A Strategy Is Needed To Deal With Peaking Problems at International Airports

In response to a congressional request, GAO examined how rescheduling international flight arrivals might ease the problems caused by multiple arrivals within a short time period and the effect of multiple arrivals on the federal inspection process. Assuming no change in the federal agencies' staffing levels, GAO developed a computerized simulation program which attempted to spread out flight arrivals at the Honolulu Airport without violating any airport's curfew and gave some consideration to travelers' preferences for arrival and departure times.

GAO found that, under its alternative simulated flight arrival schedule, the average time spent waiting to complete the airport inspection process could be reduced by approximately 50 percent. Over 99 percent of the passengers could be processed within an hour. Currently, only 48 percent of the arriving passengers are processed within that time. The impact of schedule changes on aircraft and crew utilization and connecting flights is unknown; however, the analysis indicated that rescheduling may not need to be extensive to produce a sharp drop in the length of time a traveler waits to enter the country. The need for rescheduling would also be affected by the extent to which other alternatives could be used to speed the entry of travelers. Foreign airports have successfully rescheduled flights to reduce airport congestion problems. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration began to use scheduling controls on a limited basis to keep the air carriers' landing and departure rights during peak periods in line with takeoff and landing capacity at certain congested domestic airports. GAO found that the landing rights policies and procedures of the Customs Service have not been effective and have come under increasing attack by the air carriers as being arbitrary and discriminatory. Customs has considered several alternative procedures but none have been adopted.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Arnold P. Jones Team: General Accounting Office: General Government Division Phone: (202) 512-7797