Del Balzo: "The O'Hare Modernization Plan is in serious
trouble."
Chicago's plan to expand O'Hare International Airport -- the
most complex and controversial airport development issue in civil
aviation today -- is so fundamentally flawed that it should be
scrapped, the former acting administrator of the Federal Aviation
Administration said Friday.
"Chicago's plan is in serious trouble. It will cost too much,
will not produce the claimed benefits and will fail to meet FAA
safety standards," said Joseph Del Balzo, who served as acting
administrator at the FAA in 1994. The O'Hare plan would not just
fail to reduce delays, but would actually increase them at the
nation's most pivotal airport, he said.
Del Balzo conducted a study of the O'Hare proposal with a team
of nationally-recognized experts, including: William Hendricks,
former FAA safety czar; Sieg Poritzky, former Senior Vice President
both for the Airports Council International (ACI) and the Air
Transport Association (ATA) as well as FAA Director of System
Engineering Management; Dr. Ken Fleming, Director of Air Traffic
Management Research at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; and
William Pollard, former head of both the FAA Great Lakes Regional
office and the agency's National Airspace office.
In a new analysis, Del Balzo noted that Chicago's own study had
demonstrated that the proposed O'Hare expansion could not
accommodate the 1.6 million annual flights that Chicago had
publicly claimed last year. Chicago's own experts now say the OMP
will become gridlocked at a significantly lower number of just 1.3
million flights. But the city's analysis failed to consider
adequately that the airspace over O'Hare -- already the nation's
most crowded -- could not safely and efficiently handle the
additional traffic.
In addition, Del Balzo said at a Washington news conference that
two top aviation industry leaders were so troubled by Del Balzo's
findings that they have volunteered their own time, without pay, to
guide further analysis of critical operational, safety, security,
economic and social issues that Chicago has failed to do.
The two are: David Hinson, former FAA Administrator and former
airline chief executive officer and Jonathan Howe, former president
of the National Business Aviation Association, the Airports Council
International and former FAA Regional Administrator.
"The documents and
planning studies that have been released to date by the city are at
best erroneous and incomplete and at worst misleading and
intellectually dishonest. The FAA should reject the plan and look
to others," said Del Balzo.
On behalf of the Villages of Bensenville and Elk Grove Village,
which border O'Hare, Del Balzo's firm, JDA Aviation Technology
Solutions of Washington (DC), has assembled a team of
nationally-recognized experts with whom the volunteer executives
will work, to analyze fully the O'Hare Modernization Program
(OMP).
In formal comments filed Friday with the FAA, Del Balzo
described the team's initial conclusions that the OMP is
fundamentally flawed in several critical areas: airspace,
capacity/delay, safety/security and cost. The filing represents a
critical new phase in the O'Hare expansion saga, as federal
authorities ponder the city's request for approval of its Airport
Layout Plan (ALP) -- a key component of the OMP that describes the
location of runways, taxiways and other facilities.
"The city would have you think the decisions have been made and
this game is over. My years of experience at the FAA tell me that
before the FAA approves this defective plan and the American
taxpayer is asked to foot the bill for the most costly project in
aviation history, the FAA will undertake serious scrutiny and
technical evaluation," Del Balzo said.
"To put it bluntly, the process has only just begun; it ain't
over. I am confident the FAA will reject the city's piecemeal
approach. The Administrator must place a hold on the consideration
of the ALP until the deficiencies of the more comprehensive OMP are
examined and resolved," he said. The expert panel will file more
detailed analysis of those critical areas in the next few weeks,
Del Balzo said.
In the filing with the FAA, Del Balzo argues that under federal
law and the agency's own regulations, the FAA cannot approve
Chicago's ALP until the city submits more detailed and credible
evidence that the expansion can safely, securely and effectively
achieve the city's own stated goals. Such evidence has not been
made public and may not exist, Del Balzo said.
In a separate
statement, Hinson and Howe said that concerns already identified by
Del Balzo's preliminary analysis "raise serious and troubling
questions that ask whether the OMP makes any sense and whether it
will help or hinder civil aviation. There is no need to rush a
decision when the consequences are so significant. With our
considered input, we are confident the FAA will reach the right
result."
Del Balzo is a man of exceptional qualification and integrity,
making his evaluation of the Chicago airport scheme especially
noteworthy among aviation professionals nationwide, Hinson and Howe
said. His work on O'Hare so far also highlights systemic
secretiveness and a disregard for the FAA's recommended planning
practices to this point that is disconcerting for an airport
development of this magnitude, they said.
"We commit to finding answers to those questions and to
informing the public and the FAA of our findings," they said.
"Without the dedication, persistence and determination of the
leadership and citizens of Bensenville and Elk Grove Village -- two
communities that will be seriously impacted by the OMP -- these
important issues would never have been raised. The citizens and
taxpayers of the Chicago area, indeed, of the entire nation, as
well as the flying public owe a great debt to these
communities."
Del Balzo's memorandum to the FAA said that, even taking the
city's planning documents at face value, the OMP fails for several
simple and straightforward reasons:
Airspace
The airspace around O'Hare is simply too congested. Trying to
cram more traffic into the already crowded airspace creates such
fundamental problems that it will negate whatever is done on the
ground. The experts said they were stunned that Chicago failed to
demonstrate how the airspace over O'Hare can handle the additional
traffic that will be generated by the OMP. The capacity studies
prepared for the City completely ignored other area traffic, the
report said.
As Hinson and Howe said in their statement: "You can add
runways, but you can't expand airspace."
Capacity/Delays
The idea that delay and congestion reduction will be achieved by
the use of simultaneous landings on four parallel runways is
fatally flawed. In its analysis of this issue, the city made a
significant error by assuming the proposed "quad" runway would be
available in minimum weather conditions. In fact, the quad runway
approaches will be available only in excellent (VFR) weather
conditions-when the ceiling is greater than 5,500 feet and
visibility is greater than 10 miles. More than 40 per cent of the
time, landings would have to be restricted to three runways-a
capacity Chicago already has.
Even if the runways did provide the needed capacity for delay
reduction (Chicago's own studies say the runways don't provide the
needed capacity), the airspace saturation would negate the
multi-billion dollar investment in runways.
Safety And Security
In safety terms, the
memo said, the expansion would make O'Hare an airport of the past,
rather than an airport of the future. "Simply put, OMP is designed
to operate at the outer edge of safety limits in an effort to wring
capacity out of a flawed design."
The OMP has inadequate safety margins, requiring an
unprecedented number of active runway crossings and making
extensive use of "land and hold short" procedures that are strongly
criticized by pilots, controllers and safety experts. Further, the
OMP will struggle to safely accommodate the future New Large
Aircraft (NLA) that require more taxiway and runway space than
today's jumbos.
Further, the memo questions whether O'Hare will be able to
operate with adequate levels of safety and security over a 10-year
construction period while thousands of workers build new runways in
the midst of the world's busiest airport. Safety and security will
be diminished by the large number of persons and equipment that
will have access to the airport's operational area.
Cost
The project will cost
too much -- as much as more than three times the $6.6 billion the
city claims. The OMP's cost will be so large that the airlines and
their passengers -- who will necessarily bear much of the charge --
will not be able to afford it. If the OMP is built as proposed,
O'Hare will no longer be cost-competitive with other major
connecting hubs.
O'Hare expansion is so rife with problems, the filing said, that
instead of "focusing solely on expanding O'Hare to fulfill a role
for which it was never intended, the FAA needs to look at other
regional alternatives. Failure to do so will only repeat past
mistakes."
"The comments we filed today with the FAA marks the start of a
critical phase of O'Hare expansion in which expressing our concerns
in Washington, D.C. to aviation authorities and elected officials
becomes even more important than before," said Mayor Craig Johnson
of Elk Grove Village.
"It's critical that the FAA be fully aware of the major issues
that are left unresolved by the Chicago proposal," said John Geils,
Bensenville Village President. "We're confident that the analysis
we have provided today -- and the additional detail we will provide
in the next few weeks -- will compel the FAA to reject a proposal
that wastes billions of federal tax dollars," he said.
"We have seen little of the critical data and information that
have been exchanged between the City and the FAA and it's important
that we do. But even taking the city's planning documents at face
value, the inescapable conclusion is the OMP does not work and
won't reduce delays" at O'Hare, Del Balzo said.