"US airline holiday demands escalate tensions"

Monday, July 2, 2007

US airline holiday demands escalate tensions
United Kingdom - The Financial Times 


US airlines on Monday called for private jet operators in New York to be
subjected to the same enforced delays from air traffic controllers as
commercial aircraft during the busy July 4 holiday period.

The call from the Air Transport Association, which represents the major
airlines, will escalate a brewing battle between carriers and corporate jet
operators over how to pay for the estimated $30bn cost of upgrading the
antiquated US air-traffic system.

The problems are most acute in the New York area, which the ATA said
accounted for almost a third of all delays in the country last Friday. The
association said congestion at the city's three main airports is exacerbated
by the number of corporate jets operating from Teterboro and other airports,
which it said accounted for 30 per cent of flights to and from the New York
area.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees flight operations,
imposes so-called "ground-based delays" on commercial flights during busy
travel periods to ration the available airspace, keeping aircraft on the
tarmac until a slot opens up for take-off. The FAA has already warned
airlines that the delays could be imposed between now and the end of the
weekend because of congestion and expected bad weather.

"The New York City metropolitan-area airspace is completely saturated and
near gridlock," said ATA president and chief executive Jim May in a
statement, calling for the ground delays to be extended "proportionally" to
the dozens of corporate jets expected to use the region's airports over the
holiday period.

Corporate jets are subjected to the same delay programmes as commercial
aircraft if they use airports such as JFK, LaGuardia or Newark, which can
see planes queuing for an hour or more to take off.

However, the system does not apply to specialist airports such as Teterboro,
which are dominated by corporate jet movements.

The FAA has yet to respond to the ATA's request.

The US transportation department budget outlined earlier this year proposes
a hybrid system of user fees and jet-fuel taxes from 2009 to fund ATC
technology as part of a crackdown on congestion, which the DoT said costs
taxpayers more than $10 a year. 

The user-fee system would shift more costs to the fast-growing business
aviation segment, whose main lobby group described the plan as "toxic". Mary
Peters, the transportation secretary, has defused some of the potential
conflict by exempting the non-business general aviation community from user
fees. Thousands of private flyers will continue to pay fuel taxes. 

The ATA has argued that carriers pay more than their fair share of
infrastructure costs in the form of the jet fuel tax and a variety of user
fees, most of which are collected through ticket taxes. 

However, business aviation groups say the structure of the airline industry
- based on large hub-and-spoke operations - inflates the cost of ATC
services. The National Business Aviation Association argues that a user-fee
system will be bureaucratic and inefficient, maintaining that the flat
jet-fuel tax is the fairest means for paying for ATC services.

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