This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. Downturn in Air Travel Unclogs La Guardia's Runways January 25, 2003 By MATTHEW L. WALD Two years ago, takeoffs and landings at La Guardia Airport were so badly backed up that the federal government said the delays there caused a quarter of all the nation's air traffic delays, and it stepped in to ration the right to land there. Now, airline traffic has fallen off so sharply that the airport is operating far below capacity, and on some days there are no delays at all. The development is a complete reversal of fortune for La Guardia, where at one point nearly one in three planes was delayed by at least 15 minutes, and many of those were delayed for more than an hour. Although the development is good news for frustrated passengers, it is not necessarily the case for the airlines. Much of the reason for the ease in what seemed like a perpetual bottleneck at La Guardia is the sharp drop in the number of airline passengers. With fewer people flying, the airlines are cutting back on flights or abandoning routes entirely, and now the Federal Aviation Administration has a surplus of landing slots that it has trouble giving away. On Wednesday, arrivals and departures were running flawlessly, one every 90 seconds or so. With gusts getting stronger, pilots arriving on Runway 22 complained that the crosswind was too strong. So James G. Courtney, the traffic management coordinator in the tower, decided to switch arrivals to Runway 31 so the planes would be more nearly facing into the wind. In the old days, that would have meant chaos because each of the dozens of planes waiting to take off on Runway 31 would have to taxi to Runway 4. But this day, there was only one regional jet waiting for takeoff clearance. "You don't have to be an aviation expert to see we're not at capacity," said Mr. Courtney, a controller here for six years. As he spoke, gates stood empty. One plane taxied down to the takeoff runway, and then its pilot asked for a delay; with no other traffic to wait for, the crew had not had time to finish the preflight paperwork, controllers said. The scene was a far cry from 2000, when Congress lifted the restrictions on flights into La Guardia for start-up airlines and airlines serving new markets, and the airlines added a swarm of planes. The airport, which had been limited to 1,088 landings and takeoffs a day, became a free-for-all, with about 1,400. "It was a madhouse," said Tanya Hyman, a controller here for 11 years. "We'd see airplanes parked at every piece of concrete. It was like a puzzle, so many planes and no place to put them." Eventually, the airlines backed off because sending a plane to La Guardia meant committing it to extensive delays during which it did not earn revenue. In response, the F.A.A. cut the number of slots to 1,247, a compromise meant to get maximum value from scarce real estate without inviting a flood of planes that made the airport unreliable. But now the number of daily takeoffs and landings at La Guardia, which is in Queens, has fallen to around 1,100, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates La Guardia, Kennedy and Newark airports. Slots are available for every hour of the day except 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Passenger traffic is down even more sharply than the number of planes, with some airlines substituting 50-seat regional jets for full-size planes. By the Port Authority's count, planes landing at La Guardia two years ago had an average of 110 seats, but today the number is 97. That could fall still further, with US Airways having declared that it will try to find its way out of bankruptcy by flying smaller planes. This month, the F.A.A. began shopping among the airlines, trying to give away slots that had fallen into disuse. It is a tough decision for airlines. "When everything was roaring, before Sept. 11, we were doing everything we could to get the slot rule undone, so everybody could have free access," said Carol Skornicka, a spokeswoman for Midwest Express Airlines. But with the falloff in business, which she said began even before the terrorist attacks in 2001, Midwest Express cut its daily round trips to New York to seven, from eight. La Guardia's fortunes will turn around, the Port Authority insists. "I can fundamentally predict and guarantee traffic is going to return," said William DeCota, the authority's director of aviation. Traffic used to be 25 million passengers a year, but that fell to 22 million last year. He predicted that it would eventually reach 30 million. In fact, Mr. DeCota would like some long-term limit on traffic. The F.A.A. was working on such a system before the terrorist attacks; now it has put off the problem by extending the restrictions on the number of slots until 2007. If the F.A.A. does not make the restrictions permanent, Port Authority officials say, they will consider "gate performance standards," which would provide gates only to airlines that brought in large planes. The F.A.A. controls the runways, but the Port Authority controls the gates. Some airlines, like AirTran Airways and Spirit, say they would like to add service but complain that there are other bottlenecks, like gate space. "That can be, for us, a bigger issue," said Kevin P. Healy, vice president for planning at AirTran. The airline operates nine flights a day from a single gate at La Guardia and would like a second gate, but it is having a hard time securing a long-term contract for one, he said. Small airlines like his accuse bigger airlines of warehousing gates, to avoid giving them to competitors. That, too, he said, can increase delays, because sometimes when a plane is late, it will occupy a gate designated for another plane, which will have to wait on the ramp or on a taxiway. Although some huge carriers are losing millions of dollars a day or are in bankruptcy, few are willing to give up the gates, even if they could save on rent. An airline that cancels a daily round trip to, say, Little Rock can easily reinstate it later. But not at La Guardia, and that is an incentive to stay put. "You may want it a year from now," explained George W. Hamlin, senior vice president of Global Aviation Associates, a consulting company in Washington. "Once you have it, there's virtually no incentive to let it go." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/nyregion/25LAGU.html?ex=1044502363&ei=1&en=4eabd37b64224c8b HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company