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Sandy and Bob Dobkin live five minutes from Kennedy Airport. And they've had enough.
Frustrated by what they described as long security lines, overwhelming crowds and flight delays, the couple drove this week from their home in Woodmere to Long Island MacArthur Airport for a flight to Fort Lauderdale.
"It is wonderful," Sandy Dobkin said, sitting at a Southwest Airlines gate Thursday afternoon. "I'm going to tell all my friends that this is really the way to go."
As heightened security creates even more hassles for those traveling by air, MacArthur Airport, in Ronkonkoma, is positioning itself in counterpoint to delay-prone LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports. With a new $300,000 marketing campaign, MacArthur declares: "We make flying a breeze."
And they're not empty words.
According to federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, MacArthur's average tarmac time - the time an aircraft waits on the tarmac before takeoff - was less than nine minutes in 2009. LaGuardia's average was nearly 27 minutes, and Kennedy's was 32.5.
MacArthur's shorter tarmac times stem largely from the fact that aircraft flying into and out of MacArthur don't use the same airspace that the Kennedy,...