Flight plan hits Delco hard

The Federal Aviation Administration yesterday revealed its plan for reshuffling the way planes navigate the crowded airspace over New York and Philadelphia.

Locally, the change would reroute departing flights from Philadelphia International Airport flights over more suburban residential areas. In Delaware County, the decision was received as warmly as an air strike.

"They choose the alternative that had the most devastating impact on Delaware County," County Council Chairman Andrew J. Reilly said.

The FAA knew that the new air-traffic plan - part of a grander scheme to reduce flight delays throughout the Northeast - would be greeted with shock and ire.

So, when FAA officials selected the Delaware County plan from among four choices, they promised to devise air-traffic-control procedures to minimize the noise and rumble associated with low-flying passenger jets.

The FAA spent about $50 million over six years to come up with new air-traffic patterns for Philadelphia and four New York-area airports. Its goal, to improve the airports' dismal records for on-time flights, was endorsed by Philadelphia's dominant carrier, US Airways, and this region's business leaders.

Indeed, as local government officials in Delaware County were lamenting the plan, it was endorsed by Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce Chairman Mark Schweiker.

He said in a written statement that helping Philadelphia International be "a world-class airport" was essential to the region's economic growth.

"Tens of thousands of jobs rely upon the airport," Schweiker said. "The ability to easily travel in and out of the region is a significant factor for professionals doing business, and for residents seeking convenience."

At its announcement in Washington, the FAA said that, as soon as this fall, it could have its air-traffic controllers fan planes leaving the airport in six directions over Delaware County, South Jersey and Delaware.

Most departing jets from Philadelphia now make a 10-degree left turn immediately after takeoff, and fly over the Delaware River to reduce the noise heard in residential areas. But doing that means departing flights take longer to leave the congested airspace around the major airports, backing up traffic on the ground.

Steve Kelley, the FAA official in charge of the airspace redesign project, said that using the new aircraft headings was the best way to deal with an expected increase in air traffic in the Northeast, which has one of the most congested pieces of the sky in the world.

But the FAA is looking at air-traffic-control procedures, such as using the new headings only when takeoffs are the heaviest, as a way to mitigate the noise, Kelley said.

"Not using those headings all the time reduces the impact on people," he said during a telephone briefing for reporters.

After the briefing, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said that limiting the use of the new headings would particularly benefit residents of Tinicum Township and Ridley Park, among the communities closest to the west end of the Philadelphia airport's main east-west runways.

The FAA estimated that the new flight patterns and other changes in the way air traffic is managed in the Northeast could reduce delays by an average of six minutes by 2011, Kelley said. Today, the average delay across the five-state region covered by the redesign is 22 minutes, calculated over a 24-hour period, which means delays often are much longer at times of peak air traffic.

The airspace-redesign details are contained in an environmental-impact statement the agency was required by law to prepare before it can implement its plan.

Kelley said the FAA had to measure the estimated increase in noise levels, which would go up sixfold for some Delaware County communities.

The agency did not have to offer any noise-reduction procedures in the impact statement, but decided to do so because of the widespread interest, its officials said.

A draft version of the impact statement, released in December 2005, generated more than 1,700 comments, FAA officials said.

The agency is still studying what Kelley called the "noise-mitigation strategies," and will detail them in another document it will make public in the next few weeks.

The FAA will hold five public hearings toward the end of next month on the noise-reduction study, one each in the states affected, he said. Hearings in the Philadelphia area are scheduled for April 30 at Concord High School in Wilmington and May 1 at the Holiday Inn on Route 219, just west of the airport.

The FAA's plan also could be put on hold if opponents of the plan use congressional action or lawsuits to stop it.

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