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08-13-2007, 08:27 AM

jelloy683

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Small Jets, More Trips Worsen Airport Delays

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118696365326095429.html

FREQUENT FLYING
Small Jets, More Trips
Worsen Airport Delays

FAA Likes Bigger Craft
But Passengers, Airlines
Prefer Busy Schedules
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
August 13, 2007; Page A1
At 5 p.m. last Wednesday, planes from all over were lining up in the air to land at New York's La Guardia Airport. Over the next hour, 41 flights were scheduled to touch down, but there wasn't room for them all. Thirty-three arrived late, one by three hours.
With runway space this scarce, you might think that airlines would use big planes that can carry lots of people. Instead, of those 41 flights, 21 involved small commuter aircraft. Five of them were propeller planes.
The nation's air-travel system approached gridlock early this summer, with more than 30% of June flights late, by an average of 62 minutes. The mess revved up a perennial debate about whether billions of dollars should be spent to modernize the air-traffic control system. But one cause of airport crowding and flight delays is receiving scant attention. Airlines increasingly bring passengers into jammed airports on smaller airplanes. That means using more flights -- and increasing the congestion at airports and in the skies around them.
At La Guardia, half of all flights now involve smaller planes: regional jets and turboprops. It's the same at Chicago's O'Hare, which is spending billions to expand runways. At New Jersey's Newark Liberty and New York's John F. Kennedy, 40% of traffic involves smaller planes, according to Eclat Consulting in Reston, Va. Aircraft numbers tell the tale: U.S. airlines grounded a net 385 large planes from 2000 through 2006 -- but they added 1,029 regional jets -- says data firm Airline Monitor.
As air-travel woes have spread, some aviation officials and regulators, including the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, have begun saying delays could be eased if airlines would consolidate some of their numerous flights on larger planes.
Just two problems with that. One is that airlines like having more flights with smaller jets. The other is that passengers like it, too.
Illustrating the phenomenon, three airlines flying out of midsize Raleigh-Durham, N.C., send 21 flights a day into La Guardia. All but one of the flights use small planes.
That's fine with David Sink, a Durham insurance executive. "There are lots of flights, so time-wise, it worked out well for me," said Mr. Sink recently, taking an American Eagle flight home. Given a choice between more flights or larger planes, he'd prefer more flights.
The FAA once could tackle congestion by limiting the number of takeoff and landing slots. But Congress in 2000 voted to phase out slot requirements to open up the airways to competition from low-fare carriers. The FAA sets a limit on how many takeoff and landings it can safely handle at each congested airport, but airlines are free to schedule as they want. If there are too many planes because of overscheduling or just delayed flights stacking up, the FAA slows down the flow of airliners.
At La Guardia, for example, the FAA allows 75 aircraft movements -- a takeoff or a landing is one movement -- an hour for commercial airlines in good weather. If high winds or storms drop that rate lower, the FAA asks airlines to cancel or delay flights. And sometimes the bottleneck comes not on runways, but in the air when planes from multiple airports are trying to get a spot on specific routes into or out of the area. Much of the traffic into and out of New York meshes together onto specific routes in the Washington, D.C., area; when there are too many planes, it's like multiple lanes of cars squeezing into a two-lane tunnel.
Airport Crowding
Trying to tackle airport crowding, the FAA last year proposed a complicated plan to force airlines to increase the average size of the planes they land at La Guardia. FAA Administrator Marion Blakey, questioning the use of many smaller planes and their more-numerous flights, says that "from the standpoint of passengers and from the standpoint of getting the best use out of high-priced real estate, this is not the way we should be going." But the FAA plan encountered fierce opposition and is in limbo. "A solution eludes us," Ms. Blakey says.
Smaller cities say they need the small planes in order to be connected to the nation's transportation system. Only with smaller planes can a city the size of, say, Madison, Wis., have nonstop service to La Guardia. Travelers, of course, much prefer nonstops, for speed and reduced hassles.

Commercial jetliners on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport in New York

Airlines like the economics of small planes. For one thing, they're usually flown by lower-paid pilots and flight attendants from commuter subsidiaries or contractors. Smaller jets also let carriers bulk up their schedules without flying lots of empty seats. The combination of smaller jets and more numerous flights makes airlines' schedules more attractive to high-dollar business travelers.
Those regional jets -- planes with fewer than 100 seats -- don't just flit to small towns. Airlines cram them into their big hubs, too. Delta Air Lines flies regional jets between Atlanta and both Chicago and New York. United Air Lines flies regional jets out of O'Hare to six cities -- Atlanta, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Montreal and Charlotte, N.C. -- all in the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. rush. Three-quarters of the flights between La Guardia and Toronto are on planes with fewer than 100 seats. The upshot: 20 flights a day, all competing for a shot at a runway.
The small-plane conundrum is, at least in part, a byproduct of the financial troubles of the airline industry. After Sept. 11, 2001, airlines grounded older, larger jets that were gas guzzlers. The big jets weren't needed when traffic dropped dramatically after the terrorist attacks. Airlines substituted small regional jets, subcontracting the flying.
Now traffic is coming back. But many airlines have deployed most of the widebodies they have in international flying, which is more lucrative because it faces less price competition. And because of their financial woes, U.S. airlines haven't been adding many large jetliners.
Since 2002, domestic traffic by mainline airlines has increased 3.6% in terms of revenue-passenger miles, which is the number of miles that paying customers are flown, Airline Monitor says. But traffic on airlines' regional partners -- which fly the smaller aircraft -- is up 196%. The average size of jets flown by U.S. airlines, including the widebodies on foreign routes, is 137 seats, down from 160 a decade ago.
Meanwhile, flight delays have worsened every year since 2003, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In the January-June period four years ago, just under 83% of flights arrived on time; in the comparable period this year, only 72.7% did.
The three big airports in the New York area are the worst for late flights. But unlike in Las Vegas, what happens there doesn't stay there: New York's delays cascade across the country.
A late arrival for one flight means a late takeoff for another, which will arrive late in Dallas or Seattle or Denver. Or, a flight from Orlando, Fla., to Pittsburgh might be delayed because the Washington-area regional traffic-control facility moves a stream of New York-bound planes to the west around storms -- clogging the route the Pittsburgh flight would use.
The problems don't arise just in bad weather. Friday, July 13, saw good weather in most of the country. But in what's called a ground stop, the FAA barred the takeoff of flights headed to Newark. Too much volume forced controllers to keep planes waiting on the ground to take off, sometimes for hours. Continental Airlines says that in 29 of June's 30 days, the FAA imposed a ground stop or ground-delay program on flights headed to Newark.
In response to Congress's mandate to phase out slot requirements, the FAA has completely eliminated them at Kennedy. And airlines have poured in more flights. Through May this year, the number of passengers at JFK is up 14% from a year earlier, but the number of flights is up 27%, says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates that airport, La Guardia and Newark Liberty. Flights using smaller planes leapt 85% at JFK in that period, says the Port Authority. FAA officials have reduced, but not yet fully phased out, slot requirements at La Guardia.