AIRPORTS: The Crowded Ground

SIX years ago, Los Angeles International Airport dedicated new terminal facilities that were supposed to represent the wave of the future. Designed to handle 15 million passengers a year, the seven highly automated "satellite terminals" are already obsolete.

"Sure, we badly underestimated our growth factor," admits Deputy General Manager Robert C. Davidson. "But no one could accurately forecast the fantastic growth that air travel has experienced in the past six years." He has a point. In 1959, the first full year of commercial jet travel, 51 million domestic passengers boarded planes in U.S. airports. Less than ten years later, the total has more than doubled, to 115 million. Predictions--which will probably fall short of the mark--are that 280 million people will be flying in 1975 Airport congestion will thereby increase even more unless something is done quickly. Among other problems: within two years, jumbo jets will be dumping 350 to 500 passengers each plus 1,000 pieces of baggage, into the overcrowded airports.

Even without jumbos, airports are straining at the seams. Chicago's O'Hare, the nation's busiest, handled 27 million passengers last year, and has just about reached saturation. A $200 million expansion program is under way to accommodate the 40 million travelers expected by 1975. Washington's National Airport is badly overcrowded, but passengers prefer its convenience to bigger but more distant Dulles or Friendship.

As a result, ground hang-ups often consume more of a passenger's time than the 50-minute shuttle flight from New York to Washington. In the New York-New Jersey area, the Port Authority, which runs the airports, is spending $425 million to expand Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports and is meanwhile seeking a site for one more all-new superport. Boston also needs another airfield, whose cost will be over and above the $225 million now allotted to expand Logan International. Pittsburgh, with traffic up 25% in one year, has earmarked $11,800,000 for immediate expansion. Altogether, U.S. airports will spend at least $4.9 billion in the next ten years, but even that may not be enough. Says the New York Port Authority's Aviation Director John R. Wiley: "What we have is an air-transportation crisis."

Slow Luggage. The crisis causes five ground delays for every holding pattern in the air. "Ground technology," says Logan's director, Richard Mooney, "is far behind airplane technology." The majority of the delays come from slow luggage handling. Last year 340 million pieces of passenger baggage were handled; by 1970 that figure will reach 545 million. Despite automated equipment, luggage usually arrives inside the terminal well after its owner. To speed delivery, many airports have stopped insisting on claim checks--with devastating results. Pilferage is up, sometimes because of organized rings of thieves. "We caught one guy with 22 bags stashed away in a rooming house up the road," reports New Orleans Airport Director O. L. Sands.

Other causes for complaint include long lines at check-in counters and overcrowding in airport restaurants. Much the overcrowding is due to people who come to gawk rather than fly. Parents park children at airports while they go someplace else to shop. Some airports, to keep kids in hand, have opened amusement arcades, kiddy rides and souvenir shops, which turn many a city's aerial gateway into a carnival. Says one airport executive: "Where you don't hate something to entertain the kids they write all over the walls. You do it as a defensive measure."

Poor Liaison. Airlines dislike the congestion as much as passengers do. The Air Transport Association estimates that delays cost them $50 million last year in extra crew time, fuel costs and other expenses. The A.T.A. also figures that passengers lost another $50 million in wasted time. The problem will become more acute when the jumbo jets are flying. "From the point of view of economy," says TWA Airport Planner Donald Graf, "you can't let a 747 stand around too long. They're so expensive that we've got to get them back in the air as quickly as possible."

In organizational terms, the Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for airspace, the Civil Aeronautics Board for routes and flight frequencies the airlines themselves for flight scheduling, and local authorities for maintaining airports. Liaison is poor. Airport men accuse the airlines of being too secretive about equipment plans. It was only 18 months ago, says E. Thomas Burnard, executive vice president of the Airport Operators Council International, that the airlines told airports they would be buying jumbo jets. This gave the cities only a scant 36 months to carry out necessary improvements to handle such planes. "It's the same story as in the 1950s, when we pleaded with the manufacturers and airlines for the specifications of the jets they had in mind. We got no useful information until a few months before they began flying the 707s. Airlines don't want their competitors to know what they're going to order."

Any solution will add costs to the traveler's ticket. Until recently the Federal Government covered 25% of the cost of airport construction. Now the Government wants out. The U.S Secretary of Transportation, Alan S. Boyd, recently proposed that, except for special cases, airports and airlines do all heir own financing, cover the cost of revenue bonds by means of higher ticket taxes and new taxes on fuel and cargo. Meanwhile, with expansions necessary and costly new construction planned, airports are already increasing landing fees and other charges.

Even where money is available, cities are finding it increasingly difficult to acquire the right land for new airports. Everyone wants a convenient field in some other part of town where the noise, fumes and potential hazards will not be personally obnoxious. In Washington, even the poverty marchers of Resurrection City are complaining about the noise from jets approaching National Airport. New York's proposed superport in Morris County, N.J., is being blocked by protests. Last week the House Interior Committee, urged on by New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes, moved to make the Great Swamp area, where the field would be built, a wildlife preserve instead of an airport. Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley is contemplating a plan to build a 12.6-sq.-mi. airport on landfill in Lake Michigan, and Cleveland's Mayor Carl B. Stokes has a similar plan under consideration for Lake Erie.

More Roads. Wherever new fields are built, faster ways must be found to speed the traveler through them. At Love Field in Dallas, Braniff International intends to do it partly through a "Fastpark Jetrail," a monorail that will convey passengers and their baggage from an outlying parking lot into the terminal itself. Airlines are spending $150 million altogether on automated ticket-writing equipment and on a joint reservation system. Between the two, a potential passenger could go to a supermarket, bank or hotel to determine plane space and buy a charge-card ticket, then be checked in by machine when he reaches the boarding gate.

One common problem for all airports is getting the passenger into and through the airport area in order to reach his plane. Airport access roads are becoming altogether too crowded, and cities are searching for new ways to cover the distance. One is helicopters, but they have generally proved uneconomical to operate. Cleveland this fall will begin service on a 4.2-mile, $18,600,000 rapid-transit spur that will convey travelers by train from downtown to Hopkins Airport. New York is similarly experimenting with buses that can go part of the way to Kennedy by rail. Most cities, however, are unimpressed by fixed-route service, since downtown passengers are now only a fraction of the total. The remainder reach the airport from the suburbs or surrounding towns, and the only realistic way to service them is to build still more expressways wide enough to avoid the slowdowns that cause passengers to be caught in traffic jams when their airplanes are taking off.

One answer to this will be tried by Los Angeles as part of a $500 million expansion program. The city's airport authority foresees satellite airports located no more than 150 miles from International Airport. Travelers would go to the satellites, be ferried by short-takeoff or vertical-takeoff planes to International to catch their longer flights to someplace else. Oakland Airport Manager Glenn A. Plymate has a more advanced idea. He thinks that industry should make such communications as telephone and television so sophisticated that businessmen could conduct nearly all of their business in the office and would hardly ever need to fly.

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