=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2008/03/28/BUEUVRKBM.= DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, March 28, 2008 (SF Chronicle) Airlines see hard landings with fees George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer There won't be a fix anytime soon for the low cloud cover that causes weather-related delays many mornings at San Francisco International Airport. But its director says a proposal allowing airports to vary landing fees would help lessen congestion. The proposal, from the Department of Transportation, would permit airpor= ts to use landing fees as economic incentives for airlines that take off and land at less-busy times. No specific fees are being discussed yet, but very likely airports would increase the charge at peak congestion times and lower it during off-peak hours. For 50 years or more, landing fees at airports have been based on weight. The fee at SFO is $3.01 per 1,000 pounds aircraft landed weight. A 747 with a weight of 630,000 pounds pays $1,896. Landing fees do not vary by time of day. "We have a problem," said SFO Director John Martin, about crowded airpor= ts and flight delays. "We have a serious problem nationwide and we need to come together as an industry and this (proposal) gives us a tool to try to find a solution. It's for the benefit of the passengers." 'Demand management' San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom agrees. "This is tomorrow's headline - = we have got issues of how to deal with demand management, whether for parking meters, parking garages, toll roads, airports." He added, "Conditions are only going to get worse at airports with curre= nt incentives, if weight is the only criteria in landing fees. It took courage for John Martin to be out front, but look at this - now we are hearing about market-based pricing and it's coming from the Bush administration. It's fascinating." The concept for the landing fee adjustment grew out of the consternation= - really consumer upheaval - over prolonged delays during peak hours at East Coast airports last year. President Bush, who made military airspace available to commercial airliners on East Coast corridors during the holidays, said a solution will be found, and Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters put airport congestion at the top of her agenda. Change is not going to be easy, however. The trade group representing the major U.S. carriers, the Air Transport Association, as well as the International Air Transport Association, vigorously oppose the plan, saying that the pricing adjustment would be an unauthorized tax and that it would lead to higher fares, disrupt transportation flow around the globe and force passengers to wait hours for connecting flights when they land at off-peak hours. Passing on fees "The airlines will turn over the fees to passengers," said Doug Lavin, regional vice president for North America at the International Air Transport Association in Washington, representing 240 airlines. "You'll either pay more for a ticket (on a flight) landing at a congested time, or you'll have to land at 2 p.m. rather than 5 p.m. for an evening flight," and spend a prolonged period of time in an airport not built to handle long waits. "Those are the two things that would happen," said Lavin. "This is a government solution, not a market solution," said David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association in Washington. "That standard simply makes no sense today," said Martin of SFO. "Weight is not our constraint. The number of landings we can handle per hour is our constraint," and it simply makes more sense to provide an incentive to airlines to spread out operations throughout the day, he said. Martin also objected to a landing fee being called a tax. "They are flat-out wrong," he said. We do not impose taxes, we impose fees. We impose fees to cover our costs and we only exactly recover our costs," said Martin. There were 10,279 delayed flights at SFO during 2006, accounting for 3 percent of all delays nationwide, according to the Department of Transportation. "Poor weather, especially during busy morning hours, is a frequent, but unpredictable problem that inevitably leads to delays when scheduled aircraft operations exceed poor weather runway capacity," Martin said in his written response to the proposal. Morning low cloud cover typically limits landings at SFO to about 30 per hour, while 60 per hour can be accommodated at other times, Martin said. Martin supports other elements in the proposal, including the shifting of service to less congested secondary airports within the region. Traffic rising Traffic at SFO has been rising considerably lately. Some 36 million passengers passed through in 2007. Although that is short of the 41 million in 1999, Martin expects the airport will reach that level in the near term. In 2007, traffic was up 7.5 percent over 2006. D.J. Gribbin, the general counsel of the Department of Transportation, said the proposal mirrors pricing schedules "you see a thousand times in every day life," played out in the face-off between limited resources and demand. "You see it in lower-priced tickets to a matinee to higher prices at a convenience store, because there is value in convenience, to cellular telephone anytime minutes on the weekend," he said. "Here, if you do not need to land in San Francisco during the peak morni= ng time, we want people to fly in after noon, when there is space available," said Gribbin. Delays lengthen at Delta, American as airlines continue to inspecti wiri= ng on planes. C4 E-mail George Raine at graine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -------------------------= --------------------------------------------- Copyright 2008 SF Chronicle <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If you wish to unsubscribe from the AIRLINE List, please send an E-mail to: "listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Within the body of the text, only write the following:"SIGNOFF AIRLINE".