"As Kennedy Traffic Rises, So Do Worries About Delays and Heavier Runway Use"

Saturday, May 12, 2007

As Kennedy Traffic Rises, So Do Worries About Delays and Heavier Runway Use 
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York (NY) Times


Traffic at the New York area's busiest airport, Kennedy International, has
jumped about 25 percent in the last year, aviation officials say. The
increase raises concerns about serious flight delays as summer approaches
and is pushing the Federal Aviation Administration to consider major changes
in runway operations. 

The F.A.A. has begun using three of Kennedy's four runways simultaneously
for much of the day, a procedure once reserved for brief periods of peak
traffic, and a spokeswoman said yesterday that it was considering a plan to
use all four at once. Air traffic controllers say that using three runways
at once raises safety risks, and that using four would be courting disaster.


While Kennedy was built to handle international flights, growth in the last
year has been driven largely by domestic flights added by Delta, JetBlue and
others, according to officials at the F.A.A. and the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey. Arrivals and departures are running about 1,300 a day,
up from about 1,050 last year, and they are expected to reach 1,350 by this
summer, the peak travel season. 

Peter Cerda, the director of safety operations and infrastructure for the
Americas at the International Air Transport Association, an airline industry
group, said it was important to make maximum use of runways because
otherwise, extensive delays might develop. 

Kennedy has two pairs of parallel runways, and the preferred procedure is to
use one pair at a time, whichever allows takeoffs and landings into the
wind. But to keep traffic flowing, air traffic controllers have frequently
resorted to using three at a time, a practice previously limited to brief
periods. 

That works as long as crosswinds are not too strong. (And because the
runways are at right angles, a headwind on one pair will be a crosswind on
the other.)

Barrett Byrnes, president of the Kennedy Airport chapter of the National Air
Traffic Controllers Association, said the airport had lately been clearing
planes to operate on runways with crosswinds heavier than were previously
allowed. 

On May 5, the union filed a complaint with the F.A.A., saying it had
violated its own rules on crosswind limits. But David J. Paguaga, the
operations manager for the F.A.A. at Kennedy, said procedures had not
changed and the airport continued to operate within its rules.

While the distance between Kennedy and La Guardia or Newark Liberty can seem
endless on the street, in aeronautical terms the three airports resemble
three fat passengers in a row of airline seats: one vigorous swing of an
elbow and there may be trouble. Planes taking off to the northeast at
Kennedy, for example, cannot turn too sharply to the north or they will
violate La Guardia's airspace.

In addition, with simultaneous operations on perpendicular runways, even
those that do not intersect, the possibilities for collisions increase, Mr.
Byrnes said. For example, if a plane is cleared to land on a runway that
ends a few feet before the middle of a perpendicular runway, but the pilot
decides to abort the landing and circle back around, the plane cleared to
land will cross the other runway at a low altitude. "You basically have
airplanes flying at each other," Mr. Byrnes said.

Mr. Paguaga said operations on perpendicular runways were managed safely. 

According to the Port Authority, which runs all three New York area
airports, for the 12 months ended Feb. 28, there were 6.5 million passengers
at Kennedy, up 11.7 percent over the previous year, and 66,600 flights, up
26 percent. When the number of flights grows faster than the number of
people on them, the traffic growth is generally in smaller planes. In the
same period, La Guardia showed small decreases in flights and passengers.
Newark showed small increases in both.

Meanwhile, ridership on the AirTrain, which runs from Jamaica, Queens, to
the terminals at Kennedy, is booming; April is usually a slow month at the
airport, but the daily passenger traffic on the train between the Howard
Beach and Jamaica stations and the terminals was 11,700, the Port Authority
said. In comparison, last August, the peak month, daily AirTrain passenger
traffic was 11,500.

The rebuilding of taxiways at Kennedy, some old and others inadequate for
very large planes, is adding to the congestion, aviation officials said. The
superjumbo Airbus A380, which can carry more than 850 passengers and touched
down at Kennedy in March, needs wider taxiways, and the Boeing 777-300
series and the Airbus A340-600 series need stronger pavement, officials
said. 

The traffic increase coincides with heightened friction between managers and
air traffic controllers at Kennedy over staffing levels. Mr. Byrnes said the
number of controllers had fallen to about 30 from about 38 a year ago, when
there were fewer flights. But Mr. Paguaga said the control tower has been
overstaffed for years. 

The controller work force nationally is facing a wave of retirements,
because many were hired in the early 1980s to replace those fired en masse
during the strike of 1981. The F.A.A. plans to meet its needs by hiring
"developmental" controllers, who arrive with college training in their
craft, and putting them through extensive computer simulations to cut down
on the on-the-job training needed to turn them into journeymen controllers.

Mr. Paguaga said: "We do have a pipeline of people that are developmentals
coming into the building. We're in good shape."

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