The San Juan Daily Star. Tuesday, November 24, 2015

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2 Mainland 12 Stuck Waiting: Ground Delays at US Airports on the Rise On a recent morning, Delta Air Lines Flight 435 pushed back early from the gate at New York s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Passengers watched the safety video and settled in for a six-hour trip. Then they waited. And waited. Still within sight of the gate, their jet sat motionless due to airport congestion. It wasn t until 30 minutes after passengers buckled in that they were finally in the sky. It s a scene playing out across the country. According to an Associated Press analysis, airplanes spent 23 minutes and 32 seconds, on average, taxiing between gates and runways during the first nine months of the year. That s the longest it has been since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started tracking taxi times in 1995 and a 50-second increase over last year s average. For passengers, the rising delays add to the frustrations of travel. A plane might land early but then sit waiting for a gate to open up. Flights are still arriving on time but only because airlines have increased scheduled flying times to account for the added taxi times. The Delta flight made it to the gate in San Francisco 10 minutes ahead of schedule despite the takeoff delays. The creep in taxi times is attributed to a series of changes: massive runway construction projects at some of the nation s busiest airports; schedule changes that increase the number of flights at peak hours; and new, distant runways that relieve congestion but require more time to reach. It s death by a thousand cuts, says Vikram Krishnan, a partner in the aviation practice of consultancy Oliver Wyman. The problems on the ground are costing airlines dearly. Two, three, four, five minutes in a fleet of 500 planes a day is significant amounts of money, says aviation consultant Mike Boyd. That translates into hundreds of millions of dollars extra in operating costs so far this year, according to AP calculations factoring in average operating costs including pilot and flight attendant salaries. Airlines say the longer taxi times are baked into schedules, so planes generally still arrive on time. So far this year, 79 percent of flights have been at the gate within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, the best performance since Passengers might be spending more time on planes, but airlines are better managing their expectations by increasing scheduled times. That masks some of the problems, like taxi delays. For instance, ten years ago the average scheduled time from gate to gate between Chicago and San Francisco was 4 hours and 32 minutes. Today, flights are scheduled for an extra 11 minutes, according to PlaneStats.com even though airports in the two cities are the same 1,846 miles apart. All it takes are a few problems at some of the country s busiest airports to drive up the national taxi time average. The top offender in the past year was Chicago s O Hare International Airport. Of all the additional taxi time minutes in the nation, one of out of five extra minutes can be traced back to delays at O Hare. Planes in Chicago this year spent an average of 1 minute and 18 seconds extra navigating the taxiways. And taxi times are up 3 minutes and 24 seconds from five years ago, a 20-percent increase. Those delays add up considering that O Hare had 227,358 flights during the first nine months of this year. Most of the problems at O Hare stem from a construction project that is reconfiguring taxiways and runways. The longterm goal is to reduce congestion but delays racked up during the construction. A new runway did just open, but further away from the airport s terminals. Longer trips from that runway are not yet reflected in government data. In an to the AP, O Hare officials note that taxi times will fluctuate as construction phases are started or finished and that the work is helping to reduce delays in the sky around the airport. Delays have also been climbing at the two main airports in Dallas, but for different reasons. At Dallas Love Field, taxi times are up two minutes, or 13-percent, so far this year. That s the highest percent gain of any major airport. Home to Southwest Airlines, Love Field saw the number of scheduled flights during the first nine months of this year spike 41 percent to 47,438 after the repeal of a federal law restricting most longdistance flights from that airport. Terry L. Mitchell, the airport s assistant director for operations, says the increase in flights, construction projects and the use of a further runway to reduce noise concerns of neighbors all led to the run up in taxi times. Now that construction is complete and the airport at capacity, he expects no further growth in taxi times. Across town at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, taxi times climbed two and a half minutes, or 11.7 percent. In this case, the increase was due to new scheduling procedures by American Airlines, which carries 82 percent of the passengers at the airport. American groups together large numbers of flights in Dallas and its other hubs to allow passengers easy connections. In March, the airline reconfigured its schedule so more flights arrive and depart in a narrower band of time. That meant shorter layovers in the airport, more connection options for passengers and more revenue opportunities for the airline. However, the adjustments also extended taxi times. American accounted for those increases in its schedule. When they try to cram as many flights as possible into their hubbing complexes, says airline consultant Paul Sterbenz, they create logjams. Big Premium Increases Foreseen for Medicare Drug Plan Rising drug costs are starting to hit Medicare s popular prescription program, and experts say many seniors are looking at higher premiums as time runs out on this year s open enrollment season. Beneficiaries have until Dec. 7 to see if there s a lower-cost plan that will cover their medications in A study by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation finds that the average premium for a stand-alone Medicare drug plan will jump by 13 percent from 2015 to After years of stable premiums, consumer advocates say for this sign-up season, it likely will pay to shop around. Government spending on the program also has risen significantly, driven by pricey new drugs for a range of conditions. One example: Medicare estimates that hepatitis C drugs are costing $9.2 billion this year.

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4 Mainland 14 On Climate Science, Most GOP Candidates Fail When it comes to climate science, two of the three Democratic presidential candidates are A students, while most of the Republican contenders are flunking, according to a panel of scientists who reviewed candidates comments. At the request of The Associated Press, eight climate and biological scientists graded for scientific accuracy what a dozen top candidates said in debates, interviews and tweets, using a 0 to 100 scale. To try to eliminate possible bias, the candidates comments were stripped of names and given randomly generated numbers, so the professors would not know who made each statement they were grading. Also, the scientists who did the grading were chosen by professional scientific societies. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had the highest average score at 94. Three scientists did not assign former Maryland Gov. Martin O Malley a score, saying his statements mostly were about policy, which they could not grade, instead of checkable science. Two used similar reasoning to skip grading New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and one did the same for businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had the lowest score, an average of 6. All eight put Cruz at the bottom of the class. This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner, Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor, wrote of Cruz s statements. That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with an 87, had the lowest score among the Democrats, dinged for an exaggeration when he said global warming could make Earth uninhabitable. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush scored the highest among Republicans, 64, but one grader gave him a perfect 100. Bush was the only Republican candidate who got a passing grade on climate in the exercise. Below Clinton s 94 were O Malley with 91; Sanders, 87; Bush, 64; Christie, 54; Ohio Gov. John Kasich, 47; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, 38; Fiorina, 28; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 21; businessman Donald Trump, 15; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, 13; and Cruz with 6. For the Republicans, climate change came up more in interviews than in their four debates. But Rubio did confront the issue in the Sept. 16 debate in a way that earned him bad grades from some scientists. We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing, to change our climate, to change our weather, because America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely, Rubio said. But America is not a planet. And we are not even the largest carbon producer anymore. China is. And they re drilling a hole and digging anywhere in the world that they can get ahold of. Scientists dispute Rubio s argument that because China is now the top emitter, the U.S. can do little to change the future climate. The U.S. spews about 17 percent of the world s carbon dioxide emissions, so big cuts here would still make a big difference globally, said geochemist Louisa Bradtmiller at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rubio s inference that China is not doing much about global warming is out of date. The Chinese are implementing a cap-and-trade system in their country to reduce emissions, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. At an August event In California s Orange County, Cruz told an interviewer, If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there s been zero warming.... The satellite says it ain t happening. Florida State University s James Elsner said ground data show every decade has been warmer than the last since the middle of the 20th century and satellite data-based observations show continued warming over the past several decades. In fact, federal ground-based data, which scientists said is more reliable than satellites, show that 15 of the 17 years after 1997 have been warmer than 1997 and 2015 is on track to top 2014 as the warmest year on record. Scientists singled out Sanders for overstatement in the first Democratic presidential debate. The scientific community is telling us that if we do not address the global crisis of climate change, transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy, the planet that we re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable, Sanders said. Dessler said, I would not say that the planet will become uninhabitable. Regardless of what we do, some humans will survive. Harvard s Jim McCarthy also called the comment an overstatement, as did other scientists when Sanders said it. Recent research on the worst heat projections in the hottest area, the Persian Gulf, finds that toward the end of the century there will be a few days each decade or so when humans cannot survive outside, but can live with air conditioning indoors. Trump brought out some of the more colorful and terse critiques. It could be warming and it s going to start to cool at some point, Trump said in a September radio interview. And you know in the 1920s people talked about global cooling. I don t know if you know that or not. They thought the Earth was cooling. Now it s global warming. Actually, we ve had times where the weather wasn t working out so they changed it to extreme weather and they have all different names, you know, so that it fits the bill. McCarthy, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called Trump s comments nonsense, while Emmanuel Vincent, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, said, the candidate does not appear to have any commitment to accuracy. The eight scientists are Mann, Dessler, Elsner, McCarthy, Bradtmiller, Vincent, William Easterling at Pennsylvania State University and Matthew Huber at the University of New Hampshire.

5 15 Mainland In First National TV Ad, Rubio Talks of Terror Threat Marco Rubio By SERGIO BUSTOS Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio unveils his first national television campaign ad this week, focusing on the terror threat of the Islamic State group. The Florida senator appears by himself in the ad and says there is no middle ground in America s fight against IS because these are radical terrorists who want to kill us. He says it is a civilizational struggle and that there can be no arrangement or negotiation with IS, either they win or we do. The Rubio campaign said in a statement on Sunday that the 30-second ad will air nationwide, beginning today. Rubio is in Iowa on a five-day campaign visit. The latest poll in the early caucus state shows him trailing front-runner Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Dr. Ben Carson. Donald Trump Won t Rule Out an Independent Campaign, Even After Pledging Not To Run Donald Trump s waterfall of regurgitated chatter continued on Sunday, with quips about Muslim databases, 9/11, and bringing back water-boarding. And over all of it, he also suggested that he would run for president as independent if he doesn t get the Republican nod. When pressed by ABC s George Stephanopoulos on This Week, the Republican presidential candidate and former reality TV star said he plans to see what happens, and couldn t rule out running as an independent. I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly. If I m treated fairly, I m fine. In an infamous moment during a debate in August, Trump signaled that he d be willing to go against Republicans if not nominated. If he did run as an independent candidate, Trump would be going back on a pledge he signed in September vowing not to do exactly that. Trump s interview on Sunday quickly spiraled into a mess of xenophobia and false accusations. He doubled down on his plans to create a database of Muslim citizens in the U.S., said he d bring back water-boarding, and also cited a false statistic that most Syrian refugees are young men. He also took the opportunity to dredge up a widely debunked rumor that people in New Jersey cheered as the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, He said: Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of Donald Trump people were cheering. So something s going on. We ve got to find out what it is. Even when Stephanopoulos countered that police say that the incident never happened, Trump denied it.