"O'Hare expansion in holding pattern"

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

O'Hare expansion in holding pattern
Plan's viability, scope questioned as costs rise
By Jon Hilkevitch
The Chicago (IL) Tribune


With runway construction at O'Hare International Airport falling behind
schedule and hikes in oil prices and inflation driving up costs, officials
are questioning the timetable and even the viability of the $15 billion
airport expansion project.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't know when the city will
begin work on two runways. And Chicago aviation officials this spring
announced a one-year delay in building another runway on the north end of
the airport.

The major airlines are voicing support for some variant of the ambitious
parallel-runway configuration that Mayor Richard Daley unveiled in 2001. But
the carriers acknowledge they are in no better position today than they were
then to help pay for Chicago's O'Hare overhaul.

"In light of the financial crisis the industry finds itself in, we and the
city must be ever vigilant so that whatever improvements are made are
cost-efficient and effective," said American Airlines spokeswoman Mary
Frances Fagan.

United Airlines is committed only to the first phase of the project, said
Ajay Singh, the airline's vice president of corporate real estate.

No airline has signed up to help finance the second wave of new runways and
passenger terminals, which is when the city says major reductions in flight
delays would occur. Last year, O'Hare had the most delays of any major U.S.
airport.

"Nobody expects United or American to pump huge investments into their
O'Hare hubs in the next few years. And the city is opting for a more go-slow
approach to keep tight reins on the costs," said Joseph Schwieterman, an
aviation expert at DePaul University.

"The sense of urgency about the first phase appears to be diminishing,"
Schwieterman said.

O'Hare expansion chief Rosemarie Andolino disagreed, saying the city is very
aggressive in moving forward.

"Our goal is to build the project as fast as we can so the benefits of
reducing delays and increasing capacity can be realized by the traveling
public and the airlines," said Andolino, executive director of the O'Hare
Modernization Program.

"Time always works against you because of escalation in costs. If I don't
have to pay more for something, why should I?"

That's what the airlines are asking.

Despite its crisscrossing runways, the existing airport is working well for
United and American, which operate more than 85 percent of O'Hare flights.
The nation's two largest carriers have even stopped grousing about
government-imposed O'Hare flight caps because they provide stability in an
industry mired in turmoil.

Making O'Hare operate more efficiently--the cornerstone of Daley's plan--is
already happening. The FAA says flight delays are down 30 percent since the
caps were imposed, saving the airlines millions of dollars in fuel and labor
costs.

The big carriers are cutting back on O'Hare flights in a strategy to boost
ticket prices. They can do so because the flight caps mean there's no room
for a discount airline like JetBlue Airways to compete in the Chicago
market.

"The longer we don't have to pay for something, the better. However long it
takes, it takes," one airline official said about O'Hare expansion.

Amid signals that the scope of O'Hare expansion may be changing,
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta commissioned its fifth
runway on Tuesday. At a cost of only $1.3 billion, the new runway is
expected to reduce departure delays by 50 percent at Hartsfield, which has
surpassed O'Hare as the world's busiest airport.

Meanwhile, a new FAA analysis released Tuesday verifies that air-traffic
controllers can adequately handle as many as 279 takeoffs and landings an
hour at a modernized O'Hare, said Kevin Markwell, an FAA manager who works
on planning the procedures of the future airport.

Yet before the flight caps were introduced in 2004, O'Hare controllers often
directed as many as 240 flights an hour.

O'Hare expansion critics in Elk Grove Village and Bensenville who are waging
a court battle to stop Chicago from condemning their properties for the
airport expansion say the relatively modest increase in flight capacity does
not justify taking their homes and businesses.

Although Markwell and other FAA officials said air-traffic operations went
smoothly during simulations of the expanded O'Hare, the airport's
controllers who participated in the tests disagreed.

The controllers said the simulations revealed excessive taxiing times--as
long as 4 miles and 45 minutes for planes to reach their gates after
landing--and a very congested airport bordering on gridlock conditions.

"It was just an ugly situation, so bad that controllers were yelling at each
other and we had to stop the simulation," said Craig Burzych, local
president of the controllers union at O'Hare tower. "It just didn't work,
and it's going to be a nightmare if this expansion plan goes through."

The controllers blamed many of the problems on the city's new airfield
layout, saying there aren't enough taxiways going around the north side of
the terminals. The result is a bottleneck at the intersection of two key
taxiways--Bravo and Lima Lima--on the southeast side of the airfield.

"Lima Lima and Bravo looked like the Kennedy-Edens junction at rush hour,"
Burzych said.

Andolino, Chicago's airport expansion chief, said city officials anticipated
that the taxiway intersection might become a choke point, and they are
considering adding a circular taxiway to reroute United planes, which
account for more than 40 percent of O'Hare operations.

But building the new taxiway would require relocating an existing runway
farther north, Andolino said.

She said a decision would be made later, depending in part on how fast
flight operations grow at the expanded O'Hare.

The city has failed to identify funding for the Lima Lima taxiway, which the
FAA says is critical to making the new runways work efficiently. The
airlines have balked at city requests to provide the funding.

The first new O'Hare runway in the eight-runway configuration will not open
until at least 2008, a full year later than the city's original schedule.

Even then, the runway, at the far north end of the airfield, will be used
sparingly for a while because of a delay in breaking ground for a new
air-traffic control tower, according to the FAA. Groundbreaking had been set
for this spring, but it was pushed back until the fall.

If the northern runway opens in late 2008, controllers will initially direct
planes using the runway from a temporary control tower, FAA officials said.

"The city is building the north tower, so they are in charge of the
construction and the schedule," said FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro.

And the reduction in delays as a result of the first new runway will be
negligible--from 16 minutes of delay per plane to 15 1/2 minutes, FAA
computer modeling has shown.

The real benefits come later, if the project can be completed.

But the timetable is in flux for the city's planned extension of an existing
runway and the construction of a second new runway.

The runways were supposed to open in 2009 under the plan Chicago submitted
to the FAA, but the construction dates now are "to be determined," according
to the FAA.

The city's top priority is moving ahead with site preparation for the
expansion, Andolino said.

Earlier this year, city officials tossed out construction bids that came in
over budget for the first new runway on the north airfield.

Much of the work is now focused on building concrete box culverts to divert
portions of the relocated Willow-Higgins Creek underground.

Trees are being removed and tall berms excavated on the south airfield to
get ready for leveling the land and building runways there.

But about 475 parcels, mostly in Bensenville, still must be acquired, said
O'Hare expansion spokesman Roderick Drew.

The land the city needs for new runways includes St. Johannes Cemetery,
which Chicago and St. John's United Church of Christ in Bensenville are
fighting over in federal court, eight months after the FAA approved the
airport expansion.

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