Northern Air has dozens of flights daily into and out of Belleville Airport, which is highly congested. Northern Air depends for its success on economy and quick turnaround and consequently is planning to replace its large planes with Skybuses, whose novel aerodynamic design is extremely fuel efficient. The Skybus' fuel efficiency results in both lower fuel costs and reduced time spent refueling.

Which of the following, if true, could present the most serious disadvantage for Northern Air in replacing their large planes with Skybuses?

(A) The Skybus would enable Northern Air to schedule direct flights to destinations that currently require stops for refueling.
(B) Aviation fuel is projected to decline in price over the next several years.
(C) The fuel efficiency of the Skybus would enable Northern Air to eliminate refueling at some of its destinations, but several mechanics would lose their jobs.
(D) None of Northern Air's competitors that use Belleville Airport are considering buying Skybuses.
(E) The aerodynamic design of the Skybus causes turbulence behind it when taking off that forces other planes on the runway to delay their takeoffs.


Ron, i was vacillating between A and E, please help me.

Source of this question is Gmatprep

Between A & E...
"A" looks like clear advantage to me...

E should be ans...

What's wrong with option-B, since question is most serious disadvantage for Northern Air in replacing their large planes with Skybuses..

B seemed an advantage to me...

E seems to be the correct choice.
A and B point out clear advantages.

Also, could you classify this question as a strengthen weaken type?

I think E is correct

A partly supports this argument, since the currently needed stops
are eliminated, this in turn saves the time of the flight;
B is unrelated, so too are C and D

what is the official answer to this question?

This is definitely a strengthen-weaken question, and E is definitely the answer:

A is a definite advantage
B cannot be a disadvantage; at worst it makes an advantage smaller than it otherwise would have been
C is only a disadvantage if the lost jobs generates enough bad publicity to affect the company negatively; this COULD lead to a strike and a shutdown of the airline industry etc but is highly unlikely given what an advantage this will be to the customers
D is absolutely irrelevant
E looks irrelevant - why would we care any more about the other planes than the mechanics we're about to fire - until you realize that some of these planes may be Northern's own planes, which COULD be a disadvantage if it increases turnaround time

Note that none of these answers will result in a definite disadvantage. If the official answer turns out to be C, it will be because of a very specific difference in interpretation they are applying to COULD compared to mine. However, i doubt the problem would have made it past the experimental phase and onto the GMAT and then the software if they expected you to extrapolate such a tenuous and unlikely outcome..

_________________
Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor