<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by bry99:
(2) Smaller airports need slot limitations for morning flights. At CRP, for example, WN has a 737 flight at 6:50, DL a CRJ at 6:55, AA an ERJ at 7:00, and CO a 737 at 7:20. Given that WN allows passengers on board as late as the departure time while the others (try to) close their flights 10 minutes early, all four airlines have flights boarding within 25 minutes of each other. That's a recipe for disaster at any small airport. Those flights need to be spread out over an hour instead of compressed like that.
Allowing the airlines full discretion to pick their departure times at small airports presents the choice of heinously long security lines or having extra security staff stand around the rest of the day.</font>
I don't think slot limitations are necessary at all. The times the airlines publish as departure times are "push-back" times. The time the plane pushes back from the gate. You can have five flights push back from the gate at 7:00am and all five could feasibly arrive at their destination on time or early. SFO often operates with only one runway for both take-offs and landings, and while it is often a problem - look at the size of SFO compared to, say, ELP. If ELP was down to one runway all day,every day it wouldn't ever be a problem. If an airline had four departures leaving within 10 minutes of each other and they don't staff for that you're looking at a whole different story. But that isn't what your talking about I don't believe.