Washington – New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators Thursday announced that the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill signed into law by the President Wednesday includes two measures they authored to reduce flight delays and ease congestion in the New York/New Jersey airspace. One amendment requires the federal government to provide a plan to Congress to reduce flight delays in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania Region, the nation’s most densely congested airspace. The other amendment requires the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, to investigate the Administration’s Airspace Redesign Plan, as well as the effectiveness of a variety of approaches used nationwide to reduce flight delays.

The Senators called for action after record airport delays this summer and amid major concerns that the Federal Aviation Administration’s announced Airspace Redesign for the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia area will increase aircraft noise while providing only minimal delay reductions.

The amendment requires the Transportation Department to submit to Congress a report detailing how the Federal Aviation Administration plans to alleviate air congestion and flight delays in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Airspace by August 31, 2008. The report would have to be submitted no later than 120 days after the enactment of the legislation.

The measure directs the GAO to conduct a study of the efficacy of various approaches used in the past by the FAA and the DOT to address delays at our nation's airports. Within 120 days of enactment, the GAO is to report which strategies have worked best to comprehensively reduce flight delays at an airport within SIX months or less. The GAO is instructed to examine efforts by the FAA to induce voluntary schedule reductions at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the FAA's mandatory flight reduction operations at LaGuardia International Airport and Reagan National Airport, the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Airspace Redesign and any other significant efforts by the FAA or the DOT to reduce flight delays at a major U.S. international airport.