AJC = Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper. From: http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/delta/stories/2006/11/02/1102bizontime.html?cxntnid=biz110306e On-time woes hit Atlanta's airlines, airport By RUSSELL GRANTHAM The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 11/02/06 Atlanta's top three airlines and its airport fell to the bottom of the industry for on-time performance in September â?? four months after the opening of a new fifth runway built to reduce delays. Officials at the airlines â?? Delta, AirTran and Atlantic Southeast â?? and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport blamed a repaving project that put one runway out of service starting in early September, forcing the airport to shift traffic patterns and go back to using four. But U.S. Transportation Department reports also show the airport's on-time arrivals rate trended downward before the repaving started. The latest Department of Transportation monthly report, issued Thursday, showed Hartsfield-Jackson's three largest airlines at or near the bottom of the industry for on-time performance in September â?? an unusual trifecta. The airport itself also landed in last place, 31st out of 31 major airports. "We saw a tremendous relief then when the [fifth] runway opened. Planes were no longer circling," AirTran Vice President Tad Hutcheson said. But the airport needed to repave the other runway sometime, he added, and September is usually a light travel month with dry weather. "Now, we're suffering," he said. The good news: The repaved runway is due to reopen next week, so the trend may reverse in time for Thanksgiving travel. Hartsfield-Jackson General Manager Ben DeCosta said no more repaving projects are expected for another decade, adding that things should be much improved once all five runways are in business and airlines adjust. "The fifth runway has been a success," he maintained. ASA at bottom But for now, government and airline officials say the runway reshuffling, coupled with more aircraft using the airport and worse weather than usual for the time of year, has caused significant delays. Another factor, the DOT statistics suggest, has been chronically poor on-time performance in recent months by Atlantic Southeast Airlines. ASA is a regional feeder for Delta Air Lines and, along with Delta and AirTran, one of Hartsfield-Jackson's three biggest operators. ASA had the lowest on-time record in September out of 20 airlines ranked by the DOT, with only 55.5 percent of its flights arriving on time â?? an unusually low figure for an airline in any month. It was the fourth month in a row that ASA has been at the bottom, and the third straight in which fewer than 60 percent of its flights arrived on time, according to the DOT. Delta Air Lines was 18th of 20 airlines for September, with an on-time rate of 68.6 percent. But it had been notably better earlier in the summer, at 10th in August and seventh in July. AirTran Airways ranked 17th in September, at 70.8 percent, after being 16th in August and eighth in July. At the other end of the scale was Hawaiian Airlines, with an industry-leading 96 percent on-time rate for the month. The average for all 20 airlines was 76.2 percent. The DOT report defines a flight as on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. Frustrated fliers Fliers interviewed at Hartsfield-Jackson on Thursday said they've noticed more delays lately. "I really can't stand it anymore," Mike Metreyeon, an information technology sales manager from Roswell, said while getting his shoes shined before a midafternoon flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. His original flight, scheduled to leave at 11:20 a.m., was canceled. The culprit was irregular flight operations, Metreyeon was told. Metreyeon flies Delta to and from Atlanta three times a month, and he says he's missed business meetings because of delays. He thinks the airline has too many flights at the Atlanta airport and should better schedule flights and add another hub airport. "I just don't understand why every flight has to go through Atlanta," he said. Atlantan Lisa Lillemon â?? waiting in the airport's food court for a business meeting with someone whose flight was late â?? said she has no choice but to be patient. She thinks overbooked flights are a culprit. "You kind of sit back and say 'Well, I'll have to wait,' " she said. Hartsfield-Jackson, the world's busiest airport, has long been delay-plagued. But its September mark of 60.9 percent was far lower than normal. The average for the 31 big airports in the DOT report was 75.4 percent. In the same month a year earlier, Hartsfield-Jackson posted a rate of 82.6 percent, good for 16th place. The airport also was running with four runways then. But it handled almost 5 percent more landings and takeoffs this September than last year as Delta, which has been restructuring in bankruptcy, shifted more passengers to regional carriers' smaller jets. ASA's passenger loads in Atlanta have grown about 24 percent this year as a result of Delta's changes. Delta, ASA and AirTran reported about double the amount of weather- and air-traffic-related delays to the DOT in September compared with a year earlier. Delta spokeswoman Gina Laughlin said weather had a "huge impact" on September flights, with about twice as many days in which jets were held or delayed compared with a year earlier. DeCosta, however, said he believes the September delays had less to do with weather than how the Federal Aviation Administration handled rush-hour air traffic when the repaving project started. He said FAA data indicated that 46 percent of delays were weather-related in September, vs. 71 percent a year earlier. "I conclude that it's because of the way they configured the runways," he said. Ground bottlenecks In any case, Hartsfield-Jackson's on-time rate was trending down even before September, as some airlines grappled with unintended consequences of the new fifth runway as it was phased into the traffic flow. It was 20th among the top 31 airports in June, 22nd in July and 28th in August. The problem, said Anthony DiNota, who heads Atlanta airport operations for ASA, is that the new runway shifted traffic backups from the air to the ground when it opened at the end of May. The extra runway boosted the airport's capacity to 135 landings per hour, from about 100 previously. Both DiNota and Hutcheson, of AirTran, said the higher inflow at times put more pressure on other bottlenecks at the airport, especially the airport's shortage of gates. "There was a whole change in the dynamic," said DiNota. "It had an impact on our on-time [performance], no doubt about it." DiNota said many ASA planes this summer actually arrived too early, then had to keep taxiing or wait until a gate opened up. He said the airline is hiring extra ramp workers and working with Delta to modify schedules. AirTran has long lobbied for more gate space, and Hutcheson said the airport needs to move forward with building new concourses or convert another facility such as the now-vacant Northwest Airline hangar into a passenger terminal. With the fifth runway, "clearly there's more capacity to schedule more departures and arrivals, but there's no space to put [planes]," he said. Adding to the on-time issue has been periodic delays in luggage handling, in part because of a greater volume of checked baggage after changes in security rules. Delta ranked 15th in September in mishandled baggage complaints, with 9.58 reports per 1,000 passengers, while ASA had the worst rate of mishandled luggage, at 24.13. AirTran was fifth, at 5.36. Staff writer Eric Stirgus contributed to this article.