Like Rest of U.S., John Wayne Taking a Look at Flight Delays

Cal Abreu didn’t care whom he told, but he had to tell someone, and heaven knows, he had the time to talk.

It was 6 p.m. Thursday, and the Castro Valley electronics salesman was slumped on a bench at John Wayne Airport. He was 400 miles from home, and his flight to Oakland Airport was late --again .

“I was late getting in on AirCal, late to my meeting in Costa Mesa, and now I’m late getting out on PSA,” Abreu said. “I don’t know if you’re with the newspaper, I don’t care who you are, but I’m telling you . . . I cannot depend on the airlines for their schedules. . . . Going home (late) is OK; I can miss a dinner with my family. But missing a meeting, I lose money.”

Flight delays at airports nationwide are not new but they are news. In the last two weeks, U.S. Department of Transportation officials announced that they were investigating airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Boston and Dallas-Fort Worth for consistent discrepancies between advertised flight schedules and actual departure and arrival times.

They also reported that passenger complaints have almost doubled in the last year, with more than one-third of those complaints involving delays and cancellations of scheduled flights. The department now is pushing to resolve delay problems throughout the air traffic control system.

Federal officials and consumer activists contend that airline mergers and increased crowds generated by discount fares have led to many of the delay problems. However, officials with the airline companies attribute the delays to the federal air traffic control system.

Although officials at John Wayne Airport contend that there are few such difficulties at the Orange County airfield, they began keeping flight delay statistics two months ago for the first time.

“For myself, I wanted to start keeping track,” said Jay Maag, air traffic manager at John Wayne. “The (Federal Aviation Administration’s) goal is to reduce delays overall in the system. I have no idea if I’m reducing them, because I have no base line to compare them to.”

Delays at John Wayne Airport can be explained, in part, by large increases in commercial airline traffic between 1985 and 1986, Maag said. In 1985, there were 38,144 takeoffs and landings by commercial airliners at the facility. The number rose to 56,393 in 1986, an increase of 48%.

Maag said an estimated 180 passenger-carrying jets take off or land every day at John Wayne Airport, which is the nation’s fifth busiest in terms of overall usebut ranks 74th in volume of commercial passenger traffic. In February, an average of 11 flights a day departed at least 15 minutes late. The average delay was 25 minutes. In March, an average of 10 flights departed late each day, with an average delay of 26 minutes.

Low clouds on April 10 gave the airport its worst day in the two months of record-keeping, Maag said. On that foggy Friday, 47 flights were delayed in taking off. No statistics are kept for late arrivals.

Last Wednesday, which was the most recent day for which Maag had complete statistics, only nine flights were delayed. Two were 15 minutes late; two were 17 minutes late; one was 18 minutes late; another was 22 minutes late; another was 23 minutes late, and two were 33 minutes late.

The biggest logjam happens at 7 a.m, when nine flights are scheduled to take off within 15 minutes of each other, Maag said. Although there are two runways, only one plane can take off at a time, and there are often delays.

“Still, I don’t think 10 (late flights) a day is a lot,” Maag said.

Some passengers agreed with Maag’s assessment that flight delays are not a problem at John Wayne Airport. Although the facility had 560,166 takeoffs and landings in 1986, only about 10% of those were commercial airline flights.

Skip Parrett, a marketing manager for an aerospace firm based in Jacksonville, Fla., who flies into Orange County regularly on business, gives the airport high marks for efficiency.

“For a small airport, they do a pretty good job,” Parrett said, as he stood in the Continental Airlines queue at 6:35 a.m. Friday. “You can get a lot worse. I’ve had pretty good luck here--a 10- to 15-minute delay, but nothing terrible.”

Jim Baker, a county employee who flies out of John Wayne Airport at least once a month, said, “I’ve never had any big problem--a few minutes late here and there, but I’ve been real pleased.”

Still, horror stories are easy to find, and the Department of Transportation consumer division has been flooded recently with complaints. In March, 1986, the department received 1,099 complaints nationwide about airline service, cargo companies, travel agents and tour companies, said Bob Marx, a department spokesman based in Washington. In March of this year, there were 2,060 complaints.

No similar statistics are available for Orange County’s airport. And although the Department of Transportation may widen its study of delay problems to include other airports around the nation, Marx said there currently are no plans to investigate John Wayne Airport.

Passengers’ biggest lament was about delayed and canceled flights, and complaints about such problems rose 132% between March, 1986, and March, 1987. In the earlier period, there were 311 flight problems reported, Marx said, compared to 722 in the same month this year.

Cal Abreu keeps his own statistics. Of his last five flights from Oakland to Orange County, two were canceled and three were at least 45 minutes late.

“And going home from here, all five were delayed--15 minutes to two hours,” the Northern California salesman said.

Jill Childress, a Denver mortgage banker, has commuted weekly between her home and Orange County since last August. On her way home Thursday night, Childress gave a terse assessment of John Wayne Airport:

“It’s horrible,” she said.

About three weeks ago, Childress’ flight between John Wayne Airport and Denver was delayed for three hours. The airline said the delay was caused by a snowstorm that apparently had dumped eight inches of snow in her home town. But when she finally reached the Mile High City, she said, there was no snow on the ground.

“The question is whether the (delay) problem is here or there,” she said.

Childress said she has had punctual flights “once or twice” in the past eight months. “It happens periodically--if you’re lucky.”

Jerry Reese, a Newport Beach businessman, spent part of the 75-minute delay in his Thursday flight to Phoenix pondering why John Wayne Airport is “the pits.”

“It’s usually not the flight coming in here that’s late,” said Reese, who flies out of Orange County once a week. “It’s usually getting all the people through (the airport lines). It’s here; the delays are usually here.”

In his travels in and out of Orange County, Reese said, he has not found a particular airline that is to blame. The problem, he believes, is that “the airport’s just too small.”

“But I’m like all the rest of these people here,” he said, gesturing at a line of people. “I’m not going to drive two hours to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). I’m going to wait here for 45 minutes.”