To help alleviate congestion and accelerate summer travel, the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) has approved more than a hundred new and improved flight routes across the East Coast.
The 169 new routes primarily fly over the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, along the East Coast, and are more direct, which makes them shorter in distance, according to the FAA. They are often flown at elevations of more than 18,000 feet.
“These significant improvements to our national airspace system are just in time for summer and will help travelers get to their destinations more efficiently,” Tim Arel, the chief operating officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, shared in a statement. “The new routes will reduce complexity and redistribute volume across all available airspace. I’m proud of the FAA and [the] industry’s strong collaboration on this project to get it done.”
Travel + Leisure notes that the new routes, which have been under development for more than seven years, will help airlines save a yearly total of 40,000 miles and 6,000 minutes of travel time. They will take the place of “legacy routes,” which have a tendency to twist and turn more often and were applied when “aircraft largely relied on ground-based radar, limiting the directness of routes, instead of GPS,” according to the FAA.
After the FAA granted permission to airlines to reduce service from New York and Washington, D.C.-area airports ahead of the busy summer season due to a staffing shortage, the decision to begin operating these routes comes weeks later.
Operators like United Airlines and American Airlines did the same, as Detour previously reported, reducing the number of flights from the impacted airports momentarily.
This summer is expected to be exceptionally hectic for airports across the globe, and not just on the East Coast. According to a study from Delta Air Lines last month, its summer overseas flights are already 75% booked. Additionally, a recent survey found that international airfare is anticipated to hit a 5-year high this summer, with tickets to Europe and Asia being among the priciest.
Evie Blanco is a journalist with nearly a decade of experience who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Queens, New York. She is extremely well-versed in hip-hop music and culture and is always aware of any developments within it. Whether it’s the latest in pop culture, a fascinating foreign destination, a truly amazing new restaurant, or breaking news, she loves to write about it all.
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