Welcome to La Guardia, Enjoy Your Stay

It’s the airport with the most delays in the nation.

How many, you ask? Try 10,226 planes that were late taking off from or landing at New York’s La Guardia field during October. One day, 600 aircraft couldn’t arrive or depart on time.

And angry passengers are stacked up like planes waiting for a thunderstorm to pass.

“We are just held hostage,” said Terry O’Brien, who last weekend stood--along with his wife, Elizabeth, and their friends--in front of a screen full of red letters signaling canceled or late flights.

They were trying to return to Portland, Maine, after a weekend getaway in Manhattan. The plane was supposed to leave at 2:30 in the afternoon. That flight was eliminated because the runway was too crowded. They were booked on the 7:30 flight, but its departure was pushed back until 8:15 p.m.

Nearby, Gunter Damian--a vice president of an animal health company--was typing on his laptop. He had been stuck in Kansas City, Mo., for 12 hours because his flight didn’t have clearance to take off for congested La Guardia.

“It seems every time I travel to La Guardia, the plane is late,” Damian complained.

The Federal Aviation Administration has labeled the situation “intolerable.”

So the agency held a lottery Monday to reduce the number of flights at La Guardia--which accounts for almost one-quarter of all U.S. airport delays.

The lottery is a stopgap measure until the FAA can come up with a solution to the problem created by a law designed to provide service to smaller cities: too many airlines signed up for slots at La Guardia.

“You already had an airport that was close to capacity, and these additional flights created a very large increase in delays due to congestion,” said FAA spokesman William Schumann.

Simply put, there are just too many planes waiting to take off and land. Flight controllers can handle about seven aircraft operations every five minutes without compromising safety. These days, 22 planes are trying to squeeze into that time slot.

“The snowball effect occurs the entire day,” said one FAA traffic expert who asked not to be identified. “Even if you have your very best day, you are still going to run a couple of hundred delays because of volume.”

The effects of the delays can ripple across the country. Confronted with congestion at La Guardia, flight controllers routinely order planes to remain on the ground at other airports so problems won’t worsen.

La Guardia--named for New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who served from 1933 to 1945--was built on a site once occupied by an amusement park. It is a small, older airfield with only two runways.

The entire facility is only 680 acres; John F. Kennedy International Airport 10 miles away covers 4,930 acres. But La Guardia handles 33% more flights daily.

Even though it’s been almost seven months, Julie Wilson still remembers her ordeal at La Guardia.

“It was a journey through hell,” she said.

The first plane Wilson boarded for Austin, Texas, in the afternoon started moving down the taxiway--only to return to the gate because of congestion. The flight was canceled.

Scrambling to find her baggage, Wilson saw a flight that stopped in Houston and continued on to Austin. She approached the counter to try to get a ticket.

“I watched people on the line melt down and scream at those people behind the counter. It was really bad behavior, each person thinking their problem was worse than the next one,” Wilson said.

Sweating out standby, she eventually boarded the second flight--only to have it delayed by bad weather.

When the plane touched down in Texas early the next day, the passengers applauded.

From start to finish, Wilson’s trip took eight hours--twice what it normally would.

“Some flights at La Guardia have experienced average ground delay time that exceeds scheduled flight time,” the FAA noted in papers announcing the lottery.

Results of the lottery designed to reduce air traffic by 20% won’t become effective until January--too late for the Christmas travel season.

“I couldn’t imagine this place in a few weeks for Christmas,” Elizabeth O’Brien said. “Horrible.”

Some jaded travelers mused that if Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had to take off from La Guardia, he’d be so late he’d cross paths with the Easter Bunny.