Airlines are less than Thrilled with the Billionaire Space Race

a reply to: anzha
Maybe I'm looking at this too simplistically, but why so many 'spaceports' all around then place? Isn't this the root cause of the issues? Every man and his dog with cash (and government/military departments etc) wants their 'own' facility.... Just mandate that there shall be only one facility on the west coast, one on the east coast (for the USA), one in Australia, one in South America, one in Africa, one in Russia/China. All with permanent airspace/maritime/land exclusion zones etc.
Complexity only increases the risk.

a reply to: CovertAgenda

Vandenberg and Canaveral launch orbital systems. You don't want to tie them up with testing, because then you have to work to their schedule, not yours. Right now, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are testing sub orbital. Virgin Galactic isn't as much of a hassle, because they launch high altitude, using a carrier aircraft.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Additionally, each range or space port can handle only so much. Vandenberg and the Cape both have other things than the commercial launches going on. Even then, given the slippage on launches, you can't depend on a single launch going off at any one day. That means it's better to have another site to launch from.

TBH, I'm really, really surprised noone has put one in Puerto Rico.

Another reason why airlines might be upset that I haven't seen yet, and probably will be if they block off the airspace on a perminant basis, is:

1) Fuel. It'll cost more fuel to go around the airspace. Since airlines are notoriously cheap, and seemingly getting cheaper by the minute, it'll force them to spend more fuel to get around the airspace.

2.) Timetables. The delay of the flight getting around the airspace will cause a ripple effect of their schedules, and a lot of flights will be affected. For example, say a flight from Phoenix to, I dunno, Memphis, with a short layover in San Antonio (I'm not sure if this is a real flight). Airlines are way too cheap to bump up the speed on the flight to compensate.
You may have gone through the NM spaceports airspace before arriving in San Antonio, and have 15 minutes to catch a connecting flight. If they blocked off that airspace, a lot of connecting flights may be missed, stranding passengers until the next flight, which then too will already be oversold since that's the airlines SOP.

I'm not down with airlines, but in this case I can kinda see why they're upset.