Inside FAA's NextGen Air Traffic Control System
Popular Mechanics:
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End of Flight Delays? High-Tech FAA Fix Could Bust Sky Gridlock
By Barbara S. Peterson
Alaska Airlines Flight 75 from Seattle was about 30 minutes from Juneau when the pilots heard from the control tower: The airport was fogged in, and visibility was less than 400 ft. In that kind of late February weather, the crew normally would divert rather than try to land at an airport ringed by 2200-ft. mountains and buffeted by winds from the Gastineau Channel.
Instead, the Boeing 737-400 stayed on course. A global positioning satellite (GPS) relayed real-time information about the plane's location to the cockpit's situational display, which cut through the gloom and put the aircraft on a flight path up the channel, between mountains that the pilots couldn't even see.
It was one of around 1000 flights that Alaska Air rescued last year from typical foul-weather fates: a long delay, cancellation or diversion. Those completed flights added millions to the airline's bottom line, but the new flight-saving hardware may have an even greater impact than increased profits. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been quietly using Alaska as a testbed for technologies that could radically transform the nation's antiquated air traffic control (ATC) system from ground-based radar to space-based GPS.
It's part of an overhaul called NextGen — and it's long overdue. Last year was the most delay-filled on record; 2007 looks like it will be worse. "The current system cannot handle the projected traffic demands expected by 2015," Robert Sturgell, the FAA's deputy administrator, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in March 2007. "Absent modernization, the consequences will be a total system collapse."
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