Joe Singleton / Washington DC
US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has outlined a new plan to reduce congestion, including implementing new air traffic management procedures at capacity-constrained New York LaGuardia airport.
The multimodal National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network is also an attempt to promote existing projects – such as airport congestion mitigation programmes, environmental streamlining initiatives, and the development of the US Federal Aviation Administration’s next-generation air transport system (NGATS) – to officials from affected US Congressional districts and state and local governments to attract new funding.
Mineta says the key short-term method for tackling congestion is to develop new air traffic management procedures at LaGuardia, which the FAA in 2000 labelled the country’s most capacity-constrained airport.
LaGuardia has long operated under a high-density rule and airline slot controls. Despite persistent congestion, the FAA has decided to remove the airport’s high-density rule from 31 December.
The FAA plans to bring in rules to establish an operational limit on the number of aircraft landing and taking off at the airport. It says: “The proposed rule would increase utilisation of the airport by encouraging the use of larger aircraft.”
Source: Flight International
