'Lear lock' cost -- who pays?

0 Comments | USA TODAY, February, 2007

Frequent business travelers know the many indignities of flying: long lines, shoe removal, frequent delays, bad or nonexistent food. Here's another, less familiar one: Road warriors are subsidizing high fliers in their Gulfstreams.

Those subsidies are one reason there are more than 17,000 corporate airplanes in the USA, twice the number of commercial airliners. At times and places such as South Florida on winter weekends or New York at virtually any time, they can cause what might be called "Lear Lock." This Monday after the Super Bowl, for instance, corporate jets left South Florida at a rate of 200 to 250 per hour, causing delays for airline passengers, according to the Air Transport Association (ATA), the major carriers' trade group.

Those jets are so...