The airlines' trade group, the Air Transport Association (ATA), has asked thhe Federal Aviation Administration to help ease air-traffic congestion in the New York area by treating airports primarily used by corporate planes the same way the region's three major commercial airports are. Why do PHL fliers care? Because PHL and New York share overlapping airspace, and flights coming or going to PHL from much of the west or north use the same higher-altitutde enroute facility, called New York Center, near Kennedy airport, as New York bound traffic does. This is a touchy issue these days because of debate in Congress on how to fund the FAA for the next five years. Airlines support a switch away from a percentage tax on ticket prices to a user-fee system in which all planes that use air-traffic control services would be treated alike. General aviation groups, representing business aircraft operators, charter services and recreational fliers, who now pay lower fees than larger passenger planes, are opposed to the user-fee idea because it would raise their costs, and they say they already pay their fair share. And, oh yeah, there's that issue of the FAA's controversial airspace redesign plan for PHL and New York.
In this latest iteratioin of the debate, ATA said traffic in the New York area is "completely saturated and near gridlock," and airlines have been forced to cancel hundreds of flights because of air-traffic constraints and summer thunderstorms. More than a third of all air-traffic delays nationwide last Thursay were in congested New York airspace, ATA said. ATA's solution: FAA should temporarily create additional airspace capacity by imposing proportional ground-delay programs -- that dreaded, 'We can't take off because we're in a ground hold, folks" -- at Teterboro, N.J., and other general aviatiion airports when ground delay programs are imposed on Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark. Corporate jet flights represent about 30 percent of all New York approach-control activity, ATA said.
We just touched the tip of this iceberg of an issue, so stand by for more devleopments.
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