to Paris and back on a train, and it was a very pleasant experience. Had I had to go to airports, a whole lot of time would have been wasted.

Unfortunately, our air travel crisis is just one more problem that our government seems impotent to solve. There are so many issues that need to be handled much like Roosevelt handled the crises of his day that it would be hard to figure out where to start if the political will and can-do attitude of years gone by still existed. Between health care, education, climate changes, transportation and myriad other crises, our country seems unable to find a workable solution for anything anymore. This is what happens when at least half of the nation's public funds end up in the military complex.

Learn more about this author, Pedro Pereira.
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