Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) – Air-travel delays could be cut significantly in the US by channeling more funds and equipment to the most-congested airports, a report said.

The New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco metropolitan areas were among those with worse-than- average delays for departures and arrivals in the year ended in June, according to the report today from the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based public policy group.

Almost 80 percent of the $2.6 billion in a U.S. airport-aid program last fiscal year went to facilities in small cities and other less-traveled destinations rather than the 26 largest metropolitan areas, the study showed. The analysis may increase pressure on Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration to redirect aid to busy airports.

The U.S. “cannot afford to send limited financial resources to under-used airports,” said Adie Tomer and Robert Puentes, the authors of the report. “FAA investments in targeted metropolitan airports have the potential to significantly improve air-travel delays.”

About 22 percent of the $2.6 billion spent through the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program in the year ended Sept. 30 went to the 26 metropolitan areas. Those facilities accounted for three- quarters of the air passengers in the 12 months ended in March, the study found.

Congestion-Related Pressures

“Sending a majority of this federal funding to airports that constitute a small minority of all passenger trips only serves to intensify the congestion-related pressures the country’s aviation system already experiences,” Tomer and Puentes said in the study.

The federal government “must focus on near-term upgrades to the country’s critical hubs,” since the FAA is years away from completing a major equipment overhaul, known as NextGen, according to the study.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt defended the way airport aid is distributed.

All airports play a role in the national system, and some that handle fewer passengers are heavily used by cargo shipping, another important transportation component, Babbitt told reporters in Washington today.

He also said that the facilities have some fixed expenses that don’t vary by size, such as building a new runway. Those are the same whether planes land on the site 3 times or 100 times an hour, Babbitt said.