Fitzgerald Says Delay Controls Are Needed Again at O’Hare Airport in Chicago

U.S. Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald (R- Illinois) said that delay controls, pejoratively called “flight caps” by the airlines, are needed at O’Hare International Airport to reduce delays and ensure safety, and urged U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to impose them as soon as possible. “What’s happening at O’Hare is an insult to airline customers and an assault on air travel schedules across the country,” Sen. Fitzgerald said. “The airlines regularly schedule more flights than O’Hare is able to handle and then blame the inevitable delays on the weather or the FAA.”

Fitzgerald made the comments after Mineta called a meeting of the O’Hare air carriers in Washington D.C. next week to try to hammer out voluntary flight reductions. Although Congress removed delay controls from O’Hare and other airports in 2002, it gave the Transportation Secretary authority to impose new restrictions to ameliorate delays if the need arises. Fitzgerald predicted the airlines wouldn’t be able to reach agreement on a sufficient reduction plan and said that Mineta ought to act quickly on delay controls if the airlines don’t immediately come to agreement on aggressive reductions.

“We shouldn’t dance around the obvious,” he said. “Delay controls are needed at O’Hare, and we ought to put them in place right away.”

Fitzgerald praised Mineta and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey for aggressively dealing with the delay problems at O’Hare. The delays have reached historic proportions this year with 58,600 delayed flights in the first six months of 2004 — more than annual delays in each of the last three years.
Since he became a senator in 1999, Fitzgerald has fought for the continuation of delay controls at O’Hare. He was able to prevent the elimination of delay controls for a time, but eventually they were phased out ending in 2002. Until then, delay controls had been in place, and worked well, for more than 30 years at O’Hare, the two major New York airports, and Washington D.C.’s Reagan National.
At the time, Sen. Fitzgerald warned that without delay controls, delays would rise exponentially at O’Hare — a prediction that came true until Sept. 11, 2001, when air travel across the country was sharply reduced. Air travel has returned and is beginning to surpass pre-9/11 levels.

Fitzgerald believes the solution to the region’s future air transportation needs should focus on building a south suburban airport. He believes the proposal to expand O’Hare will not work because the airspace over Chicago is already saturated. According to Fitzgerald, a lack of available airspace over O’Hare will limit the benefit of adding new runways at that airport.

Fitzgerald believes that United Airlines and the City of Chicago lobbied Congress in 1999 to lift delay controls at O’Hare in order to create more delays and thereby build support for adding new runways. United Airlines opposes (and has opposed since 1969 when O’Hare first reached capacity) constructing a new Chicago area airport because it wants to prevent other carriers from entering the Chicago market. The City of Chicago opposes a new south suburban airport because a new south suburban airport would compete with Midway and O’Hare.

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August 4, 2004   Posted in: United States Central