Airports See Few Problems Thus Far: WSJ

Updated March 5, 2013, 12:13 a.m. ET
By JACK NICAS and SUSAN CAREY
The Wall Street Journal
 
Major airports reported smooth operations Monday after the Obama administration called attention to delays at two big airports over the weekend, adding to other early indications that the impact on air travel from forced government spending cuts may be less abrupt and in some ways less dramatic than many feared.

The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that freezes to overtime pay that are part of the $85 billion in so-called sequester cuts left customs and immigration checkpoints understaffed Saturday at Miami International Airport and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, causing two- to three-hour waits.

he waits were "150% to 200% as long as we would normally expect," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "We will see these effects cascade over the next week."

On Monday, however, officials representing a dozen major airports said there were few if any unusual flight delays or lines at security or customs checkpoints. Since the sequester started Friday, "we haven't seen any delays out of the ordinary," said Bob Rotiski, duty manager at San Francisco International Airport.

A Miami airport spokesman confirmed the customs delays on Saturday, but a JFK airport spokesman said he hadn't received any reports of unusually long lines since Friday. Both said there were no issues on Monday.

Airport delays likely will increase, though probably not for some time, as the freeze on hiring and overtime gradually reduces staffing among federal airport workers, according to federal officials who have pledged to ensure that the cuts don't materially affect safety.

Throughout Monday, the Democratic National Committee emailed copies of news reports citing harmful effects of the sequester, including one that said the Pentagon would furlough about 15,000 military school teachers and support staff around the world.

At the same time, Republicans called attention to instances in which administration warnings appeared to be overblown.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last month warned that furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration could lead to eventual 90-minute flight delays at some of the nation's largest airports.

The Transportation Security Administration, which has more than 45,000 airport screeners, said a hiring freeze it put in place would result in up to 1,000 vacancies by Memorial Day and 2,600 by Sept. 30 because of attrition. Wait times could eventually double during busy travel periods at security checkpoints, the agency said.

The FAA has said it is considering cutting air-traffic-controller training, hiring and overtime. Overtime is important to keep traffic flowing at many busy airports, and training is important for staffing because some tasks can't be done by trainees.

The FAA also has said it might eliminate overnight shifts at control towers at 72 medium-size airports and cut funding for towers at 238 small airports on April 1. Those cuts could create delays, as major control towers dealing with their own staffing issues pick up more flights in the wake of other tower closings.

But some of the cuts are likely to have little direct impact on the average flier. The tower closings at the 238 small airports—including those at Ithaca, N.Y., Santa Fe, N.M., and Hilton Head, S.C.—represent nearly half of the control towers in the U.S., according to the American Association of Airport Executives. But many of those airports don't have commercial air service, and several of the dozens that are served commercially said they don't expect to lose any service.

Airlines technically don't need to have an air-traffic controller guide them to a landing. And many of the airports that could lose tower staffing already keep them open only part time, while others operated for years without them.

"It's obviously safer when you have a tower controlling separation between faster jets" and slower, smaller aircraft, said James Parish, assistant director of the airport in Punta Gorda, Fla., which has about three commercial flights a day and added a tower last year. But without a tower, "we would continue as we had before."

The airport in Des Moines, Iowa, which could lose funding for its tower's overnight shift, has very few if any operations between midnight and 5 a.m., said airport director Don Smithey. If a plane needed to land in Des Moines in the absence of a controller, the pilot would be guided to that city by a controller in Minneapolis, who would deliver the plane to the Des Moines approach about five miles from the field. The pilot would use the instrument-landing system to touch down.

"All commercial pilots are trained to land at uncontrolled airports," Mr. Smithey said.

Executives of five major airlines who spoke at an investor conference on Monday hardly mentioned concerns about impacts from the sequester.

—Andy Pasztor, Peter Nicholas and Damian Paletta contributed to this article.

Source:  http://online.wsj.com