Air traffic congestion at O’Hare International Airport has become such a problem that United and American Airlines have agreed to reduce the number of flights they operate at peak times by 5 percent.
And that points to something remarkable, though it hasn’t drawn much attention. Even in the midst of the Sept. 11 attacks, a national recession and a slump in the convention and tourism business, demand for O’Hare steadily grew.
O’Hare handled a record 931,422 operations last year. That’s up from 922,817 in 2002, 911,917 in 2001 and 908,989 in 2000.
The urgent need for more capacity there has only increased.
The voluntary cutbacks for United and American were brokered by the Federal Aviation Administration, which recognized that growing congestion-related delays at O’Hare were having ripple effects across the nation. The two airlines account for 88 percent of O’Hare’s flights. They agreed to cut or reschedule 62 flights between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Passengers should face little disruption, the airlines promise, and should see some increase in on-time performance. O’Hare had fallen to the worst in the nation.
Cutbacks in service are an imperfect solution to this problem. The long-term solution is growing O’Hare so it can handle more planes and more passengers, and moving forward with a new airfield in the south suburbs.
The O’Hare component is being addressed by the $6.6 billion expansion plan, which will reconfigure existing runways and add two new runways, allowing capacity to nearly double to 1.6 million operations a year.
In announcing this unusual deal to voluntarily reduce peak-time flights at O’Hare, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta acknowledged this is an interim measure, which will have to be monitored to see if it delivers the relief promised. If it doesn’t, additional steps might need to be taken.
He also acknowledged that more capacity at existing airports and more efficient use of airspace are essential to any long-term solution.
The record volume at O’Hare occurred in a year that saw continuing financial pressure in the airline industry amid economic recovery. United’s parent, UAL, filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2002 and has yet to emerge from Chapter 11. United, American and the other major carriers continue to struggle to compete against the discounters, such as Southwest, ATA and JetBlue.
This reinforces a fact about Americans and air travel. Despite economic problems, today’s security hassles–and yes, even the delays at O’Hare–the steady upward trajectory in demand for air travel is unlikely to change. Rationing access to O’Hare is a temporary, unfortunate, but necessary byproduct of its success as the most essential hub in the nation’s aviation system.
