Billions Unspent : Answers to Jet Age Jam Are in a Stall
It does not take an aeronautics degree to recognize the problem. Just read those TV monitors at the airport, the ones the airlines call “flight information display systems.”
On a typical evening at Chicago’s O’Hare International, for example, roughly 70 takeoffs and landings were scheduled between 6 o’clock and 6:15.
Under the best of conditions, that is about twice as many flights as O’Hare’s six runways can manage in that time. When the weather is bad or the airport is under repair, the number of flights the O’Hare tower can handle in 15 minutes can drop by 20, so two-thirds of the scheduled flights--and many subsequent flights, as well--will be delayed.
The grim message to be read between the blinking lines on the monitors is this: The nation’s aviation system is pressed to the limit.
High Rate of Tardiness
That impression gained credence last week, when the Department of Transportation’s first public rating of airline promptness showed that nearly one in four domestic flights in September was late. Over the past five years, in fact, delays due to heavy traffic, bad weather or controller equipment malfunctions have jumped 70%. More worrisome, pilots report drastic increases in the number of “near misses,” which were up 50% in the first nine months of this year.
It is difficult to see how things could be otherwise: In the last four years, the number of flights has risen 25% while the system for handling that traffic has, if anything, deteriorated. No new airports have been completed. There are fewer air traffic controllers to police the system and new computers expected to ease the strain are years behind schedule, so they are forced to rely on older, less reliable equipment.
‘Crisis in Confidence’
Even Federal Aviation Administrator T. Allan McArtor concedes a public “crisis in confidence.”
Those responsible in government and industry are scrambling for answers, and most of them are trying to find some way of easing the air traffic strain.
Among the proposals:
--Limit the number of flights allowed at peak hours. Most in the industry oppose this as a return to regulation, but the House already has approved a bill that would allow the secretary of transportation to restrict the number of flights at 42 major airports.
--Ease congestion with new flight patterns that reroute planes and have more altitude levels. Airlines, acting on their own initiative, have done this at a few big airports such as Chicago’s, but they complain that the FAA has not done enough to employ the techniques elsewhere.
--Speed up the hiring and training of air traffic controllers. Most observers, however, believe that the fastest way of getting more controllers--rehiring those who were fired for striking illegally--is politically unlikely.
--Force the federal government to release nearly $5.6 billion frozen in trust funds for budgetary reasons and use the money to buy new, stop-gap equipment and expand the capacity of existing airports. Recently, the House narrowly rejected a bill that would have started this process.
At the same time, the Reagan Administration’s widely perceived shortcomings in management of the deregulated airline industry have prompted a general soul-searching about how best to monitor the nation’s skies.
Congress is so troubled about the matter that it has forced an apparently reluctant Reagan White House to appoint a study commission. The independent Air Safety Commission is considering, among other things, making the FAA an independent agency with budgetary freedom and an administrator who would serve a fixed term of years, as does the director of the FBI.
“When the average traveler goes to the ticket counter and finds that the plane is delayed an hour,” said commission Chairman John M. Albertine, “his perception is that the system is falling apart and that nudniks are running it.”
Results of Deregulation
Such perceptions began in 1978, when the airline industry was deregulated, and have mushroomed since the Reagan Administration fired 11,500 striking air controllers 1981.
When it took that step, the Administration expected that a $12-billion computerization of the air traffic system, called the National Airspace System Plan, would soon make many of the fired controllers unnecessary. The 10-year NAS Plan was supposed to be fully installed by 1992, but a General Accounting Office report shows it has fallen perhaps six years behind schedule and it will be at least another decade before it is fully in place.
These delays and other technology have left the busier system to rely on aging equipment. The 1960s-vintage radar equipment used at the Los Angeles Terminal Radar Approach Control Center to monitor approaches to the north side of Los Angeles International Airport went down 16 times last year. The 1970s-era gear that monitors the airport’s south side went down six times.
The stress seemed to peak this summer, and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Burnett warned that the aviation system had reached a “red line” and faced great risk of a mid-air collision.
Flights Spaced for Safety
But FAA chief McArtor said that while the system has reached a “red line” in terms of capacity, it has preserved a margin of safety. Delays, McArtor and industry officials argue, do not suggest that the system is breaking down. They are “safety at work,” he says, caused by air controllers spacing planes far enough apart to avoid any danger.
To the passenger, one key Capitol Hill staff member said, flying has become one big “aviation mess.” People accustomed to the timely flights and tidy service of the more expensive, regulated system of pre-1978 see the crush of crowded planes, skimpier service, backed-up runways and unexplained delays as signs that the system is in trouble.
In the long run, the country needs more modern equipment and more airports to accommodate the growing demand for air travel. The last major airport built was Dallas, completed in 1974, and only one other, in Denver, is under construction. But building airports takes billions of dollars and considerable time, and requires cooperation from people usually unwilling to see airports built near their homes.
Thus the Department of Transportation seeks to spread out rush-hour air traffic by requiring the airlines to publish realistic schedules.
The new monthly report on airlines’ on-time performance was required by the department’s truth-in-scheduling rule. A tougher measure, part of a consumer bill passed by the House and Senate but not yet signed into law, would require that the information be made available on travel agents’ computer screens.
Scheduling Fewer Delays
In another initiative, the DOT persuaded six airlines to adjust their schedules beginning Nov. 1 so that no more than half their flights out of Chicago, Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta will be more than 30 minutes late.
Last month the House unanimously passed a bill to require the secretary of transportation to impose similar limits on traffic at more than 40 major airports, and to determine whether traffic is exceeding those airports’ capacity.
The measure, part of the consumer bill, would also empower the secretary to order changes in scheduling.
The bill’s impact would depend, however, on the DOT’s willingness to act as regulator, something most observers doubt it wants to do, particularly since pilots, airlines and controllers all oppose placing limits on air traffic.
Meanwhile, authorities at some airports are considering imposing their own capacity limits. One plan considered for Boston’s Logan Airport would dole out takeoff and landing slots according to passenger load. Private planes, in effect, would be excluded at peak hours.
Earlier this year, a group of major airlines plagued by delays at big airports took it upon themselves to contrive an alternative to restricting traffic--that of managing flights better through “flow control.”
Some Flights Moved
With the eventual cooperation of the FAA, the carriers moved flights to other airports, made their shorter flights at lower, more costly altitudes and devised new routes to busy cities. If delaying planes on the ground is akin to putting stop lights on freeway ramps, the flow-control program amounted to adding lanes to the freeways and diverting trucks to other roads.
During June, for example, the number of delays at O’Hare each day increased by 330 over the previous month. Under the flow control plan, delays dropped to pre-summer levels.
Yet airline officials complain that the FAA has shown little initiative in developing such techniques and has been slow to introduce them at other airports, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“I keep asking myself,” said an executive at one of the country’s biggest airlines, “Why doesn’t the FAA take more of a lead? Why do we in the industry have to keep pushing them?”
One of the few solutions to the immediate crisis on which all observers agree is the need for more air traffic controllers, but the issue of how to hire them, like much in aviation policy, is an old and tangled political web.
Both the airlines and their unions charge that the DOT, under its recently departed secretary, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, hired back controllers too slowly.
Rehirings Proposed
The Air Transport Assn., an airlines trade group, recommends that retired controllers be hired back part time at busy airports, an idea that has the support of FAA chief McArtor and Capt. Henry Duffy, head of the Air Line Pilots Assn.
But Air Traffic Controllers Union President John Thornton worries that the former controllers, most of whom took early retirement, left for a reason: burnout.
“It’s not a part-time career,” he said. “It’s got to be full time, a full-time commitment.”
Some on Capitol Hill want the FAA to rehire the controllers fired for striking. The Administration counters that mixing those who struck in 1981 with those who did not would hurt morale, and that rehired controllers still would need intensive retraining.
Yet, under questioning before a Senate committee last month, McArtor conceded that fired controllers could be brought back up to speed in as little as three months. Others point out that the handful of fired controllers who proved in court that they were dismissed illegally have returned to work without incident.
The FAA also wants to use more computer simulators to speed training. The FAA currently conducts much training of new controllers on the job, which diverts trained controllers from the system.
All of these proposals require money, however, and that has focused attention on one of the most complex issues of all.
$5.6 Billion Frozen
The Reagan Administration has been criticized for allowing a surplus of $5.6 billion in the Airport and Airway Trust Fund to go unspent. Critics even alleged that the money was held as a bookkeeping trick to reduce the apparent size of the federal deficit. The Administration says that some of that money is pegged to the delayed NAS Plan equipment, and blames Congress for restricting how it can spend much of the rest.
As Congress sought to respond to concerns about the aviation system, pressure mounted on Capitol Hill to force some of that money out. But a House effort to pull the trust fund out of the federal budget, a step that advocates argued would make the money easier to spend, failed by five votes early last month.
Meanwhile, pressure to spend some of that money is intense.
The airlines would like to see some of it used to add taxiways and high-speed turn-offs, to allow more planes to take off and land at existing airports. McArtor, who wants to keep the trust fund on budget, would like to buy more old-style equipment to be used until new technology is ready.
What chance do these proposals have? Part of the answer involves Congress, and one key Senate staffer believes the changes, for now, will be limited to small matters such as improving flow control. Budget limitations will restrict any major infusion of money for staffing or equipment.
Veto Appears Certain
The trust fund bill appears dead since its defeat in the House. If it did pass, it would be “veto city” when it reached the White House--”A-list on the veto list,” said one House staffer.
Now that Congress has approved the consumer bill and funds to hire up to 675 air traffic controllers next year, “there are not many battles to be fought right now,” the Senate aide said.
Another reason many doubt that major change will occur is the Administration’s track record.
“We’re getting nowhere fast,” said Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.), “because I think the Administration simply does not want to crack the whip that has to be cracked” to guarantee the safety of airline passengers.
Many also doubt that McArtor, who took over the FAA in July, and his boss, Transportation Secretary-designate James H. Burnley IV, can do much in the remaining months of the Reagan Administration.
Burnley, who seemed to be “calling a lot of the shots already” as Dole’s deputy secretary, represents the status quo, Thornton, the controllers’ union president, said.
McArtor has gained wide publicity with a safety program called Impact ‘88, a comprehensive list of everything that could be done to improve aviation.
FAA Chief’s Plan
McArtor’s plan emphasizes pilot training and cockpit coordination. He also proposes:
--Having airlines issue quarterly reports on safety and service.
--Developing a national plan for building and improving airports.
--Speeding the switch to updated technology.
--Winning greater autonomy for the FAA to spend funds, move personnel and issue rules.
“We’ve heard all this rhetoric before,” said Duffy of the Air Line Pilots Assn. “It all gets down to how you convert that to jobs done.”
Meanwhile, Albertine of the Air Safety Commission hopes to issue a report next April, and to make the commission’s findings an issue in the presidential campaign.
According to insiders, the commission is already leaning toward recommending that the FAA and its administrator be independent, toward devising indices to measure the safety records of individual airlines, and requiring random drug-testing of airline and FAA employees.
Yet Albertine and most of his fellow commissioners oppose any regulating of how airlines schedule their flights. “I think it’s a bad way to run a railroad,” he said.
These political stances could change as swiftly as the wind at O’Hare, however, in the event of another major crash, seasoned political operatives said.
“Everybody has these ideas in their back pocket,” said one Capitol Hill veteran. “If we have a horrible safety record this year, that trust fund will be spent and the FAA will be independent. All the things that people are throwing out here will happen.”
