Q7 - Passenger volume in the airline industry has declined

[kevin75j]

Can someone explain to me why B is right? I only got there because of process of elimination, but still am unclear.

Why is "little inconvenience to the public" a good reason to expand? if there is a recession and passenger volume is low, couldn't many airports go out of business or otherwise fail, resulting in wasted efforts to expand?

also, could you go over why E is wrong? little unclear.

Thanks in advance.

[LSAT-Chang]

Sure! I will try my best to explain why answer choice B is the only relevant answer here and provides the best reason in favor of the airports' timing of their planned explansions.

So in the stimulus, we see that airport expansion can be warranted only by increases in air traffic volume, and it will probably be at least five years before passenger volume increases. So we would expect the airports to NOT expand at the moment due to above reasons, but ironically, the airports are carrying out their plans NOW to expand passenger terminal facilities. All we are asked to do in this question is to side with the airports and provide a reason as to WHY it would be best to carry out the plans NOW and not later (doesn't matter how "out of scope" seeming an answer is, just as long as it can explain why it would be in the interest of the airports to carry out the expansion NOW - the answer will be correct)

(B) - clearly provides a reason as to why the airports are carrying out the plan now (when passenger volume is low) and not later (when passenger volume is high). If low volume in passenger air travel permits airport expansion with relatively little inconvenience to the public, then it's a good enough reason since think about how inconvenient it would be if there was a high volume of passengers in the airport and construction going on! So, it provides a good enough reason to carry out the expansion now than later.

(E) - this is completely out of scope. We don't care about what happens if there is sustained decline in passenger travel. We want an explanation for WHY airports' are planning to expand passenger terminals NOW and not LATER.

As for the other incorrect answers...

(A) - this even makes it more complicated by bringing in the idea of the whole "economy in a period of decline" and still leaves us with the question, "WHY are the airports going ahead with plans to expand??"

(C) - this is just out of scope. If it had said something like, "Airport expansions cost significantly less when there is a low volume of passengers than when there is a high volume of passengers" then it would have been a better answer with "cost" involved in it. But this answer choice doesn't provide a reason for WHY airports are carrying out their expansion plan NOW.

(D) - this makes the gap even bigger. If it is the case that most airlines can absorb the increase of passengers without adding new routes or new planes when passenger volume begins to grow again after a period of decline, then why are airports carrying out their plan NOW??? This answer choice doesn't provide us a reason.

Hope this helps!

[cyt5015]

sorry, I don't agree with the above explanation. The stimulus states that "airport expansion can be warranted only by increases in air traffic volume", in other words, if the air traffic volume is not increase, then airport expansion cannot be warranted. Clearly, answer B does not mention anything about high air traffic volume. Based on common sense, the answer B does make sense, but by only considering the given fact, I cannot see why B is right. I favor E because the air traffic volume at some airline may increase due to absorbing other failed airlines.
Please help me here!

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm with you - I also liked (E) quite a bit.

I was looking for something that was going to show how you have increased air traffic volume even while there is a dramatic decline in passenger volume in the overall airline industry.

So I actually predicted something like (E). Since we can't change the smaller volume of passengers, we would need fewer planes/airports in order to increase air traffic.

I was thinking, "if a bunch of airports close, then the remaining ones will be more slammed".

There are a couple problems with this, and (E), though.

1. We're talking about "air traffic volume", not "how busy an airport is". I think "air traffic volume" really refers to the overall volume of planes / passengers in the sky on a given day, not the congestion at specific airports. Nitpicky, I know.

2. More importantly, (E) does not talk about airports going out of business (which would create more congestion at the remaining airports). It talks about airlines going out of business and their routes being absorbed by those that survive. So if Delta goes out of business, then United will handle those passengers. That would either mean the SAME number of flights at a given airport, or potentially even fewer than before because Delta and United might have both been flying at less than full capacity. When United gets to claim all of Delta's old passengers, United might be able to max out occupancy and so the total number of Delta/United passengers might use fewer total flights now that they're all forced onto United.

Ultimately, the key to getting this problem is to realize the real tension is between
"at least five years" and "now".

It's not about "why are the airports expanding".

As said, that's only warranted by increases in air traffic volume and in five or so years there WILL be passenger volume meeting and exceeding previous levels.

So the author would support airport expansion in five or so years.

It's just a question of "now" vs. "5 or so years from now".

(E) keeps us stuck in the same puzzlement, because it talks about an effect that COULD lead, eventually, to what we think might be higher air traffic volume for the remaining airlines. But even if we believed that (which we shouldn't, for reason #2 above), that gives us no reason for "NOW" vs. "5 or so years from now".

If (E) is true, this author would still find it surprising that we're expanding airports NOW. "Why not [b]wait[/] until other airlines crumble and air traffic volume increases?" he would say.

Hope this helps.