"New York Fliers May Get Choice a Bit Farther Out"

Saturday, April 29, 2006

New York Fliers May Get Choice a Bit Farther Out 
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
The New York (NY) Times


Worried about a looming traffic jam in the skies over New York City,
aviation officials have begun studying ways that other airports - some more
than 60 miles from Midtown Manhattan - could help relieve the congestion.
 
Executives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates
the three airports - La Guardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty
International - say they fear that the increasingly crowded airspace could
crimp the region's economy, driving some business travelers and tourists to
other cities. They are mulling a range of incremental improvements that
would allow them to squeeze more planes and passengers through the airports
they have.

But the Port Authority's chairman, Anthony R. Coscia, said he believed a
bolder, more controversial solution would be necessary. The time has come,
Mr. Coscia said, to start creating another major airport to serve the
metropolitan area.

"I think we have to start now planning the development of a potential fourth
airport," Mr. Coscia said in a recent interview. "We don't want to solve our
aviation problem by slowing down our economy."

A proposal for a fourth airport is not an original idea, just one that few
public officials have dared broach for about 30 years. But in spite of the
concept's checkered past and the Port Authority's history of overestimating
growth in air traffic, the need for a fourth airport is inescapable this
time, Mr. Coscia said. 

The three airports are already so plagued by delays that they rank at the
bottom of the list of big American airports for on-time performance. And,
with passenger counts rising steadily, officials predict that the three big
airports will reach the limit of their capacity in just 15 years.

This year, after resuming growth that was interrupted only by Sept. 11, they
are on pace to handle more than 100 million passengers for the first time.
Even with a modest rate of increase and a long list of improvements planned,
they will reach their full capacity of 130 million annual passengers within
15 years, said William DeCota, the Port Authority's director of aviation. 

"The trajectory always is up; there's no doubt about that," Mr. DeCota said.
"By the year 2020, we will have reached and slightly exceeded our ability to
serve 130 million passengers."

In round numbers, he said, that would leave each of the airports at what is
believed to be its maximum annual load: 50 million passengers at Kennedy, 30
million at La Guardia and 50 million at Newark. 

The Port Authority expects cargo to pour in faster, compounding the problem.
Mr. DeCota forecast that the amount of freight moving through the three
airports could increase to four million tons annually by 2020, from less
than three million last year.

To avert gridlock on the runways, Mr. Coscia said, "We're thinking into the
future and working on developing viable options."

One point of consensus among aviation officials and analysts is that no
major airport will be built from scratch within a two-hour drive of Midtown
Manhattan. The only feasible solutions involve expanding existing airports
on the periphery of the metropolitan area, they said.

"You can't build a 'green-field airport' because there is no green field,"
said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, a consulting firm in
Evergreen, Colo. "There is no place within 100 miles of New York City where
you can buy land for less than a bazillion dollars."

Mr. Coscia said a study of six other airports in the region that was
commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration could help identify one
that could be expanded into a major airport. The study is analyzing the
potential of Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, N.Y.; Long Island
Islip MacArthur Airport; Westchester County Airport; Trenton Mercer Airport;
Atlantic City International Airport; and Lehigh Valley International Airport
in Allentown, Pa.

None of them represent anything like an ideal solution. Some are more than
60 miles from Manhattan, and none can be reached easily by mass transit. But
they are all that aviation officials have to work with - though each one
lies outside the Port Authority's territory, which extends 25 miles out from
the Statue of Liberty.

Attached Graphic:

Possible Expansion. Gazing into the future.

airportbig.jpg