What will you do when the major commercial airports (among the 5,177 airports in the United States) demand that dozens or hundreds of flights per day are diverted to smaller general aviation airports? Imagine the traffic acceleration, noise and pollution you’ll experience in your community or one near you.

Those among us who don’t think beyond this coming weekend pooh-pooh the idea that a sudden shift will occur driving corporate jets and smaller planes away from international/major airports and toward these smaller ones. To that I say, “Breathe deeply, my friend, and enjoy that fragrance of jet fuel” because it’s going to happen. It may not be sudden and will likely play out over several years but there isn’t a choice and here’s one example: 55 planes an hour trying to depart New York’s LaGuardia airport when only 45 slots are available (and some slots have smaller planes or corporate jets in line) and this can’t continue. Especially when that number balloons to 65, 75 or 100 an hour.

This article says it all about our air traffic gridlock and the composition of the aircraft exacerbating the problem: “At La Guardia, half of all flights now involve smaller planes: regional jets and turboprops. It’s the same at Chicago’s O’Hare, which is spending billions to expand runways. At New Jersey’s Newark Liberty and New York’s John F. Kennedy, 40 percent of traffic involves smaller planes, according to Eclat Consulting in Reston, Va. Aircraft numbers tell the tale: U.S. airlines grounded a net 385 large planes from 2000 through 2006 – but they added 1,029 regional jets – says data firm Airline Monitor.”

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