Editorial

Port Authority Takes
Safety Over Law

We usually think of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a Goliath, relentlessly stepping on everything in its path on its way to creating bigger, noisier, more pollution-generating airports. However, last week the PA allied itself on the side of David when it announced a moratorium on new flights at LaGuardia Airport during peak hours beginning Oct. 1st. The PA's act was especially courageous in light of the fact that it defies a federal law enacted last year to expand service between New York and smaller cities by allowing takeoff and landing slots for smaller planes carrying up to 71 passengers.

Airlines have protested that the flights are necessary because the morning and evening peak hours represent most of their business. They claim that passengers prefer morning and afternoon-into-evening hours to other, off-peak times. The moratorium, they claim, will seriously infringe on their business. This argument does not hold water. Whether they want to or not, business passengers, especially the majority of LaGuardia's customers, need to fly rather than take other modes of transportation.

However, while air travel remains at least in theory the quickest way to get from one place to another, reality presents a different picture. Given time spent on line waiting to get a boarding pass, confirm reservations or get cleared through security and it is not inconceivable for an airline passenger to spend two or three times the length of a flight in an airport. Factor in delays due to weather and overcrowding at other airports and waiting for taxi clearance and it is not inconceivable for the actual flight--time in the air--to represent the shortest leg of an airplane trip.

Put under enough stresses, even the most urbane and sanguine of airline travelers will snap. Increasing incidents of "air rage" are reported almost daily, occurring both at airline terminals and in the air. Gate and flight attendants and passengers all feel they should receive combat pay for the indignities they have had to endure at each others' hands. LaGuardia has been the scene of several such incidents.

While one of the smallest, oldest municipal airports in the United States, LaGuardia is the gateway for domestic flights to and from New York. At one time the facility handled numerous flights in and out quite well. But as is the case with many other entities, it was then operating at capacity. Already 200 more takeoffs and landings a day have been added to its schedules, with concomitant infringement on its efficiency. Taxiways at times look like local highways at rush hour. Were it not for the Port Authority's willingness to defy Congress the situation would be far worse.

One of the funniest slapstick comedy routines ever devised involved two or three people trying to get through a doorway at once. This bit quickly loses its power to amuse when translated to several hundred planes a day trying to take off and land on two runways. Inevitably some of the planes are going to connect with each other. If their passengers and crews are lucky, collisions will happen on the ground at low speeds to result in the aircraft equivalent of fender benders. If all concerned, including the residents of the neighborhoods surrounding LaGuardia are unlucky--and the Federal Aviation Administration is crowding its luck more than a little with the takeoff-and-landing schedule--the result will be fearsome carnage and destruction.

The Port Authority in this instance knows more about the airports it manages than do federal officials who are not on the scene. Whether it has the power to enforce its dicta in contravention of federal law is unclear. In this case, however, legalities are irrelevant. What matters most is the safety and comfort of the people who fly in and out of LaGuardia and of the owners of homes and businesses and apartment residents who live nearby. Common sense and the common good should prevail.