Do you belong to or read AVWEB? A couple of excellent articles written on this. Al ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alireza Alivandivafa" <DEmocrat2n@xxxxxxx> To: <AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:03 AM Subject: Re: San Diego fire > In a message dated 10/29/2003 5:46:04 AM Pacific Standard Time, > exatc@xxxxxxxxxx writes: > > << Is the issue that weather restriction reduced the traffic into and out of > these airports or the fact that the TRACON has been evacuated? If it had > not been evacuated would there still be restrictions. ANd yes there was a > vocal element that felt the same as you about ACF's versus the smaller > facilities. But is the combined facility more efficient and less expensive > to operate? >> > > I think that this is one case where spending a bit (not much) more is worth > it. The main factor was that the TRACON was evacuated. Since LA Center took > nearly all of the traffic, it had to operate under the more strict, center > rules (more separation, more visibility, and in a facility with not enough > controlers to do both jobs at once. The smoke may have caused some delays, but if > SoCal was kept open, or there were more redundencies, this would be minimal >