Business: AIRPORTS: The Crowded Ground

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SIX years ago, Los Angeles International Airport dedicated new terminal facilities that were supposed to represent the wave of the future. Designed to handle 15 million passengers a year, the seven highly automated "satellite terminals" are already obsolete.

"Sure, we badly underestimated our growth factor," admits Deputy General Manager Robert C. Davidson. "But no one could accurately forecast the fantastic growth that air travel has experienced in the past six years." He has a point. In 1959, the first full year of commercial jet travel, 51 million domestic passengers boarded planes in U.S. airports. Less than ten years later, the total has more than doubled, to 115 million. Predictions—which will probably fall short of the mark—are that 280 million people will be flying in 1975 Airport congestion will thereby increase even more unless something is done quickly. Among other problems: within two years, jumbo jets will be dumping 350 to 500 passengers each plus 1,000 pieces of baggage, into the overcrowded airports.

Even without jumbos, airports are straining at the seams. Chicago's O'Hare, the nation's busiest, handled 27 million passengers last year, and has just about reached saturation. A $200 million expansion program is under way to accommodate the 40 million travelers expected by 1975. Washington's National Airport is badly overcrowded, but passengers prefer its convenience to bigger but more distant Dulles or Friendship.

As a result, ground hang-ups often consume more of a passenger's time than the 50-minute shuttle flight from New York to Washington. In the New York-New Jersey area, the Port Authority, which runs the airports, is spending $425 million to expand Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports and is meanwhile seeking a site for one more all-new superport. Boston also needs another airfield, whose cost will be over and above the $225 million now allotted to expand Logan International. Pittsburgh, with traffic up 25% in one year, has earmarked $11,800,000 for immediate expansion. Altogether, U.S. airports will spend at least $4.9 billion in the next ten years, but even that may not be enough. Says the New York Port Authority's Aviation Director John R. Wiley: "What we have is an air-transportation crisis."

Slow Luggage. The crisis causes five ground delays for every holding pattern in the air. "Ground technology," says Logan's director, Richard Mooney, "is far behind airplane technology." The majority of the delays come from slow luggage handling. Last year 340 million pieces of passenger baggage were handled; by 1970 that figure will reach 545 million. Despite automated equipment, luggage usually arrives inside the terminal well after its owner. To speed delivery, many airports have stopped insisting on claim checks—with devastating results. Pilferage is up, sometimes because of organized rings of thieves. "We caught one guy with 22 bags stashed away in a rooming house up the road," reports New Orleans Airport Director O. L. Sands.