The fast-growing US airline industry faces a myriad of problems as it triples in the next two decades to include not only commercial aircraft but thousands of smaller jets and even commercially operated rockets carrying tourists into space.
To keep planes flying and on time, the industry faces various challenges:
- A way will have to be found to hire and train new traffic controllers. Estimates are that double the current number will be needed in just seven years.
- The government agrees a new air traffic control system is needed to replace the outmoded one. But how will the new system be funded and financed?
- Another question is how the Federal Aviation Authority will cooperate with other agencies such as NASA and the Pentagon to come up with plans for new training and physical facilities.
“There’s a consensus that there is technology out there that could help,” Robert Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, told The New York Times.
But he added there was no consensus among the various representatives of regulators on working out the details.
The FAA says increased traffic could overload the system with a growth spurt of 25% in the next decade.
“You’re going to hit a wall,” said Bobby Sturgell, deputy administrator of the FAA.
The agency estimates that delays caused by air traffic will be 62% higher in 2014 than it was in ten years earlier.
The FAA currently tracks planes in flight by using radar. Pilots navigate by signals from a network of FAA radio beacons on the ground.
Officials are calling for a new system to do away with the outmoded operation of today and replace it with a Global Positioning system. That would allow every plane to check its precise location and broadcast that to others on a computerized network.
Current software and other equipment will have to be replaced to make way for the new system but questions include where the money will come from and who will oversee construction of a much-needed new aviation tracking system.
The FAA estimates it will take $2.1 billion to build a new system to replace software that is decades old. Current computers are so old that IBM will soon stop providing technical support and spare parts.
Safety is not seen as an issue, however, since manager can keep traffic levels down to what they can handle by keeping planes waiting on the ground.
Report by David Wilkening
