I promised Gady that I would post something about the Super Bowl. (I had assumed that Jan wouldn’t know about the game.) I had though of revisiting how pizza parlors prepare for the game since there has been much in the news about the volume of junk Americans will consume while watching the Giants and Pats. Instead, we’re taking a problems of the rich angle. Apparently, an influx of private jets is expected to cause significant delays at the Indianapolis airport (Super Bowl Jet-Setters Face Tarmac Gridlock, Wall Street Journal, Feb 4).
About 1,100 private planes are expected to ferry in corporate chieftains and other bigwigs to see the New York Giants face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. That’s one of the largest fleets of luxury planes in the Super Bowl’s history, flying into one of the smallest cities to ever host the game.
Combined with additional commercial flights, the FAA expects an overall increase in the Indianapolis area of nearly 3,500 arrivals and departures for the festivities. That’s about eight times the uptick in air traffic for a typical Indianapolis 500 car race.
Here the author discusses the problem:
In a bit of news that I am sure delights local tourism officials, the private jet crush is being attributed to a lack of nice enough hotel rooms. Unable to stay in style, many are choosing to make it a one-day trip as opposed to staying for the weekend.
The rate of take offs is suppose to ramp up 100 per hour on Sunday evening so it will take a long, long time to clear the queue. This also creates some interesting problems for firms providing private jets. Clearly 4 hour on the tarmac undermines one of the main reasons to take a private jet. Obviously, the firms themselves are no more responsible for this than for a blizzard, but they are still taking steps to minimize the discomfort for those waiting.
In these cases is better to take a private jet!