Like hundreds of other flights this year, Daley's plane was held at O'Hare airport (which is owned and operated by the city of Chicago) because of a band of storms in the eastern part of the country. While such delays are not unusual, they have increased at an unprecedented rate, swelling by 50 percent in the past two years. The delays, moreover, have been particularly bad at five major airports-- Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago (O'Hare), and Washington, D.C. (Dulles)--where they were more than 80 percent higher in the first seven months of 1999 than the same period in 1998.
The rise is due to a variety of factors, including an unusual spate of bad weather, especially cautious air traffic control procedures, a lack of cutting-edge air traffic technology (such as real-time information on storms rather than the storm forecasts) and a growth in the number of flights, particularly at peak periods. Regardless of the cause, however, such delays are worrisome from a local perspective: The economies of thriving regions rely on information-age businesses, conventions and tourists, and these are all markets where extensive and reliable air connections are critically important. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that many local officials are trying to alleviate delays, usually by trying to improve the layout and operations of their airports and the air traffic control procedures used near those airports.
In fact, since 1985, the Federal Aviation Administration (which owns and operates the ATC system) has worked with more than 40 local airport operators to develop such airport improvement plans. In Miami, for example, FAA and local officials developed plans for a new runway, new ground procedures and a new daytime-only route for departing planes. A similar study in Dallas/Fort Worth led to a redesign of ATC procedures that has already produced a 40 percent increase in the airport's peak-hour capacity. (As a result of that study, a new runway is also being built at the airport.)
Such changes can be controversial. O'Hare's neighbors, for example, have protested against a proposed redesign of air traffic routes in Chicago on the grounds that, by allowing more flights, it will bring more noise and traffic to their communities. Similarly, disputes over propsoed new runways have erupted in Seattle, St. Louis, Boston and San Francisco.
Airport operators and local officials have two other options at their disposal, although to date they generally have not pursued either one of them. To the extent that delays are caused (or at least exacerbated) by the airlines' practice of scheduling too many flights at peak periods, airports could charge airlines more to use scarce runway capacity during those times, much as airlines charge travelers more to fly during the week. Imposing such charges was a central recommendation of a recent Transportation Research Board panel chaired by John Meyer, an economist whose work in the 1950s and '60s laid the intellectual groundwork for the deregulation of airlines (along with trucking and railroads) in the 1970s and early '80s. Such pricing policies, however, have been strongly resisted by smaller commuter airlines and the politically active and influential owners of both corporate jets and personal planes. Consequently, no airport operator has even tried to put such fees in place since the late 1980s, when they were used briefly at Boston's Logan Airport.
Airport operators could also wade into some contentious disputes about the operation and governance of the nation's air traffic control system. The key issue here is whether FAA can modernize the ATC system, and do so quickly. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey swears the agency has finally gotten its long-delayed ATC modernization program under control by moving to an incremental approach in buying new equipment. Local officials, such as Mary Rose Loney, Chicago's aviation commissioner, have lauded such efforts and asked FAA and Congress to speed up the modernization program, which has been constrained by congressionally imposed limits on FAA's budget.
Many of the nation's leading airlines believe that FAA is incapable of making needed improvements in a timely fashion. Consequently, they have called for turning the ATC system over to a private corporation that would have the incentive and ability to invest in new equipment and pay higher salaries to attract better personnel. This is neither a far-fetched nor a new argument. Sixteen of the world's 25 largest countries have privatized their ATC operations. Congress, however, has rejected several previous calls to privatize the United States' ATC system, largely because the politically powerful owners of business jets and private planes have opposed such efforts.
To date, airport operators and local officials generally have not gotten involved in these fights. But if delays continue to worsen, they may find themselves backing ATC privatization--a stance that might be enough to tip the balance of power in favor of that plan.
