[mathogre]

From the article: "The FAA is encouraging airlines to use bigger aircraft with fewer take-offs and landings." I worked in ATC R&D for many years. NY Tracon, N90, is crazy busy and very complicated. DCA handles lots of Regional Jets. Each aircraft is an "operation". If you're an airline and can carry the same amount of passengers in fewer aircraft, re: fewer operations, you're at an advantage, and the system continues to work.

The airspace and airports with the available controllers can handle only so many operations, and the FAA will limit operations accordingly. The airlines can either let the FAA randomly deny flights, or they can say to the airlines, as they apparently did, "We can only handle so many operations. How do you want to do this?" In situations like this, airlines themselves can decide how they're going to change their operations. In NY, it's probably easier to use/lease larger aircraft. Yes Teteboro, TEB, could take some traffic if this were just airport operations limited, but I suspect it is an N90 issue, so offloading to TEB really isn't an option. With DCA, it's more likely the airport. Airlines like United can offload to Dulles, IAD. Additionally, the airlines could even work with each other to some degree to get through this. They do that in significant weather events, though this is a much bigger event than a snowstorm at someplace like O'Hare (ORD).