Airport "Choking" On Delays

It is no secret to anyone there are congestion issues at John F. Kennedy International Airport. More than one million flights fight their way through a roughly 20 mile-by 20-mile area. According to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, four of every ten flights were at least 15 minutes late just through May of this year.

USA Today conducted an examination to find out the reasons behind the delays. Some, the newspaper says, will be quite difficult to change. It contends the airport is, literally, choking on its own delays.

Available air routes are outdated, the study found. The last update was two decades ago and controllers simply run out of room to put everyone. This results in substantial delays. One of the biggest threats to restructuring the system is area residents fearing increased noise and pollution.

The newspaper looked at airline competition as a problem. If one carrier increases it number of flights in and out of JFK, others are sure to do the same. It's so bad, JFK's leading airline, JetBlue, is actually backing scheduled flight limits.

Another cause for delay has been accommodation preparations for the impending arrival of the Airbus A380. Key taxiways are blocked by construction.

John Hansman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said these problems show how "fragile" the current state of US aviation is at the nation's busiest airports. "A few things start to go wrong, and then it cascades," he told USA Today.

FAA Deputy Administrator Bobby Sturgell believes the problems at JFK can be solved with the use of new technologies the agency will be implementing in coming years.

"It speaks to the limitations of the current air traffic system," Sturgell says.

Change, however positive, will be an uphill battle. Just the prospect of rerouting aircraft traffic has produced bitter reactions and contentious public meetings. There has been little to no support or endorsement by the region's politicians.

The FAA has developed plans to reroute traffic patterns over rivers, highways and the ocean to reduce the number of people affected by aircraft noise.

"I'm extremely concerned that this airspace redesign is a colossal mistake," says Rep. Robert Andrews, D-NJ.

Area congressmen have requested the Government Accountability Office review the plan.

According to controller Barrett Byrnes, president of the local controllers union, the bottom line is this: "When you overburden an airport, as delays begin to happen, you are never able to recover from them. Once the delays start, it's over,"

FMI: www.kennedyairport.com