Air Traffic Control Systems Need to Become a Priority

One of the important priorities that was bypassed in the new transportation bill in favor of peace gardens and Las Vegas museums was an updated air traffic control system. John Fund discusses that issue at OpinionJournal.com:

If you think there are more airport delays and cancellations than ever, you're right. The percentage of late flights has doubled since 2002. And as bad as things are now, they're about to get worse. The Federal Aviation Administration predicts there will be 36% more people flying by 2015. If the U.S. doesn't dramatically expand the capacity of its overburdened air traffic control system, the airlines won't be able to keep up with demand and ticket prices will skyrocket.

It ought to be an issue in the presidential campaign that the FAA isn't equipped to clean up this mess. "The FAA as currently structured is impossible to run efficiently," says Langhorne Bond, who ran the agency from 1977 to 1981. BusinessWeek reports the air traffic control network runs on software that is so outdated that there are only six programmers left in the U.S. who are able to update the code. The FAA's efforts to move to a satellite-based system have been plagued by cost overruns and performance shortfalls.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns that if the U.S. doesn't do something dramatic to upgrade its aviation infrastructure, the results will be "devastating." Rationing is already rearing its head as airlines deal with capacity limits by eliminating marginal routes in order to focus on more-profitable ones.

In July, American Airlines announced it was pulling out of Stewart International Airport, a converted Air Force base north of New York City, which local residents once hoped would give them the option of avoiding crowded LaGuardia or JFK. The airline's two flights to Chicago were often full, but running them was uneconomical because of the limited number of landing slots at O'Hare International Airport and the congested airspace around Chicago. "The number of slots at Chicago is not a law of nature," says Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, who has published a study on commercial aviation reform. "It too is a function of how good--or bad--our air traffic control technology is."

There are really two issues going on here. One is of course old technology and computer systems which struggle to keep up with increasing traffic. The other is a shortage of runways. People talk about crowded skies, but go outside sometime and look around. How many airplanes do you see? It's not the skies that are crowded by the limited number of runways available for the airlines use.

For instance, Orange County Airport has only one runway capable of jet traffic which means all arrivals and departures have to be shuffled through that single strip. It also means that there's only one way in for arrival traffic, and since they have to maintain a certain amount of spacing, the landing slots are limited. Adding a second jet-length runway would greatly improve conditions at the airport, but it will never happen due to opposition from the surrounding cities. Consequently, everyone who flies out of Orange County pays a higher air fare because demand is outstripping supply.

To really solve the airline schedule crisis, not only will there need to be better computer systems, but more concrete for aircraft to operate off of.