FAA Likes Bigger Craft

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PAGE ONE


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
....