The Wall Street Journal
THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
Why Fliers Find Summer Travel Growing Tougher
Number of Cancellations More Than Doubles Amid Storms, Gridlock
July 17, 2007; Page A1
June was one of the worst months in U.S. history for flight delays, according to a preliminary count by the Federal Aviation Administration, and it may end up having been the worst of all time. Canceled flights last month more than doubled -- 20,301 flights never got off the ground, according to flight-tracking service FlightStats.com, compared with 8,710 from the same month last year. More than 30% of all flights scheduled to land in the U.S. for the 40 largest airlines arrived late in June, with an average delay of 62 minutes. Hundreds of thousands of travelers were left waiting for hours, even days. Why? More storms and too many jets, a recipe for cancellations and long delays. Add an occasional problem with Canadian airspace crucial to Northeast traffic, airline cutbacks, a bit of finger-pointing between the FAA and airlines plus a labor dispute or two, and you have a summer travel nightmare.
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The 40 airlines tracked by FlightStats scheduled 14% more flights in June than in the same month last year, and that doesn't take into account increased flying by corporate jets and cargo haulers. Most of the airline increase came from fast-growing regional airlines that fly small jets and turboprops, feeding airline hubs and replacing big-plane flights with multiple trips by smaller, cheaper airplanes... Much of the added flying has been pushed into already-congested facilities such as New York's Kennedy International Airport. The FAA says, for example that last Thursday it handled 32% more flights at Kennedy than on the same day last year. On average, JFK is getting more than 20% more flights a day. Another trouble-spot: Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a major traffic hub hammered by frequent June thunderstorms. The FAA, which operates the nation's air-traffic-control system but doesn't regulate flight scheduling, says it is doing the best it can with antiquated air-traffic-control equipment desperately in need of modernization.
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Some airlines say the FAA has been overly conservative this year -- the national command center has been quick to have airlines thin out flight schedules with delays and cancellations when storms are forecast, they say, and controllers sometimes are spacing planes as far as 20 miles apart to avoid any chance of operational errors, when five miles would be acceptable under federal rules. Airlines have been pressing for greater use of Kennedy Airport's four runways; much of the time only two are used at the same time. This year, the FAA began using three runways simultaneously for takeoffs and landings, but that has been sporadic, airlines say. Often, regional air-traffic-control centers down the line such as the one in Washington, D.C., refuse to take more planes coming from New York, making it difficult to boost traffic flow at JFK.
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The FAA says it has to be careful to keep air travel safe when airlines are swamping the skies with aircraft. Despite the large increases in the number of delayed flights -- the number of on-time flights is also up from last year -- controllers are pushing the traffic through. Several severe-weather days were worsened for travelers in June because Canada's air-traffic officials didn't permit as many flights into that nation's airspace as they usually do, citing staffing issues and storms of their own, the FAA says. Airlines pay extra to use Canadian routes, but they are popular escapes into and out of the Northeast when storms hit the U.S.
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The major airline hit hardest in June was the biggest, American Airlines. Only 58.7% of its arrivals in the U.S. were on-time in June -- meaning they reached the gate within 15 minutes of schedule -- according to FlightStats, and 21.3% of the delayed flights were more than 45 minutes late. Flight cancellations were four times as high as the June 2006 number, American says. Thunderstorms, which airplanes avoid because of the potential for hail, lightning and violent winds, affected its Dallas-Fort Worth hub -- which handles 45% of American's domestic flights -- on 17 days in June, compared with only four days last year in the same month. Its other hubs in Chicago and Miami were hard-hit by weather as well.
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For travelers, much of the pain of the summer of 2007 has resulted from airlines' inability to rebook customers from delayed or canceled flights, leaving scores sleeping in airports or hotels after storms and sometimes waiting days for a seat to their destination.
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