Disputed runway cuts delays in first month
Logan International Airport's newest runway -- one that took a 30-year struggle to build -- in its first month of operation reduced delays without sparking community uprisings.
The runway, called 14/32 for its compass headings (minus the last 0), opened just 13 times last month, for a total of 82 hours handling 455 takeoffs and landings. That's barely 1.5 percent of Logan's flight operations, but it's had a big impact in reducing delays on days -- including this Tuesday -- when strong northwest winds would have shut the airport down to two runways, or even one, and turned the skies over Massachusetts Bay into a traffic jam.
It's far too soon to know whether the $110 million runway will produce the projected 25 percent annual reduction in total Logan-specific delays -- those caused by congestion at the airport itself, rather than air-traffic congestion or weather problems elsewhere. And it isn't clear yet what kind of overall community impact 14/32 is having, say representatives of towns most affected by flights from the new runway.
But a full month of operations shows "it's definitely working the way we thought it would," said Thomas J. Kinton Jr. , executive director of Massport, which runs Logan.
Massport has said the runway would reduce delays by 90 percent on days with certain strong northwest winds. In fact, last month with the runway open there were no delays because runways were closed because of the winds , Kinton said.
Kinton and Federal Aviation Administration officials said one of the best illustrations of how 14/32 eases Logan's operations was on Dec. 8, a Friday when winds averaged 20 miles per hour from the west-northwest , gusting to 41, according to the National Weather Service.
As part of the court order that led to 14/32's approval after more than 30 years of community opposition, Massport can only use the runway for smaller planes and only when winds are flowing from the northwest or southeast at more than 11.5 m.p.h.
Prior to building 14/32, northwest winds that strong -- which are common in winter -- would have shut down three or even four of Logan's five runways . But the sixth runway can stay open , allowing Logan to maintain the same capacity it has the rest of the year.
Had the new runway not been open Dec. 8, the FAA calculated, 275 flights coming in and out of Logan would have been delayed by a total of 9,500 minutes.
Dan Wolf , chief executive of Cape Air and also one of its pilots, that day flew one of his airline's nine-seat Cessna 402s through from Hyannis to Boston.
"I remember thinking that was a classic day to be flying into 14/32 because otherwise there would have been ground stops from everywhere into Boston, and that day there were no delays because of 14/32," Wolf said.
Cape Air nine-seaters have accounted for 20 percent of all landings on the new 5,000-foot runway, and other turboprop planes for 14 percent. General aviation, or private, planes are 20 percent. Small commercial jets account for the other 46 percent, mostly regional jets but even a handful of US Airways Shuttle Airbus A319s, according to Massport data.
Construction of the runway has faced decades of opposition from communities in every direction, either because they feared a direct increase in noise or feared a new runway would increase overall Logan operations and noise for everyone.
With December's balmy weather and unusually frequent southwest winds driving unusual air-traffic flows, "I don't think we've really had a chance to see what the real environmental impacts are," said Stephen Lathrop, a Hull resident who represents the town on a Logan advisory committee.
Anastasia Lyman , a Jamaica Plain resident and airport-noise activist, said the Massport data so far "sound like very preliminary, very sketchy numbers" that barely begin to answer the question of how bad the new runway might be for communities.
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com. 
