"Delays erode competitiveness of New York airports"

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Delays erode competitiveness of New York airports
By Ken Belson
The International Herald Tribune


NEW YORK - The growing number of delayed flights at Kennedy International
Airport and the region's other major airports has cost passengers nearly
$200 million in lost productivity this year, says a report released Sunday
by the New York City comptroller's office.

The increase in delays has also cost the airlines more money for fuel and
wages, interfered with delivery of air freight and increased pollution in
neighborhoods near Kennedy, says the report, a copy of which was provided to
The New York Times.

Taken together, the problems are chipping away at the city's competitiveness
and could drive away some companies, the report says.

"One of New York City's major competitive advantages is its outstanding air
connections with the rest of the nation and the world," the comptroller,
William Thompson Jr., writes in the report. "This advantage is now being
degraded by the declining reliability of air travel into and out of New
York."

The report was released less than a year after the federal government lifted
the cap on the number of flights permitted to operate at Kennedy during peak
hours. As a result of the change, on-time performance has worsened. The
average time spent taxiing at Kennedy is 36 minutes, up from 22 minutes in
2003, compared with a 1.3-minute increase nationally during the same period,
the report asserts.

Passengers at Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International Airports
spent 3.9 million more hours waiting for their planes to take off after they
left their gates in 2007 compared with a decade earlier, the report says.

That cost passengers $187 million, Thompson writes, citing data that are to
be published in The American Economic Review this month. To come up with
that figure, the economists assigned values to a range of travelers, from
those on vacation to those flying for business.

The logjams and delays have triggered a debate over the best solution among
federal regulators, the airlines and the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, which operates the three airports.

Seeking to reduce the delays, the U.S. Department of Transportation met with
airlines in October and asked them to either reduce or otherwise alter their
schedules in the metropolitan area.

The department said that if it could not reach agreements with the airlines
by the end of the year, it might re-impose landing quotas at Kennedy.

As part of the negotiations, federal officials have also pushed for a
congestion pricing system that would charge airlines more to fly during peak
hours.

Many airlines and the Port Authority have opposed those measures.

But Thompson said in the report that if conditions did not improve soon, he
would favor congestion pricing over the current system, which bases landing
fees on an airplane's weight. "The situation is urgent," he said. "We simply
cannot accept another summer of soaring delays like last summer."

Thompson also said the Federal Aviation Administration should make the New
York area a priority when new technology, designed to better distribute air
traffic, is available. The FAA has decided that Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico
region, Philadelphia and Louisville, Kentucky, will be the first to get the
new technology.

But even if improvements to air traffic control are made soon, they may
barely keep up with expected growth at the New York area's airports, the
report said, citing forecasts that the number of flights will increase 20.7
percent by 2015.

Big storm heads to Northeast 
A snow storm headed to the Northeast on Sunday after plastering a wide area
of the Midwest the day before, disrupting airport and highway traffic and
killing at least three people, The Associated Press reported from Des
Moines, Iowa.

Hundreds of flights were canceled at airports in Des Moines, Chicago and
Milwaukee on Saturday, with officials closing Des Moines International
Airport for several hours after a United Airlines plane slid off a taxiway
as it headed to a runway for a flight to Chicago's O'Hare. None of the 44
passengers was hurt and the airport reopened by mid-afternoon.

At Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin, an incoming Mesa
Airlines regional jet flying for United Express slid off the pavement after
failing to make a turn onto a taxiway, but no injuries were reported among
the 25 passengers.

The National Weather Service had posted winter storm and ice warnings across
parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, the eastern Dakotas, Illinois and
northern Michigan, but many of the warnings were lifted later in the day. In
Minnesota, Duluth received nearly 8 inches, or 20 centimeters, of snow.

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