Dallas Airport's Taxi Time Longest Among Nation's Top 10

Posted on Mon, Dec. 22, 2003   
 
Dallas Airport's Taxi Time Longest Among Nation's Top 10
Dallas Morning News, TX

DALLAS - (KRT) - Arrived at the airport 90 minutes early? Check.

Stripped of all metal objects for a breeze through airport security? Check.

Good weather for the flight, a smooth landing and early arrival at Dallas/Fort 
Worth International Airport? Check.

Yes, today, the holiday travel gods are smiling.

But wait, what's that? The smiles stop - and so does the plane - right there on 
the taxiway.

Welcome to the world of gate waits and taxiway traffic jams, where a finely 
choreographed ballet of seven runways, incoming flights and outgoing planes can 
hinder on-time arrival like ice and snow.

Among the country's 10 largest airports, D/FW had the longest taxi time for 
arriving planes during the first 11 months of 2003, federal data show. On 
average, a plane traveled 10.48 minutes between runway and gate, with 3.81 
minutes of that considered delays.

Taxiway backups occur throughout the year, not just during holiday seasons. But 
the delays seem to intensify around Thanksgiving and Christmas as planes grow 
more crowded and pressure mounts to get travelers to their destinations on time.

"Controllers are very conscious of all the details surrounding flights - 
traffic, congestion and procedures," said JoEllen Casilio, the air traffic 
manager for the FAA's tower and traffic control office at D/FW Airport. "We 
take all those things into consideration. But it has to be safety first."

Federal on-time statistics show that the D/FW Airport average taxi time for 
arrivals hovered around 11 minutes the last three years. Average taxi times in 
2003 for arrivals stand at 7 to 9 minutes at some of the nation's other large 
airports in Atlanta, Denver, Chicago and New York.

The main reason for the delays getting to and from gates is the maze of 
concrete taxiways and aprons planes must navigate at the nation's third-busiest 
airport. The airport is the nation's second-largest in terms of land mass and 
the world's third-largest.

Almost 1,700 times a day, a taxiing plane must cross one of the facility's 
seven runways. The result is a logistical challenge that often goes over the 
heads of travelers who wonder why they must wait rather than zip directly to 
the gate or runway.

No plane sits without a good reason, say FAA and airline officials. And bad 
weather does complicate the control tower coordination. FAA ground controllers 
may handle 20 planes at a time during peak periods at D/FW Airport and 40 to 50 
planes during inclement weather.

"It's an orchestrated effort," said Bob Cordes, vice president of operations, 
planning and performance for American Airlines. American offers 690 departures 
a day at D/FW Airport, the most of any airline. "The worse the weather, the 
more planning that is required."

Runway congestion and longer taxi times typically ebb and flow with the daily 
tides of business. Arrivals at D/FW Airport bunch up at several times of the 
day, from early morning to lunchtime and 6 to 8 p.m. The most departures occur 
midmorning, lunchtime and evenings about 7:30 to 8, FAA officials said.

The sheer size of D/FW Airport, which at 29.8 square miles is larger than the 
island of Manhattan, factors into the taxi time equation. An arriving plane 
from D/FW Airport's outer runways heading to the terminal must cross one or two 
active runways.

"The key is to have only one operation on a runway at a time. You can't do both 
(taxi and take off) at the same time. One of them has to give," said Greg Juro 
of the FAA traffic management office at D/FW.

In those cases, getting the go-ahead is not as simple as waiting for a green 
light at an intersection. No visual signals exist that tell pilots when to 
proceed, and there are no overpasses for waiting traffic.

Each pilot must make contact with an FAA ground controller before the plane may 
cross a runway. On long treks across the airport, a pilot may have to establish 
contact with three or more controllers.

"We say it, and the pilot hears it and responds to it," said Juro. "By the time 
that's all done and we've come back to the next plane, we've lost time."

In cases when a queue of several planes is waiting to take off or taxi to the 
gate, ground controllers often let three to six planes take off and then let 
three to six planes taxi across a runway.

"We're like traffic cops in that situation," Casilio said.

Planes move no faster than 15 knots. And they operate a lot like people - the 
more mass they have in their bellies, the slower they usually move.

"Planes are not built for the ground," Casilio said. "They're slow and wide, 
and you have to watch for space."

Even if it's been a long flight and passengers see plenty of parking spots at a 
terminal, pilots can't just pull into any open gate they see, Cordes said. 
Certain gates can't handle certain aircraft, so even a flight that arrives 
early to the joy of its passengers must wait for its designated spot.

For example, a row of four gates can accommodate two, three or even four planes 
depending on the wingspan of each. If one zips into the first open spot, it may 
get in the way of another plane coming behind it.

"We really manage 40 flights on the ground, not just each individual flight," 
the American Airlines vice president said. "It's all inter-related."

D/FW and the airlines are aware of the delays.

A year ago, American Airlines spread out its flight schedule to help eliminate 
some backups that occurred when too many planes were slated for departure 
around the same time. The effort has paid off with shorter taxi times to 
runways, Cordes said.

Before the schedule change, departing American planes took an average 19.2 
minutes to get to the runway in September 2002. That figure dropped to 17.2 
minutes this September, according to airline figures.

But taxi times have grown slightly for arriving planes headed to their gates. 
American's arrival taxi time has grown from 11.57 minutes to 12.44 minutes in 
the same period, federal figures show. Delta Air Lines, the second largest 
carrier at D/FW, has seen its taxi times for arrivals grow from 8.15 minutes to 
8.85 minutes, according to federal statistics.

"We've got to get them there safely," said Juro. "We don't know if a plane is 
early or late."

Some of the D/FW taxi time performance could improve with the construction of a 
perimeter taxiway. The project would create a $165 million taxiway loop around 
the busy runway areas, much like a freeway loop allows motorists to avoid busy 
downtown-area highways.

Taxi times would improve by more than 4 minutes for departing flights but would 
grow by about 2 minutes for arriving flights because of the extra distance 
required to travel, according to a D/FW Airport study. The study also shows 
that the improved times for departing flights would increase the capacity for 
outgoing flights by 30 percent.

Airport and FAA officials, with NASA's help, are conducting a cost-benefit 
study of the perimeter taxiway proposal, but no date has been mentioned for 
when it would be built.

"D/FW wants to build them as soon as is practical and allowed and approved by 
the FAA and the airlines," said airport spokesman Ken Capps. "D/FW was the 
first airport in the country to research their feasibility with NASA and the 
FAA."

 
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