Airlines Reject Guidelines On Delays
Time-Limits Plan Criticized in House
Kendra Marr and Del Quentin Wilber, Washington Post, 9/27/2007
U.S. airlines yesterday rejected a government investigator's recommendations aimed at reducing flight delays and the time passengers spend stranded on tarmacs.
James May, president and chief executive of the Air Transport Association, which represents the major U.S. airlines, told members of the House Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee that a recommendation to impose time limits on delays on the tarmac would cause further hardship for travelers.
"Imposing an arbitrary time frame to deplane passengers will have numerous unintended consequences that are likely to increase cancellations and cause even greater delays for passengers trying to reach their final destinations," May said.
The hearing underscored the difficulty of easing congestion at the nation's airports. Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel put forward proposed solutions in a report released Tuesday. With delays and tarmac strandings at record levels, President Bush plans to meet at the White House with his top aviation advisers today to discuss ways to ease delays. The officials are focusing much of their attention on New York airspace, which has become so congested that it often snarls air traffic across the country.
Among the proposals being considered by regulators is a more active role for the government in controlling flights at John F. Kennedy International and Newark International airports, according to officials.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice last week seeking the summer flight schedules of airlines serving JFK and Newark. Regulators need that information before they can request or require carriers to cull or reschedule flights to ease rush-hour congestion. In the notice, the FAA said that flights at JFK have increased 23 percent from October through July vs. the comparable period a year earlier. Arrival delays over one hour rose 114 percent.
The delays prompted the FAA to conduct a study of JFK traffic levels, which hasn't been completed. In the notice, FAA officials said they were "considering steps to address the timing of flights on the airport's operation. This could result in operational limits during peak hours."
The FAA focused its attention on flights at Newark because the airport consistently leads the nation in arrival delays, with just 60 percent of flights arriving on time, the FAA said.
Regulators generally let airlines set their own schedules but have limited flights at LaGuardia International Airport in New York and O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.
At yesterday's hearing, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) asked Robert Sturgell, the FAA's acting administrator, if the agency was prepared to take enforcement action if an airline with a poor on-time performance didn't voluntarily scale back its flights to limit backups.
Sturgell was noncommittal, saying, "It is one of the options available to us."
The ATA's May told the committee to resist calls to force airlines to reduce the number of flights, because it would only be an "expedient, temporary fix."