Steps proposed to ease air travel congestion

An estimated 24 million passengers are expected to fly over the 12 days around Thanksgiving.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is opening some military airspace to ease airline congestion over Thanksgiving and Christmas, though the effort is likely to have only limited results. And if the weather’s bad, all bets are off.

President George W. Bush announced Tuesday that he’s expanding the Thanksgiving express lanes this year to include military air corridors in the Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast. That’s in addition to the East Coast corridors, which were also freed up for holiday traffic last year.

The military uses the space for exercises, but often makes some available to commercial planes on an ad hoc basis.

Approximately 24 million passengers are expected to fly over the 12 days around the Thanksgiving holiday this year, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the airline industry. That’s about 10 percent fewer than last year, but airlines also have removed about 10 percent of their capacity from the system, meaning planes will be just as crowded. Castelveter said airplanes will be about 90 percent full at peak travel times and will be 100 percent full in key markets.

Making highways in the sky that are normally restricted to the military open to commercial airliners may get planes from one airport to another faster, but they’ll still have to contend with bottlenecks at the nation’s busier airports when they arrive.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the air traffic controllers union, said one result of airplanes’ arriving faster could be more planes circling busy airports and running low on fuel.

“Our point is that they don’t have a plan to get them on the ground any faster,” Church said. “This plan does nothing to relieve the congestion at the airports that are the traditional hotspots.”

Transportation Department spokesman Brian Turmail said that by signaling to airlines in advance that the military corridors will be available, they will be able to consider these fast lanes in their flight plans to avoid unnecessary circling.

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American Airlines, said the opening of military airspace on the East Coast helped last year, especially around New York.

“Every little bit helps,” Wagner said.

Castelveter said that some airliners may be able to get off the ground faster if there’s an extra corridor to send them to, and that added corridors can also speed up planes to less congested airports, where they don’t have to wait.

But he also acknowledged: “If you do all of these things and you get hit by bad weather, you’re still going to have delays.”