The Air Transport Association of America (ATA) included building runway 14/32 at Logan International Airport as one of its national priorities. The new runway was one of 14 airport projects sited by ATA as critical to fixing national delay and capacity problems.

Logan has been one of the top ten most delayed airports since 1990 and was ranked second for arrival delays by the FAA in 2000. To provide relief to the travelling public, Massport has proposed runway 14/32, a new 5,000-foot runway with all arrivals and departures occurring over water. The runway would reduce delays up to 90% on northwest wind days, 45-55% in good weather, and 30% annually. On March 23, Massport and the FAA filed a Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Final Environmental Impact Report (SDEIS/FEIR) with the federal regulators and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, after almost one year of additional review by an independent panel.

Without a new runway, delays will skyrocket to close to 400,000 hours annually by 2015 and the average flight delay will double from 17 to 36 minutes.

Logan currently suffers from approximately 142,000 hours of delay a year, seven times more than the FAA standard for delays, costing airlines and their passengers more than $300 million annually. These delays result in aircraft idling for longer periods of time, generating more emissions, and flights arriving later into the evening than originally scheduled.

Despite the increased use of regional airports and a dramatic slow-down in growth at Logan, delays continue to mount at a staggering pace. Delays at Logan increased by 60 percent in 2000, while the number of flights at Logan have decreased by 6 percent since 1998.

ATA is the trade association for leading U.S. airlines. ATA members transport over 95 percent of all the passenger and cargo traffic in the United States.

More in this Section