FAA and Airlines Brainstorm on NYC Airport Gridlock

Aircraft fill the parking ramp at the American Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Saturday, June 2, 2007. The New York-Philadelphia area is the worst air traffic bottleneck in the U.S. After record delays this summer, a federal task force has been convened to try to fix the massive delay problem at New York's airports. Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

NEW YORK (AP) -- Simple mathematics explain why New York has become the United States' worst air-travel bottleneck. Almost every day, more planes are jockeying for space in the sky than the region's beleaguered air traffic control system can handle.

Finding a solution to the problem, though, has tied the aviation industry in knots: Do you schedule fewer flights? Or, can you find ways to safely get more jets in the air?

A federal task force made up of airline executives, government officials and aviation groups has been discussing both approaches during a series of high-stakes meetings over the past three weeks.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters convened the group in late September, and gave it a warning: Find a fix for chronic delays at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and its sister airports, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty, or be prepared to face a federal order reducing the number of allowed flights.

The talks, led by the Federal Aviation Administration, have been closed to the public, but participants report that one of the primary topics will be "congestion pricing," a scheme to reduce delays by making airlines think twice about scheduling flights during the busiest times of the day.

Generally, the plan would implement higher fees for planes operating at the airports during the aviation rush hours, which, in New York, coincide roughly with morning and evening commutes.

Supporters of the idea say the extra cost of flying in prime time might lead airlines to shift some flights to less busy periods, and leave rush hour to the biggest jets with the most passengers.

Congestion faces strong opposition from airlines, who say it will raise costs, discourage airlines from serving smaller cities, and make it harder for passengers to fly when they want.

R. John Hansman, director of the International Center for Air Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said congestion pricing could have benefits at JFK, but would be tough to implement.

The challenge, he said, "is that landing spots in New York are so valuable, it is hard to have a price high enough that would change the airlines' behavior."

Many of JFK's international flights, he said, also cannot simply be shifted to another part of the day because they need to leave at certain hours so they don't arrive at their destinations in the dead of night.

Some airline officials say the better solution is to make better use of New York's inefficient, convoluted airspace.

For decades, jetliners traveling over the dense eastern seaboard have been directed to use a small number of old flight paths, some laid out in the days when pilots still navigated by signal fires.

Those routes jam up quickly on most days, and delays can ripple throughout the country when one or more of the air highways is blocked by a thunderstorm.

Air traffic controllers monitoring those corridors also complain that they are stretched to the limit in command centers that are understaffed.

The FAA has already come up with a sweeping redesign for the airspace around New York and Philadelphia. Both the agency and the airlines say it could cut delays by as much as 20 percent. But the plan has been repeatedly delayed due, in part, to opposition from lawmakers whose communities that might hear more plane traffic.

Members of the flight delay task force say they have other ideas that might help.

Some airlines have asked that a rarely used section of the skies off the east coast, now reserved for the military, be opened up to commercial carriers.

The airlines have also asked the FAA to appoint a "czar" to oversee the independent control centers that coordinate traffic in the region -- someone who would have the authority to address delay problems decisively.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said all of those ideas, and more, will be considered in the coming weeks. President George W. Bush has asked the task force to report back by December.

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