For perspective, 10 flights delayed by 10 minutes costs about $70,000, ALPA noted.
Originally Posted by
roybert
At $68.50 per minute as the average block cost, then a 10 minute block would be $685.00 per aircraft multiply that by 10 aircraft would only equal $ 6850.00.
I'm thinking this isn't the first time that lobbyists haven't gotten their math right while describing things to Congress.
But good catch, it made it past the Congressman, Bloomberg, and myself before someone caught it.
It's also funny that the punchline from the lobbyist was "We are smart enough to solve this problem"! ???
I still think it would be a good idea to have ATC involved. As described in the article, airspace use is 90 seconds for a launch and a short time for the landing (Bloomberg article says 1 minute, but is that the correct number). Why tie things up longer than they need to be?