ATC Delays Bottleneck Newark Operations

<B>ATC Delays Bottleneck Newark Operations</B>

By Frank Rosci

Business travelers flying in and out of the New York metropolitan area are aware--either through the grapevine or the sting of personal experience--of the air service delays that plague Newark International Airport. It is a situation for which the resolution is focused first and foremost on safety and service, assured all the key players--the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and, of course, the airlines. The ultimate goal, officials said, is to empower clock-conscious business travelers, to make more informed choices.

"The Port Authority is doing what it can. We have, for instance, developed a program to bring relief to passengers who are stranded in a plane after landing because of insufficient gates--a not uncommon situation given the heavy volume of flights," wrote executive director Robert E. Boyle in late 1999 in a letter in part to FAA administrator Jane Garvey.

The program, also in place at JFK and LaGuardia, identifies alternate gates and provides the means for passengers to transfer directly from the plane to a terminal-bound bus. Other steps by the Port Authority to speed things along at Newark include links through the Authority's Web site (www.panynj.gov) to a U.S. Department of Transportation site displaying information on the delay history of specific flights on major airlines; extension of a main runway to increase pilot options to cut back on waits for takeoffs and landings; expenditures to improve mass transit links; and a number of technological advances.

According to DOT statistics, Newark consistently ranks near the bottom of the list of U.S. airports when it comes to on-time performance. In fact, the airport had ranked number one in delays most of the past decade, actually seven of the past eight years until 1999, said Daniel D'Agostino, tower facility representative of NATCA. "It's a major problem, a major issue that has a lot to do with the schedules of the airlines," he said. "But it's not a safety problem; it's strictly volume."

At Newark, delays are a pronounced case of "volume equals chaos," D'Agostino added, "with air traffic controllers handling from 90 to 110 operations per hour, with an average of up to 1,500 a day for the entire tower and that's in perfect weather." Foul weather, such as fog, reduces those numbers considerably.

Chicago O'Hare recently wrested the delays title from Newark, which came in second in 1999. However, Newark still had the highest percentage of delays, with close to 8 percent of its 463,889 flights last year delayed by more than 15 minutes, compared with 5.5 percent of O'Hare's 897,290 takeoffs and landings.

Air traffic controllers--one element of the complicated and complex delays scenario at the airport--have their hands full, said D'Agostino. Of the staff of 37 the facility has authorized, 25 have reached full performance or are fully certified, which means they can work by themselves under supervision, while 12 are still training. Each of the controllers must be proficient in nine or 10 job functions, including tower, radar, flow and ground control, and flight data and clearance delivery.

"The FAA, which controls our workforce, was really just sending us bodies until recently, but this most recent group is progressing nicely through ground control. We will have a better idea of where we are and how we're doing in three to six months," D'Agostino said. He compared ground control, one of a controller's toughest jobs, with "being a traffic cop in Times Square without the benefit of traffic lights."

Newark is one of three major airports--along with New York JFK and LaGuardia--that create the world's densest air traffic. JFK, Newark and LaGuardia, for example, served 86.5 million air passengers and handled more than 2.7 million tons of cargo in 1998. Not surprisingly, when bad weather, typical of the Northeast in winter, is added to the volatile mix, the delay situation can quickly go from bad to worse.

"Unfortunately, delays are what you get at major airports, and bad weather is the greatest contributing factor," said Bill Cahill, spokesman for the Port Authority. In 1999, 79 percent of all delays at Newark were caused by bad weather. As operator of Newark, the Port Authority is acutely cognizant of the conditions at the airport. "We and the FAA have the same priorities: public safety and unimpeded operations," Cahill said.

Naturally, all the major players share those same sentiments. In another portion of his letter to Garvey, Boyle pleaded for more aggressive action to stem the rising tide of delays at the metropolitan area's three major airports. "The airlines must be prodded to use larger aircraft in busy travel markets, such as the New York/New Jersey region served by JFK, Newark and LaGuardia. Truth-in-scheduling procedures should be adopted to avoid the practice of scheduling more flights for a particular time period than an airport possibly can accommodate. And the method of reporting delays should be changed to provide travelers with more meaningful information," Boyle wrote.

FAA hears the extended pleas for help, said Frank Hatfield, air traffic manager of the Eastern Region for FAA. "We are making strides at Newark redesigning airspace around the airport. By the end of this year, or early next, we will have completed the redesign which, after extensive public meetings, should be implemented by the year 2004." Some of the measures being considered as part of the redesign, Hatfield added, are fanning departures in more directions and instituting ocean routing, which would help reduce noise pollution. FAA also has plans for a new control tower at Newark.

Continental is Newark's leading carrier, and as such it has a huge stake in the airport. In a recent speech in New York, Continental's president and CEO Gordon Bethune targeted an antiquated air traffic control system as the leading culprit for delays. "Here in the New York area, where air traffic control delays are particularly high and have steadily worsened, we have had to drop service to small communities, because there is little ability to reliably connect in Newark," said Bethune. "What does that mean to the consumer? It means they have fewer choices, less capacity and longer delays, which are very expensive.