FAA To Keep Present Flight Activity Levels At La Guardia
BY JOHN TOSCANO

Federal aviation officials have decided to maintain the status quo of 75 flights per hour at La Guardia Airport to maintain a safe level of operations. However, they hope to increase the future passenger volume at the Northwest Queens facility by requiring larger airplanes to operate there.

A spokesman for the Port Authority (PA), which operates the airport, said the PA agreed with the idea of using larger aircraft in order to accommodate more passengers.

"Our goal has always been to serve more passengers on the same number of, or even fewer, planes," PAspokesman Pasquale Di Fulco was quoted as saying in a New York Times story detailing the Federal Aviation Administration's decision on flight activity at the airport.

The 75-flights-per-hour rule currently in effect will expire on January 1. The FAA decided to continue it rather than risk the untenable situation which arose in April 2000 when Congress relaxed the rule and allowed exceptions to it. Within five months, the airlines had scheduled about 300 flights per day, increasing in-and-out activity appreciably and causing extensive delays.

When the FAA reinstated the rule, following complaints from Congressmember Joseph Crowley, other public officials and community leaders, and set the 75 flights-per-hour schedule, the airlines scheduled many more flights to closer destinations, using "regional jets," smaller planes carrying no more than 50 passengers.

Although La Guardia has remained one of the busiest airports in the country, beginning in 2000, the average number of seats per flight dropped by about 11 percent, to 98 seats from 110, according to DiFulco.

However, by last year, La Guardia was handling an all-time high of 25.9 million passengers, and airport officials see the number going higher. That's fine with them.

The FAA, meanwhile, while maintaining the current level of traffic would like to get Congressional approval of a plan calling for larger planes and increased competition for the right to operate flights, known as slots.

The overall effect would be more passengers carried per flight. DiFulco said just three more passengers on every plane flying out of La Guardia would add up to more than 1 million additional passengers a year.

The FAA hopes to have more and larger planes operating out of La Guardia by the middle of next year.