Sunday, July 29, 2007 By DAVID A. MICHAELS STAFF WRITER

A
congested national airspace reached its choking point this summer,
fostering record delays at New Jersey and New York airports that
already rate among the nation’s worst for late flights.

By nearly every measure, the flying experience has grown worse this
year. Delays have increased. Passengers have missed more connections,
and airlines have canceled more flights. Even complaints of mishandled
baggage are up.

For the first six months of 2007, Newark Liberty
International Airport’s on-time performance was 66 percent, according
to Flightstats.com, an online database of airline performance. In June,
the number was worse: Only 54 percent of the airport’s arrivals were on
time.

The number of late arrivals at John F. Kennedy International
Airport, where flights have been increasing by thousands every month,
is also surging. In June, the airport’s on-time performance was 53
percent.

This summer’s problems follow the misfortunes of March, when the
lethargic response of some airlines to icy weather in New York and
other cities left thousands of passengers stranded on runways for as
long as 12 hours.

“Pretty much every time I’ve flown in the past five months, there
has been a problem,” said Eleanor Norton, a Manhattan musician who
missed a vacation to the Bahamas in March because icy weather canceled
most of JetBlue’s operations at JFK.

On Wednesday, as she waited for a flight to Columbus, Ohio, Norton
recounted her recent frustrations: canceled flights, missed connections
and long security lines. She flies almost weekly to performances as far
away as Poland, but has decided there is sometimes a better way to get
there.

“My philosophy about the whole thing is if you can drive somewhere, drive,” she said. “The airport situation is just awful.”

Hub system blamed

It isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. Even as the airlines’
performance worsens, passengers keep boarding planes — and airlines
keep adding flights. The region’s three airports, operated by the Port
Authority, handled 104 million passengers in 2006. The bi-state agency
projects more than 107 million in 2007.

“It’s the most heavily transited airspace in the country, so all it
takes is a hiccup, like a storm, in the system to create a very
negative impact on the industry,” said David Castelveter, a spokesman
for the Air Transport Association, the lobbying arm of the airlines.

Nationally, the Federal Aviation Administration expects a system
that currently processes 750 million passengers each year to reach 1
billion by 2015.

And though delays are most frequent in New York, the problem is
national. The hub-and-spoke system, used by most carriers, means that
even local travelers are affected by weather in far-off locations. The
hub-and-spoke system relies on flights connecting through larger
airports to reach their destination.

“It’s a nationwide issue, so I would not estimate that the delay
problem is going to go away anytime soon,” said Port Authority Aviation
Director William R. DeCota.

Many officials believe the airlines could improve performance if
they reduced their reliance on hubs and offered more direct flights.
Southwest Airlines, which has one of the best records for on-time
performance, avoids the hub-and-spoke system. But Southwest also avoids
the nation’s busiest airports, including La Guardia, JFK and Newark,
where sheer volume make it difficult to depart on time.

Airline officials say the hub-and-spoke system is here to stay.
Without it, they said, the airlines could not offer much service to
smaller markets.

Rather, they blame delays on external factors, including bad weather
and outdated air-control technology that doesn’t make use of the entire
sky.

Outdated technology

The airlines and the FAA are pushing for legislation by this fall
that would provide funding for a new, satellite-based air-traffic
system, known as NextGen. The new technology would allow planes to fly
closer together, opening up room for more flights.

“The transformation to NextGen has to begin now or these delays are
going to get even worse as more volume is thrown into the system,”
Castelveter said.

But many insist the airlines have inflicted much of the damage on
themselves. Officials at the Port Authority have urged the airlines to
use larger aircraft instead of the 37- and 50-seat planes that are used
for many flights.

In 2006, about 38 percent of Newark’s 363,555 domestic flights used
regional jets, Port Authority officials said. About 40 percent of
Continental’s operations at Newark use regional jets, Continental
spokeswoman Julie King said.

The airlines prefer smaller jets for some routes because they enable
frequent service and usually mean the planes are full. Passenger
revenue is increasing for many airlines after they lost money for
years. Last week, Continental reported its highest second-quarter
profit since 2000.

“From the business-model perspective, they have the right-size
airplanes flying the right routes, at the right time of the day,”
Castelveter said. “That is evidenced by their success.”

Too many flights?

Frequent flights appeal to business travelers, who pay higher fares
than vacationers who book tickets months in advance. The competition
among airlines to compete for that business helps keep fares low.

But DeCota said airlines have taken the strategy too far. He cited
the 23 daily departures from the Port Authority’s airports to Richmond,
Va.

“Why do you need this volume of flights to a destination like
Richmond, all served by regional jets?” DeCota said. “It makes no
sense.”

Sensing the decline in customer satisfaction, the Port Authority
recently formed a task force that includes airline executives and FAA
officials. The task force hopes to issue its final recommendations by
December.

“The dream would be that some of those recommendations would be very
applicable to winter operations, which are also one of the biggest
causes of delay,” DeCota said.

Some experts say the problem is more urgent than some airlines
think. They say airlines risk alienating their best customers —
business travelers — if the delays continue.

Robert W. Mann, an airline consultant based in New York, said
passengers would eventually “throw up their hands and say: This system
doesn’t work anymore. I can’t schedule meetings or be productive.”

Some business travelers said they would even pay more to avoid the hassles.

“It’s critical that business travelers be able to get there, then
get home to see their families,” said Don Giordano, an insurance
executive from Montclair who flies twice a month from Newark Liberty.

Airports risk a backlash, too. Jay Alcorta, a health-care executive
from Richmond, said he concluded after several late flights at Newark
— including one this month that cost him five hours on the way home —
that the airport “is absolutely the worst airport I fly though.”

“It’s a myriad of problems, but certainly there is too much traffic
on the runways,” he said. “Sitting there for an hour-and-a-half is
awful.”

E-mail: michaels@northjersey.com

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