An argument can be made that the irresponsibly overworked New York City airports are causing a bottleneck in air travel that can be felt system-wide. The blame for the area’s poor performance gets passed around between the FAA, the airlines, the airports themselves, the weather and God.

Most people think that the airlines should just stop scheduling every single morning flight to depart at 9:00 a.m.

From the New York Times:

The United States transportation secretary will announce on Wednesday that her department has negotiated an agreement with the airlines to ease congestion at Kennedy International Airport next summer by shifting some flights to less busy times, according to government officials and industry executives.

As a result, the department will not, at least for now, order a reduction in the number of flights per hour at Kennedy, they said.

Also, the department will not immediately issue rules to carry out a more controversial tactic — auctioning off landing slots — to reduce the number of flights to Kennedy, people involved in the discussions said.

Will it work? We suppose it can’t get any worse than it already is at JFK.

UPDATE: The Times was wrong, they will be putting a cap on the number of flights per hour at JFK.

For Now, U.S. Won’t Cap Flights Per Hour at J.F.K. [NYT]
(Photo:bribriTO)

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