New Yorkers trying to snag cheap airfares for their summer vacations can ponder a legislative oddity as they chat with their travel agents: Three Western senators care more about lowering prices for Big Apple travelers than do Senators Schumer and Clinton. Senators McCain and Kyl of Arizona and Senator Ensign of Nevada are co-sponsoring the Abolishing Aviation Barriers Act of 2005, which would lift so-called perimeter rules at New York’s La Guardia and Washington’s Ronald Reagan National airports. Our senators are like lost luggage, mysteriously missing.

The perimeter rules restrict the length of flights to and from the two airports. In general, flights longer than 1,500 miles are banned at La Guardia, while the cap is 1,250 miles at Reagan. There are a few exceptions. The La Guardia restriction doesn’t apply on Saturdays, and flights to and from Denver are allowed. Over the years, Congress has exempted flights to a handful of more distant cities from Reagan.

Exceptions notwithstanding, the rule is a regulatory deadweight preventing full airline competition from taking off. A 1999 study by the Government Accountability Office found that passengers traveling to and from La Guardia pay about 50% more a flight mile than passengers using other comparably sized airports, and the perimeter rule is one of several culprits contributing to the problem. The rule favors large “legacy” airlines that operate hubs within the perimeter, while making life harder for upstart – and generally low-cost – airlines that have Western hubs or fly longhaul, point-to-point flights. The rule means that a commercial passenger’s trek to California or Hawaii must begin with a trek down the Van Wyck Expressway or a transfer to the AirTrain.

Perimeter restrictions at both airports have been in effect in various forms since the 1950s. At first, they were designed to push passengers to the then-new Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy International) and Dulles airports. Today, both of those are busy hubs, but perimeter rules remain. In New York, the Port Authority, which operates La Guardia, JFK, and Newark Liberty International Airport, uses the perimeter rule to smooth demand among the three, according to a spokesman for the authority, Pasquale DiFulco. The rule also supposedly encourages airlines to schedule flights to smaller airports within the perimeter because they can’t operate flights to larger markets beyond. And it is intended to alleviate congestion at La Guardia such as the crippling overcrowding that occurred in 2000 and early 2001.

Yet the perimeter rule didn’t prevent that congestion in the first place. And passengers and airlines should be free to decide how to make the best use of New York’s three commercial airports. As Mr. McCain argued in a floor speech when he introduced his bill, “Americans should have access to air travel at the lowest possible cost and with the most convenience for their schedule.”

New Yorkers are fortunate that someone in the Senate wants to expand their flight options, even if it isn’t either of their own senators, neither of whom was able or willing to respond to The New York Sun’s requests for comment. Hopefully they will decide to join their colleague from Arizona in grounding this archaic rule.