Atlanta – As a business traveler who flies 100,000 miles a year on Delta Air Lines, Jay Spencer is used to flying through the world’s busiest hub at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
As a result, he’s very familiar with the airport’s infamous delays – lasting, he says, anything from 15 minutes to three hours.
“They say you don’t go to heaven or hell without flying through Atlanta,” said the real estate investor from Salt Lake City.
Thanks to a new 9,000-foot runway scheduled to open in Atlanta to commercial flights Saturday, the airport’s officials are pledging to cut those delays in half, which also could mean fewer and shorter delays throughout the entire air transportation network in the United States and possibly around the world.
That’s because no other airport in the world handles more passengers.
Nearly 86 million people pass through the Atlanta airport each year on more than 980,000 flights – one taking off or landing about every 30 seconds. They fly direct to 157 cities in the U.S. and 65 others in 43 countries.
“You take an airplane delay at Hartsfield – 20 minutes – now it’s delayed at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago,” said Terry Trippler, an airline industry expert for Cheapseats.com. “If an airline cancels a flight, there’s no place to put the people – you can’t move them to another flight because those flights are filled.”
The runway is part of a major overhaul at the airport that also includes the tallest air traffic control tower in North America, standing at 398 feet, and an “end-around” taxiway – the first of its kind in the country – that will help keep arriving flights from being delayed by having to wait to cross busy runways before reaching their gates.
The airport’s new fifth runway and a new runway monitor system will help it bring in three streams of planes at the same time, even in foul weather. The reduced delays should reduce operating costs for airlines by an estimated total of $5 million a week, said Ben DeCosta, the airport’s general manager.
“If you’re flying in Atlanta, your plane won’t be asked to delay,” DeCosta said. “You’ll be brought in because we’ll have room for you.”
The airline set to benefit the most is Delta, which uses the airport as its primary hub and is looking for any savings it can get as it works to pull out of bankruptcy. Delta and its subsidiaries account for nearly three out of every four flights at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Air traffic has gotten so congested at the Atlanta airport that a quarter of all scheduled flights are delayed – ranking fourth- worst among the nation’s major airports, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And the average delay in Atlanta runs 17 minutes, said airport spokeswoman Felicia Browder.
The statistics show that most of the delays are blamed on bad weather.
With the goal of curbing delays, the airport spent five years and $1.284 billion to build its new runway, the most expensive ever built in the United States.
However, some experts say a lack of runways isn’t what’s delaying flights.
“We can build runways, and we should. But 50 percent of the benefit of the runway is totally negated by the fact we have an air traffic control system that’s still back in the 1970s,” said Mike Boyd, an airline industry consultant based in Evergreen, Colo.
Boyd said larger problems are leading to air travel delays, and they are beyond one airport’s reach. He said upgrading the U.S. air traffic control system’s equipment and getting more air traffic controllers in airport towers would have a much bigger impact.
1.284 billion Cost in dollars of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s new fifth runway, the most expensive runway in U.S. history
86 million
Number of passengers the Atlanta airport serves each year, making it the world’s busiest in terms of passengers and operations
5 million
Weekly savings in dollars that airport officials predict airlines will save with the new runway reducing delays
980,000
Number of takeoffs and landings yearly at the airport
9,000
Length in feet of Atlanta’s new fifth runway
17
Average delay in minutes at the Atlanta airport before the new runway was built
8.5
Time, in minutes, airport officials expect delays to be reduced
5
Years to construct the fifth runway
SOURCES: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Bureau of Transportation Statistics
CREDIT: The Associated Press
