FAA disputes McCarran director’s claims

Molly Ball

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 11:15 a.m.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday responded angrily to comments made by the director of McCarran International Airport, who had blamed increasing flight delays partly on the government agency's handling of air routes.

"(Airspace) congestion over Southern Nevada played no role at all in delays," said Donn Walker, West Coast spokesman for the agency.

"It would have been helpful for the airport to at least talk to us before they try to explain the causes of delays," he added.

The spokesman said he was stunned by the comments Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker made to local media.

"What took us by surprise was, we thought, we think we have a very good relationship with that airport," Donn Walker, who is not related to Randy Walker, said.

"I don't know why the airport would try to paint a picture that frankly doesn't reflect reality," the FAA spokesman said.

But Randy Walker stands by his statement that an increasingly crowded high-altitude airspace along the single route between Los Angeles and the Northeast U.S. has caused planes leaving Las Vegas to have to wait to take off.

In October, McCarran was the second-worst airport in the nation for departure delays, with nearly a quarter of all flights leaving at least 15 minutes later than scheduled.

Walker said the federal agency didn't give Las Vegas planes a fair chance to get on the "highway in the sky" jammed with coast-to-coast planes -- leaving them in the position of cars waiting for a gap in traffic to turn right onto a busy street, without the benefit of a stoplight.

Donn Walker said such congestion used to be a problem but was no longer.

"That may have been an issue last year and earlier this year," he said. "But in the spring, those issues, which were real, were addressed and resolved."

In May, the regional high-altitude air traffic center in Los Angeles added an additional controller so more planes could be handled at the same time, said Scott DeHart, the FAA's traffic management officer at McCarran.

Previously, when all the controllers in L.A. had their hands full, departure restrictions would be placed on McCarran, DeHart said.

In addition, when traffic is heavy, controllers urge carriers to take an alternate route south through Albuquerque. That route is slightly longer but can actually save the airlines time and fuel by avoiding the crush, he said.

"It's like taking the freeway around to avoid the bottleneck," DeHart said.

The FAA's air traffic manager for McCarran, Del Meadows, acknowledged that despite these measures, traffic problems will resurface as airline ridership continues to increase.

"I don't want to call it a Band-Aid, because it is a permanent fix," Meadows said. "But this is not the only permanent fix." The agency is looking at other ways to increase capacity in the region, he said.

Randy Walker said the statistics show that whatever the agency has done, it hasn't worked.

"If they think they fixed it, then I'm glad," Randy Walker said. "But if that's the case, why haven't we seen any improvement? The numbers didn't improve after the spring."

According to Transportation Department reports, 20 percent of McCarran's departures were delayed in January; in July, 25 percent were delayed.

Nationally in October, "national aviation system delay" was the largest single cause of delay, accounting for 37 percent of all delays. But that broad category encompasses air traffic control, heavy traffic volume, airport operations and non-extreme weather conditions.

Donn Walker cited a different set of statistics, collected by the FAA, that found the agency responsible for only 5 percent of delays leaving McCarran.

Those numbers blamed weather for nearly two-thirds of the holdups, but they didn't count all planes that departed late, only planes that had already left the gate and had to wait to get on the runway.

Donn Walker pointed to a category called "compacted demand" -- planes that can't leave because the runways are full, usually at peak times -- and suggested that Randy Walker could do a better job coordinating the different airlines to avoid such pileups.

But Randy Walker said he has no power to influence airlines' schedules -- and that it would be illegal if the carriers were to come together and coordinate.