Fast-Fly Zone.

LAX FLIGHTS HAVE SHORT DELAYS, FAA STUDY SAYS

LAX a model of efficiency? Despite record delays at airports across the country this summer, the nation's fourth-busiest airport seems to be handling its traffic flow pretty well.

The latest statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration show that over the first seven months of 1999, the average passenger at Los Angeles International Airport faced a 5.5-minute delay. Of the 10 largest domestic airports, only Denver, at 4.3 minutes, and Phoenix, at 5.3 minutes, had shorter delays.

Is LAX good or just lucky?

The answer is a little of both, according to local officials and outside observers. Southern California's legendary weather certainly keeps delays to a minimum. So does the design of the airport, which has two runways on each side of the terminal complex, thus minimizing delays if one runway has to shut down.

And because no major U.S. carrier uses LAX as a true hub, the airport isn't subject to some of the traffic jams and pressure for special treatment that hubs typically face.

Yet other factors are at work. LAX's proximity to the ocean lets air-traffic controllers get planes out faster than some of its land-locked urban counterparts. And over the past couple of years, local FAA officials have used aggressive traffic management programs to monitor flights and reroute them as needed.

"I would be happy to take credit for everything," said Michael DiGirolamo, director of operations for Los Angeles World Airports, which runs LAX along with the Ontario and Palmdale airports. "But all the credit is due to the FAA and local air-traffic control. It's their business to move airplanes in and out of here."

Dawna Vicars, chairwoman of the FAA's Southern California Task Force, said the LAX tower tries to maximize the airport's built-in advantages. For one, the tower can boost the number of arrivals and departures by using a single set of runways for incoming and outgoing flights.

Proximity to the ocean also helps controllers move flights more rapidly. In Phoenix, Vicars says, departing planes have to fly more slowly over residential neighborhoods that are adjacent to the airport than do flights leaving LAX that fly over the Pacific. The planes leaving Phoenix also face tough noise restrictions that don't exist over water.

"We're sensitive to noise regulations, too, especially with arrivals," Vicars said. "So we try to use the open waters to our advantage."

She says a major contributor to LAX's on-time record has been replacing the traditional "static" traffic flow with a "dynamic" system. Under the static system, airlines set their schedule of arrivals and departures at the beginning of each day. If weather problems or mechanical troubles arose here or in connecting cities, gridlock could result.

The dynamic system uses computers, radar and satellite-based communications to make adjustments when traffic patterns get out of whack.

Airlines now enter their scheduled arrivals and departures in a central database in Boston managed by the FAA. If a flight is cancelled or delayed, the FAA can fill the vacant slots by moving up other flights.

For instance, United Airlines often changes its scheduled flights from the San Francisco hub to LAX due to bad weather (mostly fog) or unsold seats. Under the static system, arrival or departure slots went unused when United altered its schedule. The dynamic system lets LAX use those available slots and modify overall arrivals and departures to keep gridlock to a minimum.

The dynamic system is in place nationwide, but Vicars thinks LAX has used it to particular advantage. For example, the tower links information from radar stations in Palmdale and San Diego to monitor air traffic in 15-minute blocks. Being able to "see" further lets the tower at LAX reroute planes or slow them down when they're far away, rather than have them circle overhead.

Despite those results, the FAA could be more aggressive in implementing new technology, says Robert Poole, president of the Reason Foundation and author of a number of studies on airport management and air-traffic control. A wider use of some off-the-shelf technologies like the Global Positioning System to augment existing landing systems could boost the capacity of some congested airports by as much as 50 percent.

"Capacity at LAX isn't a problem now, but it will be," Poole said. "You can build more capacity in the system by improving the technology you use... Rather than having all arrivals come into an airport in a straight line, you could safely bring them in from four, five or six points on the compass. The FAA knows this, and they're putting some of (the technology) in place, but slowly."

Meanwhile, the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade association, bristles at charges that its members try to cram too many flights into busy airports. A report released by the group last month blamed the FAA for delays that cost airlines and the public $4.5 billion over the past year.

The report cited some of Poole's criticisms, chiding the agency for relying on outdated technology. "The FAA's system is broken," the study said.

While the ATA's report minced few words in its criticism of the national air-traffic control system, Neil Bennett, director of the ATA's Western region, says, "We don't consider LAX a problem airport.

"LAX runs a tremendous amount of traffic and they do a great job handling it," Bennett said. "But there's always a conflict between expanding capacity and being sensitive to the surrounding community. We need to expand and upgrade the facility, and that takes time."

That gets back to the stalled LAX Master Plan, a program that would expand the airport to handle more cargo and passengers. The FAA, airport and airlines all say it's needed. But it's unclear what form the expansion will take, and how long it will be before it's put in place.

"These expansions always take longer than you expect," Vicars said. "I was based in St. Louis in the early '90s when they approved a new airport, and it's not built yet."

"Most major airports are a product of World War II development and need to be upgraded and expanded," Bennett said. "The problem you face is a conflict between the need to expand capacity and community resistance. We don't have a problem yet, but we need to move fast."