Feds Unveil Plan to Ease Airport Congestion

May 16, 2008 — -- Airlines will be required to report more complete information on the amount of time passengers spend on airport tarmacs, the Department of Transportation said today in announcing its latest efforts to ease flight cancellations and delays.

The exact time passengers are delayed on those taxiways is often lost once a flight is officially cancelled, under aviation rules, but that will change.

"Passengers should know whether it will take as long for their flight to get to the runway as it will to land at their destination," Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said.

"The new rule will do just that by requiring airlines to provide complete on-time and tarmac delay data about flights that may depart from a gate more than once, flights that are cancelled after having left the gate and flights that are diverted to another airport after departure," she said.

Airlines will also be required to disclose baggage fees up front -- both online and in print -- before they sell tickets, officials said.

In hopes of easing congestion for travelers, the Transportation Department also called for capping the number of flights at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport to 83 per hour during peak times, as is the case at nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The department also proposed a rule to auction off take-off and landing opportunities at Newark and JFK.

Still, not everyone agrees that the administration is taking the right approach to easing congestion.

"Implementing an untested scheme to impose auctions at the busiest airports in America is nothing short of insanity," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement today. "Auctions have never been tried and were hatched by a handful of ivory tower types in the administration. It shows that this administration puts ideology above the safety and economic well-being of the American flier."

The Air Transport Association, the group that represents the airlines, also said Friday that it opposes the auction proposal for the New York region.

The pledges to improve conditions for travelers came today as the Transportation Department released reports assessing the chaos at the nation's airports last month that resulted from American Airlines' canceling more than 3,000 flights in one week.

Shortly after the debacle, the Transportation Department asked both the Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines to take a close look at what happened.

The 300 MD-80 jets in American's fleet had to be reinspected after it was determined that the airline hadn't properly secured wiring bundles in the aircraft wheel well.

"The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and American Airlines both agree that when it comes to aviation safety, there are no soft deadlines," Peters said. "Indeed, both the agency and the airline agree that safety deadlines must be met, without exception and without excuse."

Still, the FAA's report lays the blame for the impact of the cancellation squarely on American Airlines.

In its report, the FAA says that American did not do the work necessary to comply with required airworthiness directives, reporting that "the workmanship accomplished in response to this AD was unacceptable."

The FAA said the materials American used were not the ones called for in the maintenance requirement and concluded that the overall safety goal was "not accomplished."

The FAA also denied the notion that there was an agreement between the FAA and American to let the planes continue to fly past the maintenance deadline.

"There is no 'informal' path to operating in noncompliance with ADs -- the airline must demonstrate compliance," it said.

"American Airlines could have done the work properly in the allotted time," the FAA reported.

For its part, American Airlines continues to say that this was an issue of compliance, not safety. It maintains that while its aircraft may not have met the letter of the requirement, the planes were not unsafe.

Many aviation safety experts also said during the cancellations that this was not an issue of safety.

"FAA is the ultimate arbitrator on what constitutes a safety of flight issue," said Transportation Department general counsel, D.J. Gribbin.

American's report called for better communication between the FAA and the carrier, especially at the highest levels, and for improvements in maintenance requirement procedures.

"In our view, the root cause of the fleet grounding was a communications failure within the FAA and between the FAA and American," the carrier's report states.

After the cancellations, Congress questioned the FAA on whether an improved system for compliance checks could have helped avoid the cancellations.

The spate of inspections came shortly after the FAA called for inspections among all carriers after slapping Southwest Airlines with a $10.2 million fine for not adhering to required safety and inspection checks.

"Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long overdue safety overhaul at the FAA," Schumer said.