Aviation interests on Capitol Hill don’t come to a stop just because the NBAA Convention is being held. Yesterday, the House transportation and infrastructure subcommittee on aviation held a hearing on airline delays and consumer issues, and NBAA was there. Association senior vice president of operations Steve Brown testified that, despite airlines’ attempts to shift blame for their recent record-setting delays, the commercial airlines’ scheduling practices are the leading cause of flight delays, second only to adverse weather. “The U.S. Department of Transportation’s own reports contradict the numerous, erroneous allegations from the nation’s big airlines…attempting to blame record delays and increasing congestion on the business aviation community,” said Brown. “DOT’s data shows that at the nation’s 10 busiest airports, general aviation accounts for less than 4 percent of all aircraft operations." He noted that the general aviation community remains focused on the “real issue”–expanding system capacity–because “when capacity becomes constrained, general aviation is usually the first segment to be pushed out.”