Since the deregulation of airlines, delays at the nation’s increasingly busy airports have increased by 25 percent. To combat this problem, more of the takeoff and landing slots at the busiest airports must be allocated to commercial airlines.
Which of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the effectiveness of the solution proposed above?
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Since the deregulation of airlines, delays at the nation’s increasingly busy airports have increased by 25 percent.
“deregulation of airlines” – Seems some regulations have been eliminated in the airline industry.
Since that, delays at the nation’s busy airports have increased by 25%.
(I wonder why this would happen. Perhaps, there is more air traffic, or perhaps, there is more chaos because earlier regulations brought some order to the airports)
To combat this problem, more of the takeoff and landing slots at the busiest airports must be allocated to commercial airlines.
The author makes a recommendation to solve this problem. Which problem? The problem of increased delays.
The author says that more of the takeoff and landing slots at the busiest airports must be given to commercial airlines.
The statement uses “more”. more than what?
more than currently.
So, if currently 100 slots are given to commercial airlines, the author says more than 100 slots must be given to commercial airlines.
—
The author has not specified why he recommends this way to combat the problem. I mean, why would increasing the slots to commercial airlines solve the problem of delays?
Is the cause of delays that commercial airlines don’t have enough slots?
We don’t know.
And if this is not the cause of delays, the recommendation by the author is not expected to solve the problem of delays.
Which of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the effectiveness of the solution proposed above?
We’re looking for an option that casts the most doubt on the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
In other words, we’re looking for an option that most strongly indicates that the solution is not effective.
In other words, we’re looking for an option that most strongly indicates that allocating more of the landing and takeoff slots to commercial airlines at the busiest airports is NOT an effective solution to reducing the delays at the nation’s increasingly busy airports, i.e., X is not an effective solution to Y.
(A) Correct.
This option indicates that the proposed solution is ineffective in solving the problem at hand since the problem is due to some other causes, i.e., bad weather and overtaxed ATC equipment. Thus, we have a reason to believe that allocating more slots to commercial airlines will not help in tackling the problem of delays.
(Some of you may notice that option A talks about “nation’s busiest airports” and not “the nation’s increasingly busy airports”. If you remember, the problem we’re trying to combat pertains to the nation’s increasingly busy airports.
How can this option weaken the proposed solution by talking about the nation’s busiest airports?
This option weakens since the proposed solution was also about the nation’s busiest airports. The option indicates that the solution may not work at the nation’s busiest airports. If the solution doesn’t even work where it is supposed to be implemented, we have a reason to doubt the effectiveness of the proposed solution.)
(B) Incorrect.
This option is not relevant to us. Why?
Because it doesn’t differentiate between commercial airplanes and non-commercial airplanes. If the number of non-commercial airplanes had increased at a much greater rate than the number of commercial airplanes, we would have a reason to doubt the proposed solution. However, option B doesn’t give any such reason.
(C) Incorrect.
I believe the reason many people mark this option is that they think in the following way:
The second step is incorrect. Even if the commercial airlines have 80% of the slots, it may make sense to give them more slots if these airlines account for, let’s say, 90% of the air traffic.
Whether it makes sense to give commercial airlines more slots depends on a relationship between the slots allocated to them and the air traffic they account for.
Just the data on the number of slots given to commercial airlines is not helpful to determine whether giving them more slots is sensible.
(D) Incorrect.
Let’s first consider the following version of option D:
D1: After a small mid western airport doubled its allocation of takeoff and landing slots to commercial airlines, the number of delays that were reported decreased by 50 percent.
D1 says that allocating more slots to commercial airlines led to a reduction in delays at some airports. Thus, D1 supports the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
However, option D is about increasing the overall number of slots, i.e., increasing the capacity of the airport. Thus, option D is talking about a different way to reduce the delays.
Whether this different way worked or not has NO IMPACT on whether our proposed solution is an effective way.
(E) Incorrect.
This option has no impact on the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
All this option gives us is that the average length of delay has doubled. So, not only has the number of delays increased, the average length of delay has also increased.
Thus, the problem is more severe than we earlier thought.
However, this option indicates nothing about the effectiveness of the proposed solution; the option just presents another problem.
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