Surviving Hard Times

Good weather and access to airspace along the East Coast normally reserved for military aircraft on training missions made the Thanksgiving weekend a "very smooth" one for the airline industry and most travelers, said a spokesman for the organization in Washington, D.C. that represents major carriers.

To be sure, there were scattered delays at airports during the four-day holiday period. But the dire predictions of jam ups at airports and on runways did not occur, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association. "I'd say it was very smooth," said Castelveter. Good weather in the New York area and across most of the nation was a major factor. But, Castelveter said, "The access to military airspace certainly helped."

Castelveter said airlines used a military air corridor between New York and Florida about 25 times an hour on Sunday, the busiest airline travel day of the year.

The access was an early Thanksgiving gift from President George W. Bush, who announced before Thanksgiving that civilian airliners could make use of the corridors. Bush's move came after airlines posted record delays during the first nine months of this year.

Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration postponed some maintenance tasks, freeing up more airplanes, and air traffic controllers at Kennedy and LaGuardia airports changed some landing and departure practices to allow for more operations per hour.

Castelveter said airlines will press for more frequent access to the military corridors.

The military uses those corridors for training purposes, and airlines must avoid such areas entirely when maneuvers are ongoing.

The military is not alone in being given such designated space. The former Grumman Corp. was given air space off Long Island's North Fork to test fly F-14s and other planes it built for the Navy, before turning them over to the service. The test space was considered so important
to the company that John C. Bierwirth, Grumman's chairman and chief executive officer in the late 1970s and '80s, once said the company would have to leave Long Island if the airspace was ever taken away.
--Jim Bernstein