U.S. Travel Association's Roger Dow Comments on FAA's Air Travel Growth Forecast

airplaneRoger Dow, president and CEO, U.S. Travel Association, issued the following statement about the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recent forecast of continued steady growth in air travel:

“We’re grateful the FAA has made official what we have intuitively known: that demand for air travel has been on a strong upsurge and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

“What the FAA’s release politely understated is that our air travel infrastructure is woefully under-resourced to cope with the demand we already have, let alone what is coming. More net travelers are obviously terrific for the U.S. economy, but those who travel frequently are thinking about what our flying experiences are already like on a day to basis, and greeting the FAA report with very mixed feelings.

“Furthermore, there is a growing body of evidence that the more traveling is afflicted by hassles and headaches, the more people simply decide not to travel. Unless we make the necessary investments in our infrastructure, this projected travel demand will not fully materialize, and the missed opportunity for the U.S. economy will be tragic.

"Our policymakers need to explore every funding avenue to make sure that our infrastructure keeps pace and the country realizes the full benefit of these upward travel trends for entrepreneurship, job creation and tax revenues.”

For more information on U.S. Travel Association, visit www.ustravel.org.