Too many aircraft are scheduled to use US airports. The result - even in in good weather - is that there are delays. Or flights are scheduled to take longer than they should do - timetables are padded.

The average taxi-out time at five East Coast airports is 25 minutes.

In bad weather, or when flights are disrupted, things are worse.

For the last ten years, there have been calls for action - for something to be done about the problem.

One reaction from Continental Airlines at Newark was to reduce the number of flights they operated at peak times. It was a good idea, but it failed - because other airlines came in and filled the vacated slots. No-one, it seemed, was able to stop them.

One effect of the over-scheduling is that passengers can be on the ground in an aircraft for a long time. In the recent past there have been a few really bad experiences and, as lawyers will tell you, hard cases make bad law.

The reaction by the US Department of Transportation (DoT) to these hard cases has been to make a rule whereby passengers held in aircraft on the ground have to be allowed off after three hours - provided it is safe and operationally feasible to do so. The penalty for not doing so is a fine of up to $27,500 a passenger.

A 120-day implementation period was applied - a period many in the industry thought was inadequate to sort out the problem, especially since major construction work is going on at New York's JFK airport.

Nothing much seems to have happened as a result.

The game-plan of airlines may be to cancel flights which are likely to be delayed more than 3 hours rather than hoping they won't be. They will then, it is speculated, blame the DoT for the ensuing disruption.

De-peaking and re-scheduling is possible, although it is likely to take more than 120 days. Given the perverse reaction encountered at Newark, it's not clear who would take the initiative in starting the process, or how you would judge between competing demands for limited runway space.

I certainly find it odd that there seems to be no way to ration slots. The result is that airlines will fly small aircraft frequently rather than larger aircraft less frequently - that is in the interests of their customers, and the financial model gives them no incentive to do otherwise. Slots are priced by the ton, not by the slot.

It is regarded as discriminatory - and therefore illegal - to change this. However, isn't the present system discriminatory? Discriminating against bigger and more productive aircraft, who have to pay much more than smaller ones for the same slot?

Very few airports - San Francisco being one - have managed to ration flights at peak hours. A recent attempt to auction slots in the New York area was abandoned because of major airline opposition.

And yet economics say that this is the sensible thing to do. If a commodity is scarce, its price should increase - otherwise demand will not be rationed. At many major airports, especially in the peaks, slots are scarce!

Inevitably there's a downside - small aircraft connect small communities to the world, and charging a lot for this can be seen as inequitable. It can restrict their access to the wider aviation network.

IATA put forward their own solution - the IATA Rules - for slot allocation. Unfortunately these seem to favour incumbent IATA members rather than possible new entrants, so they have gained a bit of a bad name.

And I also hope that high speed rail will over time also contribute to reducing demand. It won't be quick enough, unfortunately, but the withdrawal of one of the airlines from the shuttles on the Northeast Corridor is a sign that train, bus and car competition is starting to bite over short distances.

It is difficult to foresee anything other than aircraft being used for journeys in excess of 4-5 hours: in a country the size of the United States, commercial flight will continue to be essential. But it also needs to be efficient: at the moment, sadly, it's not.

Just south and east of Fairbanks, Alaska, is the township of North Pole. It's quite isolated, although it is on the Richardson Highway - InterState Highway A2.

There is a proposal to provide year-round passenger and freight rail service on the Alaska RailRoad, which runs through North Pole to Fairbanks. At the moment, passenger service only runs west and south from Fairbanks to Anchorage, although there is a freight service to Eilson Air Force Base, beyond North Pole. The proposal would necessitate some environmental mitigation in this sensitive area.

Close to the line is the privately owned general aviation airport of Bradley Sky Ranch: it would be possible to provide some kind of station for people using it, but the patronage is likely to be extremely small! Indeed, the Anchorage - Fairbanks service runs close to a number of the community airports in Alaska.

I was amused to see that one of the roads near Bradley Airport is called Taxi Way!

Also of note is the story of the other - correction, another - North Pole, the one in West London used by Eurostar as a maintenance depot until their operations moved from Waterloo to St. Pancras. When the depot was built, it was of course built for reliability, including an enclosed carriage washing plant. So in its first winter, the joke was that every carriage washing plant in Britain was frozen up - except the one at North Pole!