FAA Chief Lauds Efforts to Find New Airport : Transport: Inaction in building major U.S. airports will cause worsening flight delays meaning lost productivity, increased costs, missed connections and wasted time, an official warned.
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday applauded efforts in Orange County to seek an alternative facility to John Wayne Airport, saying new commercial airports are urgently needed nationwide in order to meet growing demand.
FAA Administrator James B. Busey IV, speaking to a group of private pilots at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel, said no new commercial airports have been opened in the country in 15 years, despite a doubling of air traffic during the same time.
There are 21 major airports that are now severely congested, Busey said, and that number will double in the next eight years unless more airports are built. The result of inaction, he said, will be ever-worsening flight delays.
“Delays are costing us billions of dollars a year in reduced productivity, increased fuel costs, missed connections (and) wasted time,” Busey told 310 members of the Orange County Aviation Council, an influential private pilots organization. “More congestion will mean higher transportation costs for everyone. American travelers will pay more, and American businesses will find it harder to compete in today’s global markets. Our entire economy would be affected.”
Busey, 56, a retired Navy admiral, was speaking for the first time on the West Coast since being confirmed by the Senate on June 23 as the nation’s top-ranking air safety official. He succeeded T. Allan McArtor, who resigned earlier this year to return to the private sector.
Tuesday morning, Busey visited the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, which handles high-altitude aircraft in Southern California. In the afternoon, Busey toured the new terminal under construction at John Wayne Airport and met with controllers in the control tower.
In his speech, Busey complimented Orange County officials for their perseverance in seeking a site for a new commercial airport to relieve congestion at John Wayne, which ranks as the nation’s fifth busiest airport in terms of total flight operations.
The county’s Airport Site Coalition, which has been studying a number of sites for a regional airport in recent years, is due to make its final recommendation by the end of the year to the county’s Board of Supervisors. The sites under consideration are Potrero Los Pinos in the Cleveland National Forest, Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino County and south Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.
“Obviously, you folks (in Orange County) have your eye on the future,” Busey said.
Busey noted, however, that the FAA has little control over airport site and selection, as those decisions are made on the local level. He added that support groups such as the Orange County Aviation Council, which has been in existence since 1974, are instrumental in influencing local policy makers on airport site decisions.
Busey said the kind of community opposition that has greeted some of the Orange County site proposals is widespread across the country and has stymied the opening of new airports. A new airport scheduled for ground breaking in Denver in two weeks is the first to be built nationwide since the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport opened in 1974, Busey said.
“In many communities, we don’t have the solid, dependable base of public support that we need in order to build or improve airports,” Busey said. “The unhappy fact is that a lot of people are indifferent to aviation. They would have no objection if a shopping mall replaced the local airport. Others are supportive of airports, but ‘not in my back yard.’ ”
Airport opponents are so vocal that they influence local decision-makers more than airport proponents, Busey said.
“If we want to build support for airport improvements, then, we must speak for airport development as others speak against it,” he told the aviation council members. “I urge you to make yourselves heard in the political arena where it counts.”
In a news conference afterwards, Busey elaborated on his prepared remarks, saying that some existing airports could close because of the proliferation of noise abatement procedures set up by local government bodies at John Wayne and other airports around the country.
The procedures are so stringent, he said, that only specially equipped jets can abide by the noise requirements. Busey said the FAA is considering a national noise policy which would supersede the varying local noise limits.
On the subject of crowded skies, Busey told the aviation council that the common public perception of “winglock” or “gridlock” in the skies is exaggerated. He said the FAA allows only so many aircraft aloft as can be safely handled by the air-traffic-control system.
Others are kept on the ground until they can be cleared for takeoff, he said.
The FAA is trying to speed the flow of traffic by changing control procedures and redesigning airspace in high-density air corridors along the East Coast and in Southern California, Busey said. The FAA is also investing $15 billion into an ambitious plan to overhaul aging air-traffic-control equipment. Much of that equipment, Busey said, has already been replaced or is about to be replaced.
Besides speeding up aviation traffic, Busey said the new equipment is improving safety in the skies.
“None of us want another midair collision like the (Aug. 31, 1986) Cerritos disaster,” Busey said.
The collision over Cerritos between an Aeromexico jetliner and a single-engine plane killed 82 people, including 15 on the ground, and brought great pressure to bear on private pilots because the small plane was found to have strayed into controlled airspace, causing that disaster.
Responding to complaints by private pilots that the restructuring of the region’s airspace is driving them out of the skies, Busey said the FAA would make sure to leave enough special corridors open to private pilots so they can bypass restricted areas.
