Bush's plan to improve flight woes

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Bush announced a plan Thursday to address what he calls an "epidemic of aviation delays" as the nation gears for one of the year's traditional travel nightmares, the Thanksgiving holiday.

Issuing a statement at the White House, Bush said it is time "to bring order to America's skies."

Among the elements of the plan, restricted military air space above the East Coast will be open to commercial aircraft for a period of nearly five days around the holiday to help ease delays.

Bush said the FAA will impose a holiday moratorium, temporarily suspending all nonessential maintenance projects to free up workers during the height of the travel rush. Also, the FAA will encourage airlines to set aside additional employees and make extra equipment available, including planes.

And the president said the FAA will add features to its Web site, fly.faa.gov, that will allow travelers to check flight delays online and receive updates via cell phone.

The president floated the idea of congestion pricing for air travel, which would include extra fees for flights during peak periods of the year.

Also, Bush said airports could auction take-off and landing rights to highest valued flights.

The president also proposed doubling the maximum amount passengers receive as compensation for being bumped from a flight, to $800 from $400, in cases when a delay is more than two hours.

Airlines will be required to compile better data on flight delays and provide that data to the FAA. Also, airlines will be required to create mandatory contingency plans for chronic delayed flights.

The announcement comes less than a week before what Bush called "a season of dread" for many travelers.

An estimated 38.7 million Americans are expected to travel this Thanksgiving period, with 4.7 million of them traveling by air, according to the American Automobile Association.

The airline industry's on-time performance this year has been its worst since 1995, when the Bureau of Transportation Statistics began keeping track. During the first nine months of the year, 24.3 percent of all domestic flights arrived late and 21.3 percent departed behind schedule, the bureau found.

Flight cancellations reached 2.2 percent, the worst since 2001.

For first nine months of the year, U.S. carriers had a bumping rate of 1.21 per 10,000 passengers, up from 1.04 in the first nine months of last year, according to data from the Department of Transportation.