"Airports get bad-weather 'escape routes'"

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Airports get FAA help to ease travel headaches
By Jon Hilkevitch
The Chicago (IL) Tribune


Special bad-weather "escape routes" to guide pilots around thunderstorms in
the Chicago area and a computer program that gives airlines earlier warnings
of increased flight delays are among some new air-traffic tools announced
Tuesday to improve spring and summer travel.

They represent the Federal Aviation Administration's latest attempt to
address aviation delays during rough weather at O'Hare International
Airport, which last year recorded more delayed flights than any other U.S.
airport, and at Midway Airport.

It's unclear how much the new bag of air-traffic tricks will improve the
odds for passengers trying to make flights on stormy days when planes are
stacked up, and safe, stable airspace is in short supply. The FAA offered no
predictions Tuesday.

The high winds and heavy rain associated with thunderstorms are tougher for
air-traffic controllers to deal with than snowstorms, mainly because the
warm-weather storms are extremely unpredictable, said Bob Everson, FAA
director of tactical air-traffic operations in the Midwest.

"There is no silver bullet during a thunderstorm. And each thunderstorm we
deal with in the Chicago area is unique," Everson said. "These are
additional tools that we can utilize and hopefully they will be effective
and minimize impact."

New air-traffic escape routes to alleviate O'Hare bottlenecks will permit
planes to use alternate routes after takeoff during severe weather, then
return to a normal course when the air is clear.

The focus will be on preventing backups of planes waiting to depart O'Hare
by concentrating on getting the first six to 10 planes that are stuck in
departure "holds" onto the escape routes quickly, said Bob Flynn, FAA
traffic manager for Chicago-area airports.

For instance, one of the new procedures in the FAA's bad-weather playbook is
dubbed "Royko," in honor of the late Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko. The
FAA will use "Royko" to direct planes into and out of O'Hare and Midway when
thunderstorms block the regular air lanes to the east.

In addition, the FAA hopes to launch a new computer software program at
O'Hare in May that will predict early in the day when the volume of planes
being handled on a stormy day will grow into major delays on the ground as
well as in the air.

Data from the predictive software -- which can size up how the day is going
at O'Hare in 15-minute blocks -- will be passed along to airlines to help
the carriers make decisions about canceling, rescheduling or consolidating
flights to minimize disruptions to passengers, said Michael O'Brien,
air-traffic manager at Chicago Center, an FAA facility that handles
high-altitude traffic over parts of the Midwest.

An existing procedure that will be expanded during bad weather gives
airlines the option of flying at a lower altitude during a portion of some
flights in a strategy to "tunnel" under stormy weather.

The FAA allowed such departures -- in which an aircraft might fly up to 450
miles at a reduced altitude of about 23,000 feet until it is clear of
Chicago airspace -- in the past as a way to address congestion by making
better use of lightly traveled airspace. But the airlines did not embrace
the procedure because planes burn fuel more quickly in the dense air at
lower altitudes.

Also new to the Midwest is an FAA airspace flow program that debuted in the
Northeast last year. By better identifying where planes cannot safely
navigate in high-altitude corridors during stormy weather, the FAA can pass
along more realistic expected departure times to the airlines. The goal is
to reduce instances in which passengers are loaded onto planes only to sit
for hours waiting to depart, officials said.

The FAA is also counting on benefits from a redesign of the Midwest airspace
that, since March 15, has doubled the number of eastbound departure tracks
out of O'Hare to four.

And the agency has implemented a 24-hour hot line during stormy weather to
improve communication and planning between the FAA and the airlines. The
effort led to positive results in advance of major snowstorms this winter.
Airlines had the information necessary to cancel hundreds of flights on the
eve of storms, saving thousands of passengers from making trips to O'Hare
and Midway for flights that did not leave the ground.

 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************