FAA admits staffing issues, asks airlines for help

The US Government spent plenty of time in recent months chiding airlines for scheduling flights they ultimately did not have the staff to operate. Now the FAA now admits that it, too, has staffing issues. With a peak 2023 summer on the horizon that will likely overwhelm its ATC staff in the New York City area, the feds are asking airlines to help by reducing their operations.

It will allow airlines to cut services by up to 10% at key airports over the busiest four months of the year, hoping that reduced demand can alleviate expected delays.

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The slots in question

New York’s three main airports – JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark – are three of the most delay-prone in the USA. A complex airspace doesn’t help, nor does an operating schedule that sees the runways nearly fully used throughout the day.

They also are some of the only airports in the US where takeoff and landing slots (or an approximation thereof) are regulated by the FAA. Airlines cannot afford to not operate the slots they hold; anything less than 80% utilization means the FAA can revoke and redistribute the authorization.

The airspace is managed by New York Terminal Radar Approach Control facility (N90). Most ATC staffing levels are impaired today, and have been since well before COVID-19. The FAA “acknowledges that temporary safety mitigations put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted controller training.” But while nationwide Certified Professional Controller (CPC) staffing has rebounded to 81 percent of the desired level, N90 is barely above half its staffing level target. These “staffing shortfalls at N90 limit the FAA’s ability to provide expeditious services to aircraft operators and their passengers that traverse this airspace,” according to the Agency.

Now the FAA is asking airlines to drop up to 10% their expected NYC operations between 15 May and 15 September, without risk of the slots being revoked by the agency. Any slots returned under this program will not be reallocated by the FAA.

Notwithstanding FAA’s efforts to address N90 CPC staffing, the staffing rate for N90 has not improved and at the same time early carrier schedules indicate an increase in operations. This being the case, for summer 2023 the FAA expects increased delays in the New York region over summer 2022. Specifically, ATO modeling indicates operations at the New York airports is projected to increase by seven (7) percent, which FAA projects will result in overall delays increasing by 45 percent.

A DC Connection

The FAA also notes “New York-DCA is a high frequency market for multiple carriers, the FAA recognizes this market is a likely target for carriers to consolidate flights while retaining their network connectivity.” Or, put another way, airlines dump capacity into the NYC-DCCA market because the slots are too valuable to cede and the shorter flights are easy enough to operate, but also typically easy enough to merge into fewer flights when cancels become necessary.

DCA also has slot controls, but is not expected to be directly impacted by the N90 staffing shortfall. Still, the FAA will allow airlines to drop NYC-DCA trips and keep the slots at both ends, even if an alternate route is not operated at DCA.

The DCA slots will be reallocated on a temporary basis, should another airline want to make a go for four months. Those slots will revert to the original airline for 2024, regardless of whether they are used in 2023 or by whom.

The Big 3 (mostly) agree

In letters to the FAA, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines each committed to:

• Fly larger planes where possible into the NYC area, minimizing the number of seats lost in the market even as up to 10% of departures are dropped;
• Use their DCA slots in other markets during the affected months;
• Accommodate affected passengers with flights on alternate carriers or refunds, as needed.

American Airlines did not commit to reducing its operations. Instead, the carrier says it “is still evaluating if we intend to seek a slot waiver” and that “currently planned operations for the summer peak season [are] sized for the resources we have to minimize impacts to customers.”

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Over the past three years airlines have successfully used slot relief to reduce operations in the face of missing demand. But demand is hardly a problem today. Passengers are back in the United States, and capacity planned for the summer shows it. Data from Cirium shows airlines currently planning a 2.6% increase in departures from the NYC airports in June 2023 compared to 2019, and a 5% increase in total seats. Slashing 10% of flights will likely push already high fares higher.

And while the airlines have voluntarily agreed to the cuts this year, reducing available capacity is unlikely to be a long-term solution. The FAA will transition part of the airspace near Newark to controllers in Philadelphia to reduce the N90 workload. That will help, but it also does not take effect until after the peak travel push.