When Stacey Jones and his family were booked on a 5 p.m. United Airlines flight from O'Hare International Airport to New York last week, they didn't think they were buying a lottery ticket.

But in a way, they were.

Even in perfect weather, that flight arrives on time at LaGuardia Airport just once every five tries, according to federal statistics.

Nearly 5,000 flights throughout the U.S. show up as tiny airplane images on the radar screen at the Elgin control center.

That's because of the impossible mathematics of overscheduling: The airlines have booked 37 flights, including the Joneses', to depart in a period, when, at best, just 25 planes can take off in that much time.

"It's frustrating," said Jones, a 43-year-old architect who already had weathered one flight cancellation, due to mechanical problems, earlier in the day. The airlines "make out like it's your problem," he said, as his 5-year-old daughter, Samantha, bored and restless, squirmed on the floor.

"But why should we have to deal with it?"

Every day thousands of passengers like the Joneses are doomed to delays, even before they leave for the airport. As the well-traveled know, the time stamped on the ticket is not an ironclad guarantee, but more a game of chance.

The Joneses were lucky -- their 5 p.m. flight was only 42 minutes late. It could have been -- and often is -- a lot worse.

Finding fault in a system that even on good days seems poised to collapse is not hard. Neither is finding solutions. The airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration and local politicians all could play a part to relieve gridlock.

Take overscheduling. In their ceaseless quest to stake out bigger slices of the market, airlines jam runways with too many flights, tipping the commercial aviation system toward chaos, punishing hundreds of thousands of air travelers and costing American companies and passengers more than $2 billion a year in lost time and revenue.

Airlines could ease congestion by scaling back bloated schedules that give passengers a choice of, for instance, 17 morning flights to Minneapolis from O'Hare.

Airlines could use larger jets to combine flights. Instead, they have ordered record numbers of small 50-seat jets to pack their schedules.

Then there's the matter of building more runways -- and airports. They could provide relief, but across the nation and particularly in the Chicago area, local politics and anti-noise activists have effectively stranded blueprints on the drawing board.

The federal government could restrict the number of flights at the nation's busiest airports. Instead, Congress is lifting those curbs,  inviting even greater gridlock.

That has driven some local airport authorities to step in and impose flight caps, despite questions about whether the law allows them to do so.

Modernizing air traffic control could help, but so far the FAA has bungled those projects, squandering billions of dollars. That has prompted calls to wrest responsibility for air traffic control from the FAA and hand it over to the private sector.

Last year, U.S. airline passengers had a one in four likelihood of booking a flight that would be canceled or delayed. This year, the odds are even higher. One of every three flights to major U.S. airports arrived late this summer. At O'Hare, the figure was one in two.

Next year, those delays will grow even worse, industry executives and experts predict.

Imagine, then, what delays could be like at the end of this decade, when the number of passengers is expected to rocket to 1 billion from the current 670 million.

"And the scary part is," said Robert Crandall, retired chairman of American Airlines, "there's no light at the end of the tunnel."

A grand ballet:

Hub bottlenecks
Crandall, a slight, wiry man with a high-pitched voice, has attained cultlike status as patriarch of U.S. commercial aviation. When he talks, the industry listens.

It was Crandall's idea for a new way of routing planes that, together with the industry's deregulation in 1978, made flying so wildly popular. Instead of the previous city-to-city scheduling approach, Crandall envisioned a grand ballet in which waves of planes flying from smaller cities would descend on major airports to disgorge connecting passengers, who would then sprint to larger planes waiting to fly to other major airports.

Robert Crandall, retired chairman of American Airlines,  devised the hub-and-spoke system of routing flights to give airlines greater flexibility.

The small planes would then loop back to the smaller cities, collecting and redistributing passengers in much the same way that city transit buses shuttle commuters to and from downtown train stations.

The new routing method came to be called the hub-and-spoke system
because, on a map, the patterns look like wheels, with the key major airports functioning as the hubs and the routes to smaller airports as the spokes. Built around 27 key hub airports that act as switching stations, the system gave airlines great flexibility in deploying planes and crews.

Just as railroads in the 19th Century put trading centers such as Chicago on the world map, economic benefits quickly piled up for regions that developed hub airports. San Francisco became a hub, as did Atlanta. O'Hare became the hub of two airlines: United and American.

The hubs, which represent only a tiny portion of the 600 commercial airports in the U.S., handle 56 percent of all passenger flights -- with O'Hare and Atlanta each representing 5 percent of the national total.

As a result of Crandall's vision, thousands of daily flights have been added over the past two decades, fares have been cut by 40 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, and the yearly number of travelers has soared.

But by cramming too many flights into airports, the airlines have turned these switching stations into bottlenecks. Glutted with flights, hubs operate at the edge of gridlock, even in the best of weather.

Like departures, O'Hare can handle no more than 25 arrivals every
quarter-hour, according to the FAA. Yet on Nov. 3, 43 arrivals were
scheduled between 12:30 and 12:44 p.m., according to a Tribune analysis of flight schedules.

On other days during peak periods, the airlines had scheduled twice as many arrivals as the airport could handle.

For years, airline executives denied that they overschedule. Then, last
summer, Donald J. Carty, the tall, button-down chairman and CEO of
American Airlines, broke ranks, admitting that overscheduling was routine. Appearing before a Senate subcommittee, he argued that the industry has no choice: "No one is willing to disarm unilaterally."

Drawing the line:

A congestion crisis
The U.S. commercial air travel system faced its first congestion crisis in the 1960s. Federal limits on the number of flights were imposed at four key airports -- O'Hare, LaGuardia, New York's John F. Kennedy International and Washington's Ronald Reagan-National, then known as National.

In the early 1980s, airports again were feeling the capacity crunch, and some of the same solutions discussed now were on the table then. The airlines, granted limited antitrust immunity by the Department of Transportation to negotiate their flight plans, agreed to divvy up the day's schedule to reduce the head-to-head flights. There also was an industrywide move toward larger aircraft and an acknowledgement that airports needed more runways to handle the rising number of flights and passengers.

The relief didn't last long. Itching to capitalize on the burgeoning demand for frequent service, the carriers soon reverted to old habits, cramming runways with more flights than airports could handle.

And little was done to build new runways, mainly because of local opposition. Since 1991, only six runways have been added at the nation's hub airports, far below the demand created by the explosion of flights. Now, however, a growing bipartisan chorus is beginning to insist that parochial politics should not stifle improvements that serve the greater good of air travelers.

Even so, there is a recognition that simply building more runways could
backfire.

"The feeling here is, if you increase the infrastructure, airlines will just fill the schedule, and we'll have just as many delays," said Peter Thorner, an officer with the San Francisco Boardsailing Association, a group trying to block a proposed expansion of the city's airport into San Francisco Bay. In Georgia, U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a veteran Democratic lawmaker, said, "It's obvious that, at some point, like interstate highways, you won't be able to build enough runways."

Building new runways isn't the only way to manage congestion. Government can cap the number of flights airlines operate.

Before deregulation, the Civil Aeronautics Board governed all aspects of commercial aviation, setting schedules, determining fares, even assigning airlines to particular airports. But, ever since, airline executives, not airport or FAA officials, have decided how many flights an airport is going to handle and at what times of day.

LaGuardia is moving to take back some of that power. The airport already had been handling about 1,000 flights a day -- and suffering rising delays -- when, because of the lifting of federal limits last spring, airlines asked to add 600 new landings and takeoffs.

LaGuardia refused. "The airport cannot possibly handle it," said Al Graser, deputy director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.

So LaGuardia thumbed its nose at Congress and on Oct. 1 banned any more flights during morning and evening rush hours. The airlines, however, are continuing to add operations -- expected to reach 300 new flights daily by Jan. 1 -- outside the rush periods.

Worried that LaGuardia's ban won't be enough to reduce delays, and citing safety concerns, the FAA now believes Congress' efforts to lift flight limits completely is unwise. It plans to augment the airport's flight moratorium with a broader ban that would cap additional flights between 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. beginning Jan. 1.

Cutthroat competition:

Low-cost carriers
Airlines are intensely competitive. They're also intensely wary of any intrusion onto their turf, especially the no-frills, cheap-fares kind offered by low-cost carriers.

Last year, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno sued American Airlines, claiming it tried to drive Vanguard Airlines and two other budget carriers from its hub at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport by saturating the market with flights and slashing fares.

In 1995, Vanguard tried to establish a beachhead in Dallas-Ft. Worth by offering three daily round trips to Kansas City. American responded by slashing its average one-way fare for that route from $108 to $80 to match those charged by Vanguard, and adding six flights to the eight it already ran.

Later that year, when Vanguard abandoned its service to Kansas City,
American immediately reduced its own. American also raised its one-way fares to as much as $147 -- a 36 percent increase over the price before Vanguard entered the market.

Justice Department lawyers contend American violated antitrust laws because it knew the moves against Vanguard would lose money in the short term. The mission all along, according to internal American documents obtained by federal investigators, was "to drive [Vanguard] from the market."

The case is pending. In a statement issued after the suit was filed, American vehemently denied violating antitrust laws, saying it is "confident that its actions in Dallas-Ft. Worth will prove to be nothing more than those of any tough competitor in a highly competitive industry."

Competition can get so fierce that airlines are willing to fly half-empty
planes -- adding to congestion -- rather than cede a city, or even a share of a city's business, to a competitor.

Even though most planes operating between O'Hare and other hubs are packed with passengers, those feeding in and out of the airport from smaller fields are usually much emptier.

Consider that, on a recent Tuesday, only 42 percent of the seats on the five United flights from Des Moines to O'Hare were filled. Its competitor, American Eagle, was only slightly more successful with its six Des Moines-O'Hare flights, selling 46 percent of the seats.

Another tactic airlines use to defend market share is to book two relatively small planes for the same destination only a few minutes apart, rather than offer a single large plane. If the planes aren't filled, the strategy may cost them money in the short run, but it still keeps competing airlines from gaining a foothold on those routes.

Northwest Airlines regularly schedules flights between its Minneapolis and Detroit hubs within minutes of each other. Some are even dispatched at the same time. For instance, at 1:10 p.m. each day, the airline flies two 190-seat jets to Detroit from Minneapolis. Those flights could be combined into a single 446-seat Boeing 747.

FAA officials predict that airlines will continue adding aircraft, especially the new 50-seat regional jets, in record numbers.

Of course, flights with only a relative handful of passengers or flights using smaller jets take up just as much runway space and require just as much air traffic control attention as a fully packed 747 carrying as many as 550 people.

"Sure, we know we are adding to the congestion," said John Hotard, an American spokesman. But the multitude of flights is "bottom-line justifiable. Major airlines put a lot of effort into focus groups, and the focus groups say the most important element they look at is scheduling, which includes frequency, and then they look at price."

Maybe Hotard should talk to Christiane Koppel.

The 34-year-old marketing specialist from Connecticut spent a frustrating day last week traveling to Arkansas through O'Hare and then trying to get back home. She found herself stuck at O'Hare, facing her third flight delay of the day.

"Frequent service is important to me," she said, "but I would rather the airlines not advertise as much frequency if it means the flights that are scheduled actually do leave on time. I'd rather have a reliable schedule than one that is hyped up."

Eventually, Koppel's American flight to LaGuardia took off and got her back to New York -- more than an hour behind schedule.

Squandered opportunities:

FAA's abysmal record
For years, the nation has looked to the FAA for help in fending off gridlock. And for just as long, the agency's track record has been defined by missed deadlines, wasted billions -- and failure.

In March, the agency trumpeted an FAA-airline industry plan to
accommodate the growing legions of flights by streamlining air traffic control operations. By early summer, it was clear the plan had collapsed.

The agency's 18-year-long effort to modernize air traffic control has been just as abysmal. The FAA spent hundreds of millions of dollars on computer gadgetry it later realized it didn't need or couldn't afford to install. It dizzied the contractor, IBM, with more than 300 changes to a single project -- some as simple as a new screen color for display monitors.

About $1.5 billion has been squandered, auditors said, because of
"overambitious plans by both the FAA and [IBM], poor FAA oversight of [IBM's] performance in developing software, and the FAA's indecisiveness about requirements." As a result, deadlines were pushed back years, just as demand for flights was ratcheting up.

The agency's gaffes have helped fuel calls for the privatization of air traffic control. Sixteen countries have taken that step, including Canada, South Africa, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland.

Proponents argue that because privatized air traffic control would be funded by airline-paid user fees and not Congress, the revenue needed to beef up manpower and technology would rise with demand.

The controllers vehemently oppose privatization, warning that privately
controlled air traffic would place the bottom line ahead of safety.

"You wouldn't contract out the U.S. Marines for the very same reason," said John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers union.

But would the Marines throw a wrench into the works the way the controllers did this summer? During an ongoing labor dispute with FAA management Chicago-area controllers in July deliberately slowed the flow of planes into O'Hare. The job action delayed thousands of passengers in Chicago and across the nation. The FAA disciplined 15 controllers. Still, the episode was embarrassing for the FAA; the agency was unaware controllers had caused the slowdown until the Tribune reported it in July.

Targeting angry fliers:

A 'hub-and-hope' cure
The major airlines' dismal performance is giving rise to new competition from other air transport services and regional airports.

An hour's drive from Manhattan in New York's Hudson Valley, Stewart
International Airport is at the forefront of an intriguing trend in commercial aviation: attracting disenchanted fliers by offering a profusion of charter jet services from a regional airport.

A Southwest Airlines plane arrives in Albuquerque. Southwest has been successful with its no-frills service by targeting travelers on tight budgets.

Targeting angry consumers trying to avoid the congestion associated with LaGuardia, Kennedy or Newark International, Stewart launched a new marketing campaign this year: "All of the convenience, none of the hassle."

Charter flights are growing by double-digit rates each year. In addition to the typical corporate charter jets, some entrepreneurs have carved out new markets to meet the demands of frustrated travelers by selling single seats aboard small planes bound for popular destinations.

So far, the major airlines haven't reacted to charter jets because they're not seen as a threat just yet.

Business jets have the best safety record in aviation, according to experts although charter service has drawbacks: Seats generally are more expensive than economy tickets and difficult to reschedule at a moment's notice.

Sitting in first class on a recent United Airlines flight from Chicago to New York City, software executive Gregory Brown said his next series of flight reservations almost certainly will go through a charter company. Brown, the chairman and CEO of Micromuse Inc., who says he flies four days a week, complained that his travel this year has been riddled with delays and cancellations, resulting in countless wasted hours on the company clock.

"It's just the indifference of the major airlines," Brown said. "They're acting like monopolies that own the sky."

At Chicago's Midway Airport, entrepreneur Matt Andersson launched Indigo air service in August, offering daily flights to New Jersey's Teterboro Airport, 7 miles outside New York City. Indigo charges $629 per flight for eight to 10 passengers, who ride in soft leather swivel chairs on midsize jets.

Andersson is hoping to attract customers with prices more reasonable than charter services. That $629 per ticket is on par with walk-up prices for coach class and far less than first-class fares on commercial airlines, Andersson noted.

"Domestic flying is becoming more untenable because of this 'hub-and-hope method," Andersson said, sarcastically referring to the major airlines hub-and-spoke system. "We're targeting travelers who value their time more than the major airlines do."

Tribune staff writers Dahleen Glanton, Dan Mihalopoulos, William Neikirk, E.A. Torriero, Rogers Worthington, Jeff Zeleny, David Mendell and Patrick T. Reardon contributed to this report.