Airport Congestion – Here’s An Idea

Airport congestion – what’s the answer? There was an interesting article written by the Associated Press posted on AM New York last week talking about the gridlock at New York’s airports. You can read it here. The thrust of the article was that our antiquated air traffic control system was the cause of all the delays. Wow. Talk about some mis-guided blame. Maybe we can dissect the situation a bit.

Airport congestion is caused by – drum roll, please – airplanes! Since the air traffic control system doesn’t generate airplanes, don’t you think there might be some other reasons for this congestion? Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of really good reasons for the huge quantity of airplanes in the air and headed for any one airport.

First, the airlines schedule their flights in big bunches. If Delta chooses (based on passenger desires, they claim) to depart airport “Q” for airport “Y” at 8 A.M., then Continental and American will do the same so as to try to get some of that perceived 8 A.M. rush of passengers. This bunches these departures on the runway at the same time and bunches them at the arrival airport at the same time. Multiply this by 10 or so city-pairs from each of 15 or 20 airports and, voila, congestion ensues at both the departure and arrival airports. Now throw in the infamous “hub” operations in the middle of many flights, and pandemonium is the daily result. For a hub to work, all aircraft must arrive at essentially the same time and then depart at the same time with the ensuing ground time allowing the passengers to all run to their next flight. No built-in congestion problem here.

Second, let’s take a look at the aircraft in use today. Not too many years ago, the normal mix of aircraft was about 10 “large” aircraft for each turboprop. This has gradually mutated into almost no turboprops, 5 “large” aircraft and 7 commuter jets. You would think the commuter jets would just sort of take over for the turboprops, but that isn’t the case. The turboprops were a lot more flexible for the airport operations. They could land on shorter runways than the commuter jets; they could land and stop short of other active crossing runways thereby allowing each runway to essentially operate independently with regard to separation; they carried almost as many passengers as the commuter jets in many cases; and they could depart from runway intersections and make quick, low-altitude turns out of the way, leaving the “large” jets the full length for their departure runs without having to wait for wake turbulence to dissipate.

Want to get rid of the delays? Here’s the list:

• Move some airplanes and stagger departure and arrival times. Airport fees could accomplish this.
• Build some more runways. An additional parallel runway can almost double airport capacity.
• Look at the runway utilization rules that are in place. Some of these could be “tweaked” to improve capacity.

For more blog entries, aviation news and information, visit our main site at AviationAnswers.com. News is updated throughout the day – even on weekends. Our section on Aviation Blogs brings in the most interesting entries every day. Give us a try!