New, Smaller Planes Crowding Skies Once Left to Big Jets

NY Times ^ | 030704 | MATTHEW L. WALD

[Archangelsk]

New, Smaller Planes Crowding Skies Once Left to Big Jets By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, March 6 — For years the skies have been crowded with airplanes, but the planes' capabilities have kept them at different altitudes, with small, piston-driven models a few thousand feet above ground, commuter turboprops in the 20,000-foot range and jet airliners at 30,000 feet or higher.

Now, to the dismay of aviation experts, an increasing number of planes may begin competing for space at the same higher altitudes. The turboprops are disappearing and being replaced by "regional jets," which fly at big-jet altitudes. Some of the older, larger jetliners are disappearing, too, each being replaced by two small regional jets.

The number of corporate jet flights is on the rise as the economy rebounds, in planes owned by major corporations or shared through fractional ownership, sold somewhat like time-share condominiums. And manufacturers of private planes are planning new "microjets" — small, relatively cheap planes designed for flying at the altitudes, if not the speeds, of the big airliners.

The changes are happening as the industry recovers from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, SARS and the Iraq war, and as the level of air traffic returns to near its 2001 peak, when delays kept millions of passengers waiting in airport lounges and on planes in takeoff lines.

"We're expecting a crunch in late spring or summer," said H. Keith Hagy, assistant director of the engineering and air safety department at the Air Line Pilots Association.

Others put the critical point slightly later, but Mr. Hagy and other experts agree that a proliferation of small jets is part of the problem. There are almost 500 regional jets, or R.J.'s, on order, and they are entering the system at the rate of about 200 a year, representing nearly all of the growth in airliner aviation.

"There's going to be a lot more competition for the airspace," said David Watrous, the president of an industry advisory group, the RTCA, formerly known as the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics.

Top officials of the Federal Aviation Administration say the trends will challenge them. At a meeting of the RTCA last month, Russell Chew, the agency's chief operating officer, said air traffic costs were based mostly on the number of planes, not on how big they were. "Capacity has already begun to become tight again," Mr. Chew said in a speech.

The agency's revenue comes from ticket taxes, but ticket revenues are flat or declining. "The financial pressures are going to be enormous," Mr. Chew said.

In January, the secretary of transportation said the F.A.A. would need to triple its capacity to handle traffic in the next few years. But the administration's budget for the agency for the next fiscal year calls for an 18 percent cut in spending on new facilities and equipment, which led the agency to shelve several projects intended to increase capacity.

Ruth Marlin, the executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said runway congestion, the traditional choke point for the system, could be made worse by a switch from turboprops to jets, because many airports have one runway for each.

The turboprops, which are planes with jet engines that turn propellers, can use older, shorter runways of less than 6,000 feet, but if the runway is given over to small jets carrying the same number of seats, the turboprop has to compete with the big jets for time on the bigger runway.

A former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, J. Randolph Babbitt, said, "At La Guardia, you can still only land them one every 54 seconds, or whatever the number du jour is."

Mr. Babbitt, now a consultant, said: "There's a finite amount of concrete. If you take one 747 out and put two R.J.'s in, it's just one more aircraft in the air traffic environment and the runway environment."

The number of regional jets could eventually be dwarfed by a new class of private jets meant to replace high-end private planes with piston engines. Eclipse Aviation, of Albuquerque, plans to begin delivering a four-seat, twin-engine jet in 2006, for under $1 million each, which would cut current prices in half. The company already has more than 2,000 orders.

The crowding is reviving friction between the airlines and other operators. At the RTCA meeting, Ira G. Pearl, the director of flight operations at Delta Air Lines, complained that in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., one recent Saturday, one of his company's wide-body jets, with 200 passengers on board, was delayed 45 minutes as it waited for takeoff behind 13 corporate jets.

The F.A.A. has always operated on a first-come-first-served basis, but, Mr. Pearl said, "H.O.V. lanes in the sky are something to think about" — meaning a system like car-pool lanes on a highway, also called high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, in which planes would get priority according to how many people they carried.

Peter West, the spokesman for the National Business Aviation Association, responded in a telephone interview that business flights were a sign of a healthy economy, which would help provide the growth that would keep the airlines healthy, and that the solution was to increase capacity.

In fact, the aviation agency recently added capacity by changing the traffic pattern above 30,000 feet, so planes can fly within 1,000-foot layers instead of 2,000-foot layers. It also has a new system for planes to navigate using a combination of guideposts, including the global positioning system and ground-based radio beacons, and to take direct paths rather than following established lanes in the sky. But it has published procedures for the system for only a handful of airports.

[raloxk]

"I know it's a matter of taste, but on a 737 or 727 on a full flight you have a 20% chance of being stuffed between two strangers."

its worse actually, you have a 33% chance

[raloxk]

actually Australia is a pretty cheap place to learn to fly.


Privitising ATC would help with conjestion. At YYZ when the ATC was privatised, through-put for YYZ increased dramatically without any delays or safety issues.

[Beenliedto]

When little jets start crashing into backyards

Oh, I remember you. You're the person who doesn't know what the subject is.

[skinkinthegrass]

As far as high and fast, I would give my eye teeth for a Lancair P4!

truely...a beautiful plane. *sigh* :)

[Archangelsk]

Don't start in on SCOPE clauses, you'll end up confusing the non-pilot public. :-)

[Archangelsk]

pasted from the article: "Mr. Babbitt, now a consultant, said: "There's a finite amount of concrete."

What he meant was that there's a finite number of runways. For bonus points, name the last two major airports to open.

[dalereed]

"For bonus points, name the last two major airports to open."

How about Dallas and Denver?

[RonHolzwarth]

re: "What he meant was that there's a finite number of runways. For bonus points, name the last two major airports to open."

---

Well, OK, I was not all that serious, I did mean it as a joke. Have you ever taken a comment out of context, to make a joke? Where I'm from, and with what I have seen of the airports here in the midwest, that sounded very funny to me!

I can only name one, DIA, just opened recently, known to the residents of Denver as "Pena's Folly".

So, I lose on that one, I could only name one. Later in this post, I have a question for you, and I am SURE you will not be able to answer it, because it is a trick question!

But back to DIA - Seems there is not nearly enough air traffic to justify its expense, nor will there be, for perhaps decades at least. Only in the future will the wisdom or folly of replacing Stapleton become apparent.

DIA has been described as being "the world's biggest airport", however, pundits have pointed out that since they measured its size by the area that the airport owns, it is akin to placing a single mobile home in a huge parking lot, and then calling it "the world's largest convention center".

Anyway, DIA certainly already owns enough empty land to fill any possible needs for at least a few centuries. Plus, since it is so far out in the wilderness, there would be no problem to buy even more farmland to make it bigger, just in case they ever need to construct a whole lot of twenty mile or longer runways.

One of the problems with DIA vs Stapleton is that DIA is way, way east of Denver, far out in the country. Stapleton was much closer to downtown. Now, seems nobody knows what to do with the suddenly empty Denver International Airport. There was some talk about using it for residential purposes, but it will take decades to sell it all off that way.

And, about the concrete guy - he lives so far from anyplace where more airports could possibly be needed, there is no way he could supply it anyway. Where he lives, there is an overabundance of airports, that is for sure!

He is about a mile from a very little used airport as it is, and maybe thirty miles from the HUGE airport built by the military in Goodland, Kansas, for air transport stops during World War II.

I cannot cite an authoritative reference for this, but it is said that the airport there sets a record - for (runway length and number of runways) vs (population size of the town).

The population of Goodland is about 8,000, and it is no problem to land big jets there. They can even fuel them up, as a few small jets do land there sometimes, but there is very little scheduled air transport there. A few commuter flights, that is it.

I could only name one new airport recently constructed, so I failed the test. But now, I have a question for you:

Can you name any other metropolitan area in the US with a population of less than 10,000 - that has an airport that can land jumbo jets?

There is lots of land available, and lots of concrete. The problem is that the airports are desired to be in or near urban areas, where land is expensive, and might require the use of eminent domain to acquire.

I worked in the aviation field a few years back, but in avionics and flight test, so I am in NO WAY an expert on airport construction. But I sure do remember the emptiness of the airport at Lincoln, Nebraska, where we did some flight test.

Some of the runways there were growing weeds. Instead of using the hangers there, they leased out the ones they could - for factory work. But, still on the airport property, they still had empty warehouses left over, and inside the empty barracks, there still graffiti left on the walls - from World War II. That was very interesting, I surely do wish I had photographed it. Granted, this was in 1982, but for me to read that there is a shortage of airports now just strikes me as unbelievable. I think maybe there are bureaucrats looking for justification for their jobs maybe?

I believe that smaller jets are the wave of the future for many reasons. Many, or most, have already been posted on this thread, and are rather obvious.

I don't know if this point has been noted on this post yet, but with the military base closings here in the US, a lot of land in very desirable locations is becoming available, for instance, NTC, conveniently right next to the airport already in place in downtown San Diego, and also, Treasure Island, right inside the San Fransisco Bay, would be wonderful for new airports. Many of these bases already have some air facilities already in place.

And, in other locations, building new airports is NOT a serious problem - the problem is to acquire the land for them. Smaller jets require shorter runways - so less land would be required.

So, I have no doubt that more airports will be built, however they will be smaller ones, serving the new, smaller jets, and hopefully they will be closer to where the air travelers need them to be.

And, with the price of the planes as high as they are, I really don't think that a shortage of airport facilities is ever going to be an ongoing problem. Short term, maybe so, but long term, no way.

In closing, I will say this:

The problems that will be faced in the future are not anything we can foresee.

[spodefly]

"Mamzelle"

[Archangelsk]

Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. KDEN and KDFW.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Your house has been targeted for a $30 million corporate jet to crash into. Move soon. The people flying these things have no respect for your life or their's. They only want to crash. Run for the hills before it's too late. No wait run cor the valley's the hills aren't safe.

CG

[Conspiracy Guy]

Excellent. All pilots want to crash into her because we like to crash into her and people like her to display our guff and swagger.

CG

[dalereed]

"NTC, conveniently right next to the airport already in place in downtown San Diego"

Keep your stinking hands off the bases in San Diego for your airport!!!!

[The South Texan]

Regional Jets Rock!

Better than flying in those turbo-props, AKA crop dusters.

[brewcrew]

After re-reading the quote, it seems Mr. Babbitt might have been referring to the finite amount of concrete specifically at LaGuardia (i.e., the inability of LGA to expand).

[RonHolzwarth]

from earlier post:

---

"NTC, conveniently right next to the airport already in place in downtown San Diego"

Keep your stinking hands off the bases in San Diego for your airport!!!!

---

I wish. I really do.

I went through BT and BEEP at NTC San Diego. I already knew it had already been closed, but of course had to drive by for a look, while visiting the area a couple years ago.

It was a shock. The barracks I had lived in were simply gone, as well as the small chapel on the corner, that was a gem of Spanish architecture. The roofs of many of the buildings were collapsing, and the area was filled with weeds.

It was amazing to me to see weeds growing on the grinder.

They closed a once very beautiful base, which I did not at all appreciate it while I was stationed there. And, at the time I visited, no decision had yet been made as to what to do with that rather valuable piece of real estate.

Anyone who has seen a base that they were once stationed at closed will know the sadness I felt.

So why keep the airport off the location of the former base? It was only real estate with falling apart buildings anyway, as of a couple years ago.

[dalereed]

The stupid city has all sorts of plans from low cost housing to parks but won't consider expanding Lindburgh to utilize it.

The only other option that I think might be feasable would be to make North Island NAS dual use with all passangers and luggage being transported by overhead tram, under the bay tunnel, or ferry with tickiting and passanger drop off and pick up at Lindburgh so only heavies and pasanger loading and unloading would be done on Coronado.

It would have to be set up so that all domestic air traffic would be terminated in an emergancy.

[Central Scrutiniser]

I flew the CRJ 700 a few months ago, much much better than the dreaded 500 (aka, "lawn dart"). I was in first class though, so I wasn't complaining. Mesa is adding piles of flights to AWA's network, passengers expecting an A319 don't care much for the 50 seaters. I'm flying on the 747-400 combi next month, kinda weird having that big wall halfway down the plane and only 200 pax.

[Final Authority]

What the article doesn't say is that many of the regional jets are flying to and from airports that are not the traditional airports in metro areas. In the greater Boston area two airports, Green in RI, and Manchester in NH are growing exceedingly fast. Manchester is the fastest growing facility in the nation and much of it is owed to RJs. I must say though that when I recently flew into Newark from Manchester I was truly impressed by the number of RJs in queue waiting to take-off. I will admit that I liked flying a 767 to Houston better than the Bombardier RJ I took recently. Although much smaller, and I am a big guy, the RJ is fast, quiet, and so far, safe.

[Kirkwood]

Legroom I don't need. Looking for wider seats and the ability to open a laptop up.