Waiting for Spin

Last year's traffic numbers for Sea-Tac show that several things are happening that the Port of Seattle has always said would not, could not, happen. We are waiting for the spin department to figure out how to deal with the disappointing numbers given to the Port Commission last month.

First, passenger traffic at Sea-Tac has NOT followed an inevitable steady & rapid upward trend. This year's traffic is almost identical to last year's, & both are well below the Year 2000 level.

The reality is that we have had a world-wide recession following the collapse of the dot.com bubble, plus dramatic terrorist activities, plus scares about epidemics in Asia, plus the near-death experience of several major airlines (which some people would say have been scandalously mis-managed for a decade).

Second, the number of flights in & out of Sea-Tac has NOT continued to rise at an inexorable rate. The number of flights is declining.

Airlines flying out of Sea-Tac have realized that making dozens of regional flights a day, each one operating at a loss, is NOT a viable business plan. Sea-Tac planners have always assumed that the airlines would & could operate forever with half-empty planes, & that the airlines' management would never take corrective measures. "Demand management" would never work, the planners said, not even for the sake of making a profit. This would lead to an ever-growing number of passenger flights in & out of the Airport, bringing ever-closer a time when there would be a continuous succession of intolerable arrival delays, justifying a third runway.

Third, no other airport in the region would ever dare to compete with Sea-Tac. All passenger flights would & should be crammed into Sea-Tac. This would increase the likelihood of serious arrival delays, justifying a third runway.

In fact, scheduled flights have resumed out of Boeing Field (partly to escape monopoly-level charges at Sea-Tac), & as our article on Paine Field indicates, opening up Paine to scheduled passenger service is being considered favorably by Snohomish County decision-makers.

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The Port's spending spree at Sea-Tac, especially the third runway plan, assumed that the airlines would prefer to operate at a loss. The Port assumed that the airlines would rather stay at Sea-Tac, paying exorbitant charges to build a part-time, arrival-only runway, rather than go to where fees are more reasonable. But eventually, even in the airline business, common sense prevails, & people want to make a profit. "Eventually" appears to be now.

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