Unfriendly Skies

By Ed Magnuson

Filmmaker Peter Charley arrived at the United Airlines check-in at San Francisco International Airport half an hour before his 11 a.m. flight to New York. The slow-moving line took nearly 30 minutes to clear. He then spent an additional 20 anxious minutes passing through security, expecting to miss his plane. But as usual, the departure was delayed. Relieved, Charley buckled into his seat and waited for takeoff. And waited. The pilot finally explained that his windscreen wiper needed fixing. Charley and other passengers fumed while mechanics fiddled. It took more than an hour before he was airborne.

Then the trip really began going sour. Without explanation, all passengers were told to leave the plane during a Denver stopover. Another hour passed. After reboarding, they waited 40 minutes for takeoff. By the time they reached New York at 1 a.m., four hours overdue, La Guardia's runways were closed for the night, and the jumbo jet was diverted to Kennedy. At La Guardia, Charley's girlfriend Melanie waited for three hours before learning what had happened. Poor Charley had almost become the jet-age version of the 1959 Kingston Trio hit about the "man who never returned." Declared Charley: "If I had any choice, I'd never fly again. It is a gauntlet of frustrations, insults and hassles."

As a record summer of domestic air traffic nears its Labor Day-weekend climax, millions of irate and weary passengers are echoing Charley's sentiments, recounting similar stories of sitting in stuffy airports or in cramped airliners stalled at terminal gates or queued on taxiways. The Federal Aviation Administration reports that delays in the first seven months of this year have climbed fully 30% over the same period last year.

So far this month, an average of 1,258 landings or departures were delayed each day at 22 U.S. metropolitan airports. While that is less than 8% of the roughly 16,000 flights scheduled daily, the problem is especially bad at certain key airports. The number of late flights at New Jersey's Newark airport is running 40% above last year's and is the highest in the nation: an average of 146 delays for every 1,000 takeoffs or landings. Other laggards include New York's La Guardia (91 delays per 1,000 operations), Boston's Logan (72), New York's Kennedy (71), San Francisco International (62) and Chicago's O'Hare (48). Delays have become so routine during peak travel hours that AT&T advises its executives flying to meetings to allow an extra three hours' traveling time.

An ever growing flying public is becoming painfully aware that some curses have accompanied the blessings of airline deregulation. Bargain fares and upstart airlines have increased bookings from 319 million passengers two years ago to an expected 410 million this year. What was long an elitist and expensive but comfortable means of transportation has been transformed into a democratic, cut-rate mass-transit system that is straining to serve the hordes of new passengers.

"We see passengers getting on planes feeling frustrated and mishandled," concedes Noreene Koan, a flight attendant based in San Francisco. "They expect travel to be the way it is in the TV ads and then find chaos at the airports." Even travel agents are becoming disenchanted with what they are selling. "There has been a degrading of service," complains John Huggins, president of Woodside Management Systems, a corporate-travel agency based in Boston. "Gone are the days when flying was fun."

One annoyance for passengers is a relatively recent change in flight-flow procedures. Instead of letting airliners circle jammed airports waiting to land, the FAA has forbidden them to take off until air controllers are sure that the planes can touch down promptly at their destinations. This saves fuel, which the cost-conscious airlines love, and reduces the sky stack-up, which overworked controllers appreciate. It is also safer, which everyone should admire.

Many passengers, however, resent being captives on grounded airliners. When Valerie Woods, a Chicago public relations executive, sat for 90 minutes in an American Airlines jet at Logan, the cabin became so hot that attendants opened the plane doors. Why were the victims held there instead of in the cool terminal? Because, Woods was told, the crew wanted to be able "to go as quickly as possible."

When a delay is caused by a mechanical problem, passengers sometimes suspect that they are kept on board long enough to prevent them from catching a competing flight, even though many airlines have agreements to transfer passengers in such situations. If other flights are available, notes Daniel Smith, a spokesman for the International Airline Passengers Association, "the airline can lose a whole planeful of passengers and their money. In a deregulated environment, that's a disaster."

Many unhappy passengers suspect that scrubbed flights are increasing and that some airlines have been canceling when they have not sold enough seats to make a flight profitable. The carriers deny it, but Hoyt Decker, an industry analyst for the Department of Transportation, insists, "I'm sure it happens." While airlines can legally scratch occasional flights, the department has investigated at least six airlines on complaints that they were doing it systematically. So far, however, no scheduled U.S. airline has been penalized for this.

Mechanical problems are, of course, a valid reason for delaying an airliner. But with rare candor, Eastern Air Lines admitted last week that in July it had averaged 39 cancellations of 1,500 daily flights because of lagging maintenance. "Eastern is having extraordinary problems," conceded Spokesman Jerry Cosley. "Our employees are catching hell at the airports." This month Eastern scrubbed its daily flight from Miami to London on four successive days because its only available DC-10 required engine repairs. On one day Eastern kept 285 passengers waiting five hours before announcing the cancellation. On the fifth day, it kept travelers at the airport for 13 1/2 hours before finally lifting off for London. Admitted Cosley: "We abused several hundred of our passengers." Seeking a fix, Eastern replaced two of its top maintenance executives. The FAA has levied heavy fines against Eastern, American and, last week, Pan Am for maintenance-related violations.

Officially, the FAA blames the weather for 70% of this year's delays -- frequent fog and thunderstorms have plagued the busy Northeast, and other storms assaulted the Midwest. Any weather hitch quickly gets amplified in the prevailing system of hub airports, in which large airlines attract commuter feeders to major cities. A significant delay at one hub quickly affects ( connecting flights there and spreads to other centers.

More controversial is the role of the air-traffic control system, which is still operating with 2,000 fewer fully qualified controllers than it had before President Reagan ordered the firing of 11,438 striking controllers in 1981. Since many of the replacements are relatively inexperienced, they protectively, and prudently, tend to space out aircraft even beyond the recently tightened requirements, slowing movement. "The skies aren't crowded," insists William B. Cotton, manager of United's air-traffic system. "It's the air-traffic-control system that's crowded." The strain was compounded last week when 34 of the 238 air-traffic controllers at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Center at Palmdale were suspended from radar duty pending a probe of alleged off-duty drug use.

While flatly denying that air traffic is being delayed by a shortage of controllers, FAA Administrator Donald Engen sees a far more fundamental problem as the villain. The number of U.S. airlines has jumped from 38 in 1978, when deregulation began, to more than 250 today, vastly increasing the number of airliners flying. Contends Engen: "What this nation needs right now is to wake up to the fact that we're already short of places to land. We don't have enough airports."

Engen argues that it is up to the cities, not the Federal Government, to take action. But few cities seem ready to meet the challenge. The last major airport built in the U.S. was Dallas/Fort Worth, opened in 1974.

Still, there is one happy side to the summer's air woes. Despite carelessness by a few of the fined carriers, the slowdowns are evidence of a general concern for safety. After 1985 set a sorry international record of nearly 2,000 airline fatalities, this year's overcrowded, often delayed schedule of major U.S. carriers has not resulted in a single death. For all the inconvenience, that is an impressive accomplishment.

With reporting by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Lisa Kartus/Chicago, with other bureaus