US airports are being urged to focus on a looming congestion crisis even as they continue their not-always successful fight for federal funding for state security mandates.
FAA chief operating officer Russell Chew told an Airports Council International/North America (ACI-NA) panel at its annual meeting in Houston that "we don't have a lot of time" before congestion surpasses the crisis levels of 2000 and the already-strained air traffic control system and workforce is compelled to reduce services.
Chew stressed he was not making a plea for a larger budget but for support for his strategic plan to shape a new air traffic organisation within the FAA.
Chew's warning of a technological crisis was complemented by a plea for support of new economic and regulatory approaches from former FAA executive George Donohue. Donohue, now a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, told the panel that landing-rights auctions could tailor schedules closer to capacity. Donohue said: "We'll see more improvements through scheduling reform than through all the technology in question."
But the dominant industry group is not yet ready to accept a stalemate in its fight for federal payments for security, said ACI-NA president David Plavin. The group gained some support from Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Stone, who said the TSA had urged congressional appropriators to free up funding for in-line explosives detection systems at airports.
However, the airports group suffered a defeat just weeks after its annual convention when Congress limited the federal share of in-line baggage-screening projects to 75% instead of the 90% the airports had been promised.
Stone did say that the Registered Traveller "fast-lane" programme, which airports strongly support, would be expanded, and he told the 2,000 airport officials that TSA had scaled back a passenger-screening system that had drawn wide public criticism, the so-called CAPPS II, renaming it "Secure Flight".
Many in the Houston audience were cheered when Brian Fleming, chairman of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, said that although 100% screening "was fine in the beginning", a risk-based system may be a more efficient approach.
DAVID FIELD HOUSTON
Source: Airline Business
