WASHINGTON - Flight cuts at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport would reduce by 63 percent the delays that keep passengers stuck in planes on runways for longer than an hour, aviation regulators said Tuesday.
The U.S. Transportation Department defended its goal of limiting the number of flights per hour at JFK airport, in some slots as much as a third, as it opened two days of meetings with airlines in an effort to get voluntary schedule reductions.
"When passengers are stranded for hours on runways, it is easy to understand why consumer frustration is reaching the boiling point," Transportation Secretary Mary Peters told airline executives.
The government wants to reduce overall delays by as much as 30 percent at Kennedy, the most congested airport in the United States after New York's LaGuardia.
The FAA plan would allow 81 hourly flights during the peak period of 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. and 80 from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and again from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. The airport recorded 120 flights in one hour Aug. 30, while the summer average was 80.
The airlines and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK airport, oppose the plan, saying it cut flights too deeply.
"Slashing capacity at a leading international gateway is antimarketplace and anti-consumer," James May, president of the U.S. airlines' trade group, told Peters in a letter Tuesday.
Hundreds of JetBlue AirwaysCorp. passengers were stranded aboard planes on the Kennedy airport tarmac, some for more than 10 hours, in a Feb. 14 snowstorm. JFK led the nation in three-hourplus runway delays with 59 during July departures, U.S. figures show.
"There's a huge problem at JFK," said Kate Hanni, leader of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights, who backs the flight caps.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 10/24/2007