Houston is in better shape than most. The city is building another runway at Bush International and is expanding a second. But adequate capacity in just one place doesn't matter. At Chicago's O'Hare, where crowded runways and bad weather often causes delays, planes stay on the ground. They can't fly on to, say, Houston, then San Francisco.
Schedules break down nationwide.
The FAA's system has been under serious strain for years. It's safe, but the price of that safety is slowing traffic. The FAA has come up with a number of big improvement plans to fix the system with one stroke, only to see them crash and burn. One solution pushed by many of the airlines is privatization of the air traffic control system. Other countries, including Canada, have seen privatization work well.