Elizabeth "Betsy" E. Bailey (1939-2022)

 Betsey Bailey, an economist of many parts, has passed away.

I knew of her both as an academic dean at CMU and as a proponent of airline deregulation, in theory and practice.  The theory had to do with the idea that even markets with big players who had lots of market share might be perfectly competitive (and hence not need lots of regulation) if they were "contestable," i.e. if new entrants could enter the market at low cost if they saw profitable opportunities.  The idea was that the airline market would keep prices low to ward off new entrants, or entry by competitors into profitable routes.  Her stint on the Civil Aviation Board led to much reduced regulation of commercial airlines, after which airlines adopted the 'hub and spoke' patterns we see today. (When they were regulated, airline routes looked more like railroads, e.g. some had northern routes, some southern...)

Here's the Washington Post obituary:

Elizabeth Bailey, pathbreaker for women in economics, dies at 83. She was the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Princeton and helped deregulate airlines as the first woman on the Civil Aeronautics Board  By Emily Langer

"Dr. Bailey, 83, who died Aug. 19 at her home in Reston, Va., was widely credited with opening opportunities for women in her field.

"In 1972, she became the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Princeton University. Five years later, President Jimmy Carter appointed her the first female member of the Civil Aeronautics Board, where she helped provide the intellectual framework for the deregulation of the airline industry.

...

"Later, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Dr. Bailey became the first woman to serve as dean of a Top 10 graduate business school."

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See 

Morrison, Steven A., Clifford Winston, Elizabeth E. Bailey, and Alfred E. Kahn. "Enhancing the performance of the deregulated air transportation system." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Microeconomics 1989 (1989): 61-123.

Bailey, Elizabeth E., David R. Graham, and Daniel P. Kaplan. Deregulating the airlines. Vol. 10. MIT press, 1985.

Bailey, Elizabeth E., and William J. Baumol. "Deregulation and the theory of contestable markets." Yale J. on Reg. 1 (1983): 111.

Transplant transport: direct commercial flights boost deceased donor transplants, by Wang, Zheng, and Dai

 Alex Chan draws my attention to this paper on airline transport of kidneys for transplant:

Does Transportation Mean Transplantation? Impact of New Airline Routes on Sharing of Cadaveric Kidneys

38 Pages Posted: 6 May 2020

Guihua Wang

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management

Ronghuo Zheng

University of Texas at Austin - McCombs School of Business

Tinglong Dai

Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School

 

Abstract

Nearly 5,000 patients die every year while waiting for kidney transplants, and an estimated 18% of procured kidneys are discarded. Such a polarized co-existence of dire scarcity and massive wastefulness has been mainly driven by insufficient pooling of cadaveric kidneys across geographic regions. Although numerous policy initiatives are aimed at broadening organ pooling, they rarely account for a key friction — efficient airline transportation, ideally direct flights, is necessary for long-distance sharing due to the time-sensitive nature of kidney transplantation. Conceivably, transplant centers may be reluctant to accept kidney offers from far-off locations without direct flights. In this paper, we estimate the effect of the introduction of new airline routes on broader kidney sharing. By merging the U.S. airline transportation and kidney transplantation datasets, we create a unique sample tracking (1) the evolution of airline routes connecting all the U.S. airports and (2) kidney transplants between donors and recipients connected by these airports. We estimate the introduction of a new airline route increases the number of shared kidneys by 7.3%. We also find a net increase in the total number of kidney transplants with the introduction of new routes. Notably, the post-transplant survival rate remains largely unchanged, though average travel distance increases after the introduction of new airline routes. Our results are robust to alternative empirical specifications and have important implications for improving access to the U.S. organ transplantation system.

Deceased donor organs, lost to transplantation due to problems in transportation

NBC News has the story:

Lost luggage: How lifesaving organs for transplant go missing in transit
Scores of organs — mostly kidneys — are trashed each year and many more become critically delayed while being shipped on commercial airliners.
Feb. 8, 2020, By JoNel Aleccia

" a new analysis of transplant data finds that a startling number of lifesaving organs are lost or delayed while being shipped on commercial flights, the delays often rendering them unusable.
...
"Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 170 organs could not be transplanted and almost 370 endured “near misses,” with delays of two hours or more, after transportation problems, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The media organizations reviewed data from more than 8,800 organ and tissue shipments collected voluntarily and shared upon request by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, the nonprofit government contractor that oversees the nation’s transplant system. Twenty-two additional organs classified as transportation “failures” were ultimately able to be transplanted elsewhere.

"Surgeons themselves often go to hospitals to collect and transport hearts, which survive only four to six hours out of the body. But kidneys and pancreases — which have longer shelf lives — often travel commercial, as cargo. As such, they can end up missing connecting flights or delayed like lost luggage. Worse still, they are typically tracked with a primitive system of phone calls and paper manifests, with no GPS or other electronic tracking required.

"Transplant surgeons around the country, irate and distressed, told KHN that they have lost the chance to transplant otherwise usable kidneys because of logistics.

...

"One contributing factor is the lack of a national system to transfer organs from one region to another because they match a distant patient in need.

"Instead, the U.S. relies on a patchwork of 58 nonprofit organizations called organ procurement organizations, or OPOs, to collect the organs from hospitals and package them. Teams from the OPOs monitor surgeries to remove organs from donors and then make sure the organs are properly boxed and labeled for shipping and delivery.

"From there, however, the OPOs often rely on commercial couriers and airlines, which are not formally held accountable for any ensuing problems."

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And here's a related podcast at Reveal news: Lost in Transplantation


HT: Frank McCormick 

Drone delivery of a kidney for transplant

Here's the press release from the University of Maryland,
Pioneering Breakthrough: University of Maryland's Schools of Medicine and Engineering First to Use Unmanned Aircraft to Successfully Deliver Kidney for Transplant at University of Maryland Medical Center

"BALTIMORE and COLLEGE PARK, MD— In a first-ever advancement in human medicine and aviation technology, a University of Maryland unmanned aircraft has delivered a donor kidney to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center for successful transplantation into a patient with kidney failure.
...
"Among the many technological firsts of this effort include: a specially designed, high-tech apparatus for maintaining and monitoring a viable human organ; a custom-built UAS with eight rotors and multiple powertrains to ensure consistently reliable performance, even in the case of a possible component failure; the use of a wireless mesh network to control the UAS, monitor aircraft status, and provide communications for the ground crew at multiple locations; and aircraft operating systems that combined best practices from both UAS and organ transport standards.

“We had to create a new system that was still within the regulatory structure of the FAA, but also capable of carrying the additional weight of the organ, cameras, and organ tracking, communications, and safety systems over an urban, densely populated area—for a longer distance and with more endurance,” said Matthew Scassero, MPA, director of UMD’s UAS Test Site, part of A. James Clark School of Engineering. "

HT: Alex Chan

Mishaps while flying transplant organs

This news story stopped with the plane, and doesn't say what happened to the organ...
No one hurt when jet scheduled to pick up donor organ slides off runway in Wheeling

Congestion in airports--landing at Logan

One of the things that makes airports congested is the safety margin needed between planes as they takeoff and land. So I was a little surprised when, walking along Boston harbor, I saw planes landing simultaneously on parallel runways at Logan airport. Here's a picture.

Apparently it's been going on for a long time, quite safely. Ben Edelman points me to the DRAFT MANUAL ON SIMULTANEOUS OPERATIONS ON PARALLEL OR NEAR-PARALLEL INSTRUMENT RUNWAYS (SOIR)

And Jerry Green gives the rules for Logan, with the aid of this airport diagram:

(http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/1107/00058AD.PDF )

Jerry writes:
"There are a couple of combinations of runways that can be used simultaneously for landing.  Ideally Logan likes to have three active runways: one will be for landing only, one for departure only and the other one can do both, depending on the wind and the types of aircraft involved.

You will need to look at the attached airport diagram to make sense of what I will say below.

The only combination at Logan where both landing runways are instrument runways (i.e. conducting instrument approaches, possibly in bad weather) is where they land on 27 and 22L and depart on 22R. In this case the aircraft cleared to land on 22L is told to “hold short” of 27, and that means that they are not allowed past the point marked LASHO (Land and Hold Short Operations) on 22L. Usually the aircraft sent to 22L are turbo props, small private jets or smaller things (like Cape Air). They can easily make the LASHO restriction.  The larger jets get to use all of 27.

In the other combinations that allow two landing runways one of them is conducting visual approaches, and in most cases  that runway does not even have the equipment to conduct instrument approaches.  These are:

Land on 4R and4L. This is the picture you have sent (I can see that from the fact that they are both over the harbor) – 4R is an instrument runway but 4L is a visual runway.  In this configuration runway 9 is used for departures only (it is not an instrument runway and no one ever lands on it because their approach would come very close to hitting the State Street Bank building downtown).  This is the most common three runway configuration since Logan frequently has a sea breeze from the East in the summer, favorable for this set up.

Another one is landing on 27 and 32, and departing on 33L.  Here 27 is an instrument runway and 32 is a visual runway. Another factor in this set up is that the final approaches for 32 and 33L would cross each other about 5 miles out, so even though they are almost parallel they can’t both be landing runways at the same time.  But as 27 and 32 to do not intersect, they can be used for landing at the same time.  This is a common set up when there is a strong Northwest wind.

That’s about it for simultaneous landing operations with three runways in use.  There are quite a number of two runway configurations with intersecting runways which can be used when things are not as busy. One of these is landing on 15R and departing on 9, used frequently on bad weather days with strong winds from the Southeast. This is a particularly difficult one for the controllers as they don’t like to use the LAHSO restriction on 15R, holding short of 9, when the weather is bad.  Pilots add a little extra speed in gusty winds which makes the aircraft take a longer landing rollout.  They have to be sure they can make the LASHO restriction.  If a pilot is asked to do LAHSO and he has any doubt about it, then he is supposed to say that he is “unable” and the controller will delete the restriction and not let the other aircraft depart on runway 9 until the landing aircraft has stopped or exited onto a taxiway. That slows things down and reduces the airport’s capacity.

All this makes Logan an interesting case of “aircraft choreography”.  

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Update: I feel like a photographer.  After a delay of only eight years (around the time it takes a paper to be published in an Economics journal), the photograph I took at the top of this post has been republished in Milton at https://www.miltonscene.com/2019/08/milton-massport-representative-discusses-airplane-traffic-priorities/, appropriately cited by a caption saying "This image shows two planes landing in parallel on runways 4L and 4R, which both fly over Milton. The photo was taken by Professor Alvin Roth, the Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard and winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics."

Auctions of airport slots: dead in the water, again.

The latest news on plans to auction off takeoff and landing slots at NY's LaGuardia airport: DOT scraps auction plan for NYC airports .

NYC's airports are the most congested in the nation, but plans for an auction have been politically troubled from the start (see some of my related earlier posts). What is the nature of the politics? Perhaps some of the airlines that fly in and out of NYC airports actually like the congestion, since it keeps out new competition by preventing airlines that don't presently have any slots from getting any.

Freakonomics has a non-auction suggestion for relieving the congestion: Shut Down LaGuardia.

Auctions of airport takeoff and landing slots--maybe not so soon after all

Auctions of slots at NYC airports delayed yet again: Court Order Delays Auction of Landing Slots at Airports

"A court order on Monday delayed a Bush administration plan to auction landing slots at the three major airports in the New York region, pushing the proposal into the Obama administration, where it may die.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted a stay on Monday, in a case brought by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, pending arguments on whether the Federal Aviation Administration has the legal authority to auction the slots. The first auction was scheduled for Jan. 12, eight days before the Bush administration ends. "

Who would have thought that such a good idea would run into so much trouble...

HT to Scott Kominer

Auctions of airport takeoff and landing slots--maybe coming soon

U.S. to Auction Slots Soon at New York City Airports reports the Times.

"The auction is scheduled for next Friday, with results announced soon afterward; the changes are to take effect at La Guardia in March and at Kennedy and Newark in October.
If the auction is not overturned by the courts or Congress — and either seems possible — it could be the last significant transportation action of the Bush administration, which leaves on Jan. 20.
What is being auctioned is the right to land, or take off, within a half-hour period for 10 years. The reserve price — below which the slot will not be sold — is $10,000 for peak hours and $100 for off-peak, but the president of the auction company, Lawrence M. Ausubel of Power Auctions, said that those numbers were likely to be “well exceeded.”
Mr. Ausubel said he did not know of any prior auction of airport slots."

HT to Scott Kominer

Auctions for airline takeoff and landing slots, continued

Feds Go Forward With NYC Airport Experiment

Plans for slot auctions at LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark continue, but it sounds like the fight is far from over.

"Federal transportation officials say much of the reason for nationwide flight delays is that airlines have tried to cram too many planes -- and too many small planes -- onto New York runways, and the overscheduling just isn't realistic.
To fix that, they have capped the number of flights coming into or out of those airports, and now intend to auction off a fraction of those coveted slots to airline bidders. An auction, they say, will use market forces of supply and demand to make the flight schedule more efficient."
...
" Critics of the plan are furious.
''It is simply shocking that the DOT is unabashedly continuing this ideological battle despite the staunch opposition from the entire aviation community and the independent finding that the DOT lacks the power under the law to implement the proposal in the first place,'' Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement."

Delay banking for air traffic

NASA proposes Delay banking for managing air traffic. The idea is that an airline whose flight was delayed by air traffic controllers would gain some 'delay points' that could be used to bid for early landing in (other) congested situations.

For some reason, NASA has taken out a patent on this idea. (The patent system is itself meant to be a solution to a certain kind of market design problem. The granting of patents to these kinds of "business practices" raises some questions about that solution. )