FAA History Lesson -- February 28

From the FAA Historical Chronology, 1926-1996...

”Feb 28, 1995: At Denver International Airport’s opening day, air traffic controllers at the state-of-the-art facility cleared three aircraft to make the world’s first triple simultaneous landing. By this date, FAA had provided Airport Improvement Program grants totaling $267.6 million for the project, and had committed over $200 million more in Letters of Intent. In a February 1996 report on the airport’s first 11 months in operation, FAA stated that the facility had achieved a flight delay rate five times less than the airport it replaced, Stapleton International. (See May 17, 1988.) “

If you want to know how to reduce airline delays, this is how. Build more runways and put them far enough apart so that you can use them in bad weather. Wikipedia has excellent write-up about the current DIA airport and it’s predecessor -- Stapleton.

If you don’t have 52 square miles and $5 billion dollars (that’s 1995 dollars) laying around, you’ll need to consider slot restrictions instead.

Don Brown
February 28, 2008