Results tagged “flights”

This is equal parts terrifying and beautiful, a map depicting 24 hours of the nation's flight patterns (two million planes pass through New York's airspace each year). This Google map shows roughly 205,000 aircraft the FAA tracked on August 12th, 2008—with darker colors indicating a higher altitude and lighter lines showing takeoffs and landings.

The U.S. Department of Transportation limiting flights at LaGuardia Airport to 71 per hour, down from 75 per hour, would help ease plane delays. (FYI, the Wall Street Journal notes, "The number of hourly flights at the New York area's Kennedy and Newark airports is also capped, but at higher levels.") DOT Secretary Mary Peters said LGA is the "worst of the worst" airports since it's dead-last in rankings of large U.S. airports' on-time arrivals, with only 61% of flights arriving on-time. Recently, the U.S. DOT's effort to auction flight slots at LGA, Kennedy and Newark was blocked by federal court; DOT counsel D.J. Gribbin, who noted one carrier at LGA was interested in limiting flights (the airport's four carriers must all agree), said, "Gridlock in D.C. should not result in gridlock over the skies of New York. We can still take the first step toward restoring reliable air service to LaGuardia."