IN June 1956 a TWA Constellation collided with a United Air Lines DC-7 over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people on both aircraft. At the time it was the worst-ever airline disaster. Struggling with outdated technology and a postwar boom in air travel, overworked air-traffic controllers had failed to spot that the planes were on a collision course.
That crash led to the creation of a new body, which became the Federal Aviation Administration, in charge of running and modernizing the world’s biggest air-transportation system. With that system again struggling to keep pace with demand, President Donald Trump thinks that it is time to privatize America’s air-traffic control service. Recently, he outlined a plan to turn air-traffic control into a separate nonprofit entity financed by user fees, instead of the present patchwork of taxes and grants. Shorn of its air-traffic responsibility, the FAA would become a safety body.
America’s air-traffic system is vast, consisting of 14,000 controllers working in 476 airport-control towers that handle takeoffs and landings, as well as in 21 “en route” centers looking after flights along the nation’s airways. It has a good safety record, but elderly technology limits the number of flights that it can handle. This leads to delays and frustrated flyers. With passenger numbers expected to grow from 800 million a year to almost 1 billion by 2026, the problem will only get worse.
Trump believes that, no longer mired in a federal bureaucracy, the air-traffic service would become more efficient and better able to invest in technology. Many countries, including Australia, Britain and Canada, have privatized air-traffic services or turned them into state-owned companies. Nav Canada, a nonprofit that long has managed Canadian airspace, has costs per flight hour of $340, compared with the FAA’s $450.
Replacing old, radar-based methods with accurate satellite navigation and better digital communications is a particular priority. Aircraft using satellite navigation can safely be spaced closer together, which permits many more planes to be in the air at the same time. Digital systems also provide data links to control centers and to other planes by regularly broadcasting an aircraft’s identification sign, its position and course. This would allow “free routing,” which means that pilots can fly directly to a destination rather than follow established airways, which often zigzag around.
The president’s proposal might even speed a move toward “virtual” control towers in low-rise buildings, replacing towers physically located at airports. The virtual versions are fed live video from airfield cameras. Proponents argue that they are both safer and around 30 percent cheaper to operate. Virtual towers also can look after more than one airport: One in Norway is set to supervise 32 airports, some of them in remote areas.
The European Union reckons that such innovations will allow three times as many flights to be handled in the region and save airlines some $10 billion a year. It also, optimistically perhaps, predicts that on average aircraft will land within one minute of their scheduled arrival time. That would count as a miraculous improvement for anyone, let alone America’s weary airport warriors.
Trump may struggle to get the proposal through Congress, though. A similar plan got stuck last year, despite being backed by most airlines and the air-traffic controllers’ union.
At least the president can count on arriving on time: Air Force One flights get special clearance.
© 2017 Economist Newspaper Ltd., London (June 10). All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Image credits: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
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