SAN FRANCISCO -- United Airlines and the Air Transport Association
blasted San Francisco Airport for a plan that would dictate to
United how many flights it can offer and what type of aircraft it
can fly on specific routes.
The result of the proposal, United said, would be steep cuts in
its service to Sacramento and Fresno, Calif., now getting 16
turboprop flights a day, and Eureka, Calif., which is getting 12.
The number of San Francisco-Los Angeles shuttle flights would be
cut in half, to 17, the airline said.
The proposal is part of the airport's plan to improve its dismal
on-time flight-arrival and -departure record.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the plan specifically names
United, but it appears the conditions would principally affect
United, which is the airport's dominant carrier.
Airport officials did not respond to repeated requests for
clarification or comment on the plan.
The ATA called the plan blatantly illegal and said it would
drastically reduce service to smaller communities. For its legal
argument, the ATA cited the federal Airline Deregulation Act, which
it said prohibits airports from determining routes or mandating the
type of aircraft to be used.
San Francisco Airport's plan, however, could be a sign of things
to come, according to an aviation researcher who has made a
professional crusade out of the need to improve air traffic control
and airport capacity to accommodate the boom in air travel.
Without changes to increase capacity, "what you're seeing at San
Francisco is the future of airports and air travel," said Darryl
Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington
University in Washington. "It is congestion and it is
rationing."
If that happens, he said, the losers will be small communities
that would see service cut or eliminated.
As of April 27, San Francisco Airport had not officially
submitted its plan to the Federal Aviation Administration for
approval, and in published reports, airport director John Martin
has admitted it will be a tough sell.
But Martin said in a statement that the airport must do
something to alleviate delays until it can reconfigure its runways
to handle more traffic.
By any measure, the airport's on-time record is abysmal.
In February, only 64% of flights operated by major U.S. carriers
left the airport on time, Department of Transportation statistics
show. Only 52% of flights arrived on time, which means passengers
could flip a coin to determine whether they would be landing late
or not.
None of the other 29 airports tracked by the DOT comes close to
those numbers.
Part of the reason is weather, particularly fog, and another
part is the configuration of the airport's runways.
Most major hub airports can handle 100 flight arrivals an hour,
United said, but San Francisco Airport can handle only 60 on good
weather days. That number drops to 30 on poor weather days.
The airport's plan to reduce delays, at least in the short term,
includes a prohibition on the use of aircraft with less than 50
seats for service to specific cities. Airport officials maintain
that airlines can use bigger aircraft and fly fewer frequencies
instead.
In protesting the proposal, United said airline customers,
especially business travelers, want more frequent flights to give
them more flexibility.
"If there weren't demand for this level of service, we wouldn't
be flying it," a United spokesman said.
The airline also said bigger aircraft, which are more expensive
to fly, aren't economically feasible for service to smaller
communities.
United and the ATA argued that the airport should concentrate on
improving its runways instead of trying to tell airlines how to
conduct their business.
In 1999, the airport hosted six public meetings to get feedback
from the community about a potential runway reconfiguration, and it
is conducting more meetings this year.