European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 12, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A in the sky above air Raff a controllers work at the Boston air route traffic control Center in Nashua . Below planes line up on a crowded runway at Boston s Logan International Airport. By h. Josef Hebert associated presso n the Day before Christmas some 2 million people rushed to airports across America expecting turmoil or delays. They often found both. That kind of Airport crush now usually seen Only on thanksgiving and Christmas is Likely to become commonplace by 2000, when the airlines expect to carry nearly 800 million passengers a year an average of More than 2 million every Day. Hello gridlock. Yes aviation officials Are beginning to worry about a logjam in skies Over the United states. Once the Domain of businessmen and the Well heeled the airlines in the United states have become a mass transit system. A record 455 million passengers boarded commercial aircraft in the United states in 1988, nearly 1.2 million people a Day compared with 243 million in i977. Three of every 10 adult americans took an airline flight last year and nearly three of every four adults have flown at some Point in their lives. Yet no major airports have been built since 1974, when the Dallas fort Worth Airport was constructed on 18,000-acres of Texas Prairie. And while local officials have received agreement on a massive futuristic $3 billion Airport at Denver the airlines there have walked because of the Cost. Add to that an air traffic control system still struggling to recover from a 1981 strike plus Federal budget constraints. The Holiday passenger crunch gives us All a glimpse into the future of air traffic bemoans Herbert Kelleher chairman of Southwest airlines. He says the air transport system of today lacks the capacity to handle that volume of traffic on a daily  he also says there Are scant signs that anything is being done about it. Page 16 the stars and stripes in the Early Days of flying who d have thought that some Day air travel would be so completely screwed up sunday february 12,1989 i think the single biggest concern in aviation is the capacity Issue agrees John Lauber a member of the National transportation safety Board. The traffic demands also raise safety worries he says especially since it is unlikely that dozens of new. Runways and airports will be constructed and Broad modernization of the air traffic control system is years away. There Are real questions As to How we Are going to accommodate this growth Lauber warns. He acknowledges that there Are ways to solve the congestion problem Short of pouring new Concrete. But he says the danger is that these things will be done before All of the ramifications Are thought through from a safety standpoint. The pressure is  among the Short term solutions being considered by the Federal aviation administration Are adopting new technology to allow More planes to land in a Shorter time Span and increasing use of computers to predict traffic flow. Indeed the overcrowding is being Felt both in the air and on the ground. Seventeen . Airports used by 40 percent of the flying Public were classified in 1988 As seriously congested because they handled 160 percent of the traffic for which they were designed. By the year 2000 that number could go As High As 58 airports used by nearly three out of every four travellers according to the Faa. Officials at Boston s Logan International Airport say As far As they re concerned aviation gridlock already has arrived. Last summer the Massachusetts port authority which runs Logan imposed a new fee Structure that makes it too expensive for owners of Small planes and even some commuter airlines to land. The local officials argue that in an Era of scarce resources priority must