Kennedy Airport Problems

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The airlines and other parties opposed to reducing schedules at J.F.K. all see culprits besides the physical reality of too many flights in too small a space. They blame the weather, the nation’s admittedly antiquated air-traffic-control system, and a cornucopia of other minor factors. And they raise the hoary restraint-of-trade argument. “If this limitation [had been] in place at J.F.K. last year, the airport would have turned away nearly 3.4 million passengers, or 10,000 per day,” complained the Port Authority in response to the D.O.T.’s suggestion.

But these arguments all ignore one of the primary reasons why Kennedy is in chaos: For years, the airlines have relentlessly reduced passenger capacity while dramatically increasing the number of flights, a process known as “downgauging.”

In 1978, for example, United Airlines flew three times a day between J.F.K. and Los Angeles. It used Boeing 747s that could accommodate a total of 1,356 passengers. Thirty years later, United clogs J.F.K. with seven daily flights on the route. But since it now uses Boeing 757s configured with only 110 seats, its daily capacity has dropped to 770 seats. In other words, United now has about half the daily passenger capacity despite having doubled the number of flights on the route.

Then there are the so-called regional jets, 37- and 50-seat planes that didn’t exist 20 years ago. Today, they represent 28 percent of the flights at J.F.K., but they carry just 13 percent of the airport’s passengers. And despite airline protests that these tiny, runway-clogging planes serve small communities whose populations cannot support larger aircraft, the truth is quite different. American Airlines, for instance, flies 37-seat jets to Washington four times a day from J.F.K. Delta uses 50-seat regional jets five times a day between Kennedy and Chicago.

The airlines claim they run much smaller planes because passengers demand more flight options. But what good are frequent flights that almost never run on time? More than anything, business travelers want reliability. Most of us would happily trade the illusion of frequency for flights that run without delays.

And the real kicker? Things are even worse than they seem from the schedules.

Consider American Airlines Flight 10, the popular red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Kennedy. These days, Flight 10 is scheduled to depart at 9:30 p.m. Pacific time and arrive at Kennedy at 5:45 a.m. the next morning. That’s a scheduled travel time of 5 hours and 15 minutes. Back in 1978, however, Flight 10 had a scheduled travel time of just 4 hours and 55 minutes.

What do business travelers get on Flight 10 now that American has “padded” the schedule by 20 minutes? According to FlightStats.com, only 74 percent of flights on the route arrive on time, and the average delay is 24 minutes. In real time, it actually takes 44 minutes longer to fly from Los Angeles to New York than it did 30 years ago.

But that’s another story of the Naked City.

The Fine Print
According to the latest Air Travel Consumer Report released yesterday, 75.4 percent of flights at Kennedy Airport operated on time in September. It ranked 30th out of the nation’s 31 largest airports. (Bad weather in the Twin Cities during September meant Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport was just 73.6 percent on time.) Between 3 and 10 p.m. in September, at least one in three flights arrived late at J.F.K.

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