JFK Backup, Nationwide Gridlock

Regulators Ponder Traffic Cap, Fees for Peak-Hours Flights

(By Seth Wenig -- Associated Press)

NEW YORK -- As federal regulators and airline executives grapple with the nation's growing flight delays, they are focusing on what many believe is the epicenter of the snarls: surging air traffic at this city's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Departures from JFK are up more than 20 percent from last year and 50 percent from 2003. To make matters worse, the increase is occurring in some of the most congested airspace in the world. On bad days, problems quickly ripple across the country, tying up air travelers from Los Angeles to Washington.

Worried that delays will only grow worse next summer, federal regulators began meetings yesterday with airlines that use JFK to find ways to reduce traffic levels. The Federal Aviation Administration hopes to get airlines to voluntarily cap their flights during peak hours. Regulators are also considering other measures, including charging higher fees to operate during the most congested times.

"We have a problem," Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in an interview. "It will grow much worse. . . . If we don't address this now, we are going to have these problems in many other parts of the United States."

Airlines and their trade groups are fighting the proposed caps. They say they schedule flights to satisfy passenger demand and believe the government should do more to boost airport capacity.

"We think we should be increasing operations and not restraining growth," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a trade organization that represents major U.S. carriers.

More than one in four flights arrived late or were canceled during the first eight months of the year, the industry's worst performance since 1995. There are many factors behind the rise in flight delays.

A major contributor -- which some aviation observers say has been overlooked in the recent debate but has a long history in the airline industry -- stems from carriers' scheduling practices. Although the number of airline flights nationally has held fairly steady in recent years, carriers have been scheduling more flights at certain airports, including JFK.

The airport's annual number of commercial and cargo flights reached nearly 420,000 during the 12 months ended in July, an increase of 140,000 since 2003, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

That growth didn't occur in a vacuum. JFK sits beneath some of the most congested airspace in the world, less than 25 miles from crowded LaGuardia International and Newark Liberty International airports. Those facilities are operating at or near capacity, regulators said.

By adding so many flights so quickly at JFK, the airlines have made it difficult for controllers to safely get those flights into the air, regulators said. Backups at JFK then snarl traffic at airports nearby because controllers struggle to fit them into the same airspace.

In August, the three airports ranked among the worst in arrival delays. More than 40 percent of flights to JFK were either delayed or canceled, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. LaGuardia's delays were worse, and Newark's weren't much better.