Gridlock in Sky Feared as Airlines Become Mass Transit

On the day before Christmas, about 2 million people rushed to airports across America, expecting turmoil or delays. They often found both.

That kind of airport crush, now usually seen only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, is likely to become commonplace by the year 2000 when the airlines expect to carry nearly 800 million passengers a year, an average of more than 2 million every day.

Hello, gridlock.

Yes, aviation officials are beginning to worry about a logjam in the air.

Once the domain of businessmen and the well-heeled, the airlines have become a mass transit system. A record 455 million passengers boarded commercial aircraft in 1988, nearly 1.2 million people a day, compared to 243 million in 1977.

High Usage Rates

Three of every 10 adults took an airline flight last year, and nearly three of every four adults had flown at some point in their lives.

But no major new airports have been built since 1974, when the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport was constructed on 18,000 acres of Texas prairie. And although local officials have received agreement on a massive, futuristic $3-billion airport at Denver, the airlines there have balked because of the cost.

Add to that an air traffic control system still struggling to recover from a 1981 strike, plus federal budget constraints.

The holiday passenger crunch “gives us all a glimpse into the future of air traffic,” said Herbert Kelleher, chairman of Southwest Airlines. He said the air transport system of today “lacks the capacity to handle that volume of traffic on a daily basis.” He also said there are scant signs that anything is being done about it.

Concerned About Capacity

“I think the single biggest concern in aviation is the capacity issue,” agreed John Lauber, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The traffic demands also raise safety worries, he said, especially since it is unlikely that dozens of new runways and airports will be constructed and broad modernization of the air traffic control system is years away.

“There are real questions as to how we are going to accommodate this growth,” Lauber warned.

He acknowledged that there are ways to solve the congestion problem short of pouring new concrete. But, he said, “The danger is that these things will be done before all of the ramifications are thought through from a safety standpoint. The pressure is there.”

Short-Term Solutions

Among the short-term solutions being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration are adopting new technology to allow more planes to land in a shorter time span and increasing use of computers to predict traffic flow.

Indeed, the overcrowding is being felt both in the air and on the ground.

Seventeen airports used by 40% of the flying public were classified in 1988 as “seriously congested” because they handled 160% of the traffic for which they were designed. (Those airports include Los Angeles International and San Francisco International.) By the year 2000, that number could go as high as 58 airports used by nearly three out of every four travelers, according to the FAA.

Officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport say as far as they’re concerned aviation gridlock already has arrived.

Last summer, the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan, imposed a new fee structure that makes it too expensive for owners of small planes and even some commuter airlines to land. The local officials argue that, in an era of scarce resources, priority must be given to large jetliners carrying hundreds of people.

May Withhold Funds

The federal Transportation Department has called the action an interference with national commerce and threatens to withhold federal airport funds if the fees are not reversed. The Logan officials, meanwhile, are standing firm and intend to fight the DOT ruling in court.

The FAA is still trying to recover from the 1981 strike by air traffic controllers in which 11,400 were fired and had to be replaced by inexperienced recruits. Although senior managers have drawn up new flight patterns and adopted a system of central “flow control” to better manage airspace with fewer controllers, problems persist.

Only last fall, controllers at Chicago’s busy O’Hare International Airport began making errors so frequently that the federal government ordered a cut in flights. As a result, the number of delays jumped.

Furthermore, the agency’s seven-year focus on damage control and government-wide budget constraints have delayed for several years the long-range modernization of its air traffic control system.

Completion in Late 1990s

The overhauled system is now scheduled for completion in the late 1990s at a cost of $16 billion to $24 billion.

But many airline executives complain that the capacity crunch is already here.

“We tend to be making a conscious effort to do everything possible to restrain the transportation system that lies at the core of travel and tourism,” complained Robert Crandall, chairman of American Airlines.

Problems with air traffic control and restrictions of various kinds already stifle competition, he argued.

“Today, American can’t compete with Eastern, Pan Am or Donald Trump (who recently bought the Eastern shuttle) between Washington and New York. We can’t add flights to and from Chicago, nor can we operate the ones we already have there with the slightest assurance that they will either arrive or leave on time.

“Even in Nashville our flights often sit on the ground waiting for a slot in the sky. The reality is we are making air travel harder and harder rather than making it easier and easier.”

Campaign Produces Little

For more than a year, the airlines have warned of impending chaos. But a $15-million grass-roots campaign to persuade business and political leaders to push for new airport capacity has so far produced little.

“I don’t see a hell of a lot of difference between our aviation problems a year ago and our aviation problems today, except today they are worse,” Crandall said at a recent industry conference.

The industry is especially critical of the government’s handling of the billions of dollars that are collected each year through an 8% ticket tax. The money goes into a special trust fund, but in recent years much more went in than has come out.

The Aviation Trust Fund’s surplus has grown to $6 billion, a reserve that its critics complain helped the Ronald Reagan Administration hide some of the federal deficit. If the trust fund were handled that way by a private trustee, complained Kelleher of Southwest, “he would have been indicted for misappropriation of funds.”

Vow to Renew Effort

An effort to separate the aviation fund from the overall federal budget failed last year, but the airlines have vowed to try again in the new Congress.

But the airlines are not free of fault either, according to their critics.

Most of the capacity problems that exist today--as well as many of the problems envisioned for the years to come--stem largely from the strategies the airlines have devised under deregulation.

Their concentration of flights at “hub” airports has caused massive peaking of traffic in and out of cities such as Chicago, Denver, Atlanta and Dallas-Ft. Worth. Since 70% or more of the passengers in many cases are only passing through these airports, layover time is minimized and a large number of planes must land and depart in a short time.

On the other hand, airports at smaller cities often beg for more business.

“We don’t have a lack of airport capacity. We have a lack of airport capacity the way we use it today,” argued Charles Barclay, executive director of the American Assn. of Airport Executives, a trade group representing airport managers.

Columbus Spurned as Hub

Barclay maintains that many airports in mid-size cities are under-used and are often ignored as possible hubs. Officials in Columbus, Ohio, have offered $30 million over 10 years to any major airline that would start a hub there, but there have been no takers, he said.

The airlines argue that they need significant local traffic to make a major hub successful.

As traffic increases, Barclay predicts, pressure will mount for carriers to seek out the smaller cities as well.

The airlines also have been criticized for not following up on their own rhetoric on the construction of new airports. They cite the example of the proposed Denver airport.

Planners foresee at least 12 runways, although half that many would be built initially for the scheduled opening in the mid-1990s.

But both United Airlines and Continental Airlines, who are the major carriers at Denver, have balked, arguing the plan is too grand, too expensive and unneeded at this time, especially in light of the region’s economic downturn.

Fears Big Surcharge

Airports are largely financed through the issuance of bonds, which are paid off from fees assessed to the airlines. Continental contends the new Denver airport would add $36 to the price of a ticket, compared to the $4 surcharge at the current Stapleton International Airport.

Mayor Frederico Pena, who has staked his political career on building the airport, makes no secret of his anger toward the airlines.

“Either we have a crisis in air transportation in this country or we don’t,” he said.

The irony of the airlines’ position in Denver has not been lost on Washington bureaucrats.

James H. Burnley IV, transportation secretary under Ronald Reagan, called the airlines’ stand in Denver as well as the industry’s lukewarm attitude toward developing a third major airport in the Chicago area “irresponsible and hypocritical” at a time when the industry talks of a capacity crisis.

“It’s time those who come to conferences in Washington and sound off about the perceived shortcomings of the federal government in this area to get their own houses in order if they want to see capacity of the system grow in the years to come,” Burnley said in an interview.

Say They Favor Construction

Spokesmen for both Continental and United insist the two airlines continue to favor construction of a new Denver airport, but the question is one of cost.

“We’d like to build one that we can afford, and we’d like to build it in the time frame that we need,” Martin Shugrue, president of Continental, said in an interview.

Airline reluctance to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a new airport may be understandable, industry analysts say, in light of other costs facing the air carriers. As of last October, the scheduled air carriers had orders and options for 1,301 new aircraft worth $59 billion and the airlines are still ordering new jetliners, according to Airline Economics Inc.

And there are competitive questions that come into play at an airport such as Denver, where United and Continental dominate, or Chicago, where American and United are supreme.

“If you own the hub,” said FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor, “you’re not too interested in adding capacity so somebody can come in and share your nest. That’s just a fact of life.”

Industry Lacks Plan

That may be one reason why the industry has yet to develop a master plan as to where any new airports should be built. Gabe Philips, executive vice president of the Air Transport Assn., the airline trade group, said such a master plan “would be difficult to get agreement on” because of the costs involved.

Nevertheless, the airlines insist, the greatest barrier to the construction of new runways and airports is not the industry, but local opposition--or the “NIMBY folks” as they have been called.

The “not in my back yard” philosophy is not likely to go away soon, said Henry Duffy, president of the 40,000-member Air Line Pilots Assn.

And if new airports and runways are not built, Duffy predicts the government will have no choice but to restrict traffic where there isn’t enough capacity.

‘De Facto Re-Regulation’

“We’ll have de facto re-regulation whether we call it re-regulation or not,” Duffy said.

The answer, in the view of many industry executives, is for the federal government to become more aggressive in pushing for new airports or airport expansion where the lack of capacity is seen as impeding commerce.

Burnley calls suggestions that a new runway or airport might be forced on a community as “hopelessly naive” and added:

“You’re simply not going to be able to politically run roughshod over the rights of neighbors of airports. The Congress would not let us do that.”