One multimillion-dollar runway each has been opened at three of the major and busiest airports in the United States, intended to handle an anticipated increase in traffic and to cut delays, notwithstanding a slowdown in economy and a projected drop in domestic flights this winter.

The three new runways are at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago (costing over $450 million), Dulles International Airport, just outside Washington, D.C. (350 million) and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, located in SeaTack, Washington ($1 billion).

Robert Sturgell, acting director of the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), was quoted as saying: “Aviation has always been a growing industry. We are building for the future.”

Robert Sturgell participated in the opening ceremonies of all the three new runways, opened on November 20, 2008, along with United States Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.

The new runway at Chicago is a part of a huge, $15-billion expansion programme at O’Hare International Airport. The plan envisages another new runway and terminal by 2014.

Previously, six of O’Hare International Airport’s seven runways intersected. When the entire project is completed in 2014, the airport will have eight runways in parallel configurations, which is considered safer and more efficient.

The first plane to use the new runway at Dulles International Airport was an American Airlines flight, which took off for Los Angeles.

However, the US media quoted air traffic controllers as saying that new taxiways, which are needed to make Dulles International Airport’s new runway fully functional, are not yet ready. This deficiency, the air traffic controllers added, would make the new the runway’s practical benefit minimal, coupled with “a confusing two-mile taxi route to and from the airstrip.”

The new strip is Washington’s Dulles International Airport’s fourth runway, its first runway addition since the airport opened in 1962.

The website cnn.com reported: “The new runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is being especially welcomed because of the region’s notoriously wet climate. The airport’s third runway will allow planes to take off and land two abreast during inclement weather. The current runways are too close to allow simultaneous operations in foul weather. Airport officials claim the new runway will cut delays in half.”

Detractors of the new airstrip at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport have criticised spending $1 billion for the project, which is five times the initial estimates. However, defenders counter it saying that “the cost would more than pay for itself in decades to come, including by reducing delays.”

David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the organisation that represents United States-based airlines, was quoted as describing the construction of the new runways as a positive step, but said more needed to be done. “The greater challenge will be to do something about modernising air space so that those improvements in efficiency on the ground is matched in the air,” Castelveter added.

The Air Transport Association supports an initiative by the Federal Aviation Administration to build a new satellite-based network that would allow aircraft to fly using the global positioning system (GPS) instead of radar. However, issues regarding funding and implementation have impeded the FAA’s $30-billion project.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the United States, has acknowledged that new runways are not the sole answer to solving delays.

In a report prepared in 2007, the FAA had noted that only two major airports have opened in the United States in the past 40 years – the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and the Denver International Airport – and that as many as four more airports needed to be built in the next two to three decades.