By Philip Newman
The FAA said flights at LaGuardia rose by 14.9 percent over September 1999, the agency's most recent statistical period, contributing to air traffic delays that increased by 41 percent nationwide.
LaGuardia, which averages slightly more than 1,200 landings and takeoffs daily, set a one-day record this Sept. 11, recording 1,381 such flights.
Although the FAA said LaGuardia accounted for 22.7 percent of all types nationwide, the figure rose to 38.6 percent when it came to delays caused by volume of air traffic.
Part of the problem has been the addition of more than 200 regional jet flights prior to a moratorium on new flights during peak morning and afternoon hours issued by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The city of New York has sued in federal court, seeking a court order against new flights pending an environmental impact study.
Congress last year passed a law known as AIR-21 permitting an unlimited number of regional flights by jets with 70 or fewer seats to underserved airports with the purpose of providing competition and thus lower fares on such routes. Travelers had complained for years that flights within New York state, for example, sometimes cost nearly as much as flights from the city to European cities.
The FAA air traffic control system in September reported 46,272 delays nationwide in September, a 40.9 percent increase over the previous September. Delays caused by weather rose in the same period by 35.9 percent.
The FAA report reflects conditions at the 553 airports with control towers throughout the United States.
Dan Andrews, a spokesman for Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, said 150,000 people live in an area close enough to LaGuardia to be affected by the noise of takeoffs and landings. Many such residents nears LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airport have testified at protest meetings about dish-rattling, headache-inducing and sleep-disturbing nose from the planes.
