Richard Turen:
Cor porate microjets will lead
to a ‘gnatification’ of the skies.
P. 61
www.travelweekly.com
Lodging Conference:
Is hotel development boom losing
steam in the credit crunch?
P. 16
Arnie Weissmann:
W hy ASTA was more militant
w ith ARC than with Carnival.
P. 12

THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY

OCTOBER 1, 2007

Bush to FAA: Fix flight delays, congestion

By Andrew Compart

WASHINGTON — The White House injected itself into federal efforts to ease congestion in the skies and delays at airports last week as President Bush directed top aviation officials to “take action.”

The officials said the action would include a request by the Federal Aviation Administration to meet with airlines to discuss possible flight schedule reductions at Kennedy Airport and to order such reductions if necessary.

The FAA is not yet saying what targets it will aim for in limiting the number of flights per hour at Kennedy during peak times. But

FAA acting administrator Robert Sturgell

said the agency would decide on its target

within a week and start meeting with airlines

to negotiate reductions the week after that.

Lots of finger-pointing as
House committee takes
up delays and passenger
rights. See report, Page 62.

The aim, Sturgell said, would be to have an agreement in place to reduce schedules by the summer of 2008, to help avoid a repeat of the problems that plagued New York-area

airports this past summer.

In July, the latest month for which DOT statistics are available, the on-time departure rate was just 64.7% at Newark, 62.4% at Kennedy and 70% at LaGuardia. On-time arrival rates were worse.

As an example of the airline overscheduling problems at Kennedy, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the airport could handle 44 departures from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., but on a typical Tuesday morning in August airlines had scheduled 57 departures.

“If necessary, we’re prepared to take the next step: issuing a scheduling reduction order,” Peters said.

[ MAJOR INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION ]

Delta adds routes
from N.Y. Kennedy
to 14 destinations

By Michelle Baran

See WHITE HOUSE on Page 63

Have kiosk, will travel

They came of age at airports,
easing traffic at ticket counters.
Today, kiosks are finding
their way into the car rental
and cruise sectors,
ushering in an era
of self-service travel.

NEW YORK — Delta Air Lines last week disclosed plans to add 14 new international routes next year from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

The new lineup includes nine transatlantic routes. They would bring Delta to the Middle East, with service to Cairo, Tel Aviv and Amman, Jordan, and to four points in sub-Sahara Africa: Dakar, Senegal; Lagos, Nigeria; and, via Dakar, to Cape Town, South Africa; and Nairobi, Kenya. (For a full list of new routes, see chart, Page 62.)

The new routes will increase Delta’s international offerings at Kennedy to 204 daily departures to 93 destinations, a 13% increase over this year’s 82 destinations.

Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s executive vice president for network planning and revenue management, said the company was looking for a Sky Team partner in Latin America and was hoping to secure one next year.

“The real value is going to places that are hard to get to,” Hauenstein said at a news conference. “The harder it was to get [to the destination] before, the higher the stimulation factor.”

According to Vaughn Cordle, chief analyst at Washington-based Airline Forecasts, the real value for Delta was moving the focus from the highly competitive domestic markets to transatlantic service.