Neighbors Say: “Runway Is Not Needed”

"Although the legal focus has mostly been on wetlands and water quality, our main objection to the runway is that it is an utter waste of money. It's a really DUMB project," said Larry Corvari, President of RCAA, commenting on what will happen next in the third-runway battle.

According to Corvari and to experts on delay and capacity planning, the most important reason to oppose the runway is that it is simply not needed.

According to the Port of Seattle & its buddies in the local FAA office, the stated purpose of the third-runway project is to allow arriving airplanes to fly closer together upon arrival during peak travel times in bad weather, thus reducing arrival delays. What arrival delays? Not arrival delays that have been experienced in the past – rather, arrival delays that might be expected IF there were to be a huge increase some time in the future in the number of flights into Sea-Tac during bad weather when aircraft must fly by instruments ("IFR")

In fact, most outside experts — including the analysts at FAA national headquarters – believe that for the foreseeable future, the existing airport can handle the traffic without undue delays. Sea-Tac is NOT recognized as an airport with significant delay problems. There are many causes of delay, most of which will not be affected by more runways at Sea-Tac. [See FAA Benchmark Study]

Are There Delays? Are They Weather-Related?

Any experienced traveller expects delays, whether travelling by air, private auto, train, bus, or camel caravan. Most travellers flying into Sea-Tac have experienced delays. Most of those delays can be traced to congestion at the eight very crowded airports in other parts of the U.S.

O'Hare (Chicago) is most notorious. Far too many flights touch down there. All too often, passengers coming into O'Hare are required to transfer to other flights. All too often, a flight bound to Seattle lands at O'Hare, & then languishes on the ground till other flights have cleared the area. The result? Delay, delay that cannot be made up on the way here. But such delays – as frequent as they are – have nothing to do with conditions here, and a new runway at Sea-Tac won't cure problems at O'Hare. Other overcrowded airports include Atlanta, Logan, Kennedy, and LaGuardia.

What About Other Causes of Delay at Sea-Tac?

Citizen critics of the runway project do not say that all the arrival delay at Sea-Tac is the result of delay at other airports. Clearly, plenty of scheduled flights do in fact leave for Sea-Tac on time, but arrive on the ground, at the gates, not on time.

Despite claims of the Port, the fact is that most arrival delays at Sea-Tac are in no way related to our local weather. Dr Stephen Hockaday, an authority on these problems points out that the Port's figure of 44% poor weather does not match the FAA definition of poor weather and is incorrectly calculated. According to Dr Hockaday, IFR conditions only occur 7.9% of the year, and as little as 3% percent of the time during peak demand when the third runway would be used. [See Hockaday Report]

Many delays happen in poor weather, lousy weather, & very good weather. Why? Because of over-scheduling.

In the United States, we have a really weird system for running airports. No-one is in charge. Airport “operators”, like the Port of Seattle, build airports. But legally the airport operator has NO control over the actual use of its runways. It is air-traffic controllers working for the Federal Aviation Administration who decide which runways shall be used by which departing or arriving aircraft. Those disembodied voices that say things like, “Delta Flight 603, you are cleared for arrival on Runway 16-L” are NOT the voices of Sea-Tac Airport: they are the voices of FAA staff.

Oh! FAA runs things, then!

No, not quite. The FAA does not tell the airlines when to arrive or when to depart Sea-Tac. Legally, there is nothing to prevent an airline that uses Sea-Tac from trying to land 30 flights at the same time. If something like that happens, the system inevitably breaks down, & there are significant delays. Think of I-405 at rush hour – with no metered on-ramps. There are NO equivalents of metered on-ramps or off-ramps at Sea-Tac. At peak periods, too many aircraft are trying to land. And no-one can say “Stop! Re-schedule for 20 minutes later!” Yet, it's clear that modest adjustment of schedules would cure most Sea-Tac arrival delays. This is called demand management. Demand management is illegal – unconstitutional, in fact – in this FAA region. It is mandatory at O'Hare. Is Sea-Tac in a different country than Chicago, with different aviation laws? Apparently.

Can We Fix the Problem Without Spending $1.3 Billion?

Even without changing schedules, there are several good, & much cheaper, alternatives for relieving arrival delay at Sea-Tac than another part-time runway. It would be more sensible to implement these alternatives now, even though arrival delay is only a trivial problem at present. Using better avigation systems would be good: GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) systems & other proven technologies would allow aircraft to arrive much more frequently during poor weather than at present.

The Port has chosen the most expensive approach to addressing a problem that is almost non-existent.

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