Comment – Parallel Madness

Probably many of our readers have been through Coolangatta airport at one time or another. It is hardly Australia’s leading airport if you have to wait there for several hours as I did. When I arrived around 6.30 pm there was not a soul in sight, apart from the odd cleaner or baggage clerk. By 9. 00 pm the airport was packed to overflowing making it im­ possible to move through the terminal due to the sheer weight of numbers.

Sure enough, in comes my flight closely followed on the final approach by the “rival” airline. Two 727s, both landing with near full loads and the two aircraft were equally as full on the departing flight. You don’t have to be an Einstein to calculate that that adds up to between seven and eight hundred people at the small Coolangatta terminal (including friends and well wishers, etc) a level of patronage that the old terminal is totally unable to service adequately.

Naturally, as always, the two jets loaded simultaneously, started nearly simultaneously, taxied out together; indeed the only thing they did not do was to take off together as depicted in Pickering’s cartoon.

If ever the sheer stupidity of our two-airline policy and one of its primary hallmarks – the blight of parallel scheduling – was exemplified, it was that one shameful experience at Coolangatta. As an afterthought, it is worth noting that the DOT is to invest four and a half million dollars in building a new terminal complex at Coolangatta to cope with the ever-increasing traffic at that port. True, this airport boasts Australia’s highest passenger growth rate but perhaps that in­vestment would not be necessary, at least in the next decade, if parallel scheduling did not exist.

From the traveller’s point of view, there were only two frequencies out of Coolangatta that day while four individual aircraft served the airport in the sector in question. Would it not be saner for the paying public if one flight had been at say noon, another at 3 pm, another at 5 pm and a late special at 9 pm? Is the slightest amount of competition feared so much by our two domestic carriers that they have to virtually fly in for­mation?

The use of Coolangatta as an example for this article is based upon my own most recent experience. The sad point is that throughout Australia, at every major airport tens of thousands of passengers each day are being subjected to this form of inconvenience. Even terminals as relatively large as Adelaide and Perth become quite congested when aircraft arrive simultaneously clogging arrival and baggage collection areas. The problem will be greatly magnified if and when wide-bodied aircraft commence operation on domestic routes.

I well realise that if every timetable was rescheduled to break the back of this parallel madness then one airline would claim that the other had an unfair advantage, etc, etc. In the past, both airlines have made this very claim so it is dif­ficult to foresee just how they expect the other to be the winner when only two are playing the game! However, if the two carriers sat down with a DOT arbitrator and carefully and sanely worked at each sector till the job was completed then I am certain an overall compromise could be achieved in the long term. Obviously, there would be certain instances of say one airline having a better patronised flight from a certain point to another but surely the other carrier would pick up a similar advantage on another schedule. In the long run, if the hearts and good intentions of the airlines were in the exer­cise, then the problem could be solved once and for all.

All it takes is a little sincere effort on behalf of Ansett and TAA to try and put the travelling public first. And that my friends is like waiting for it to snow at Ayers Rock.