Wingman: A Comparison of ATC Modernization Approaches

Robert W. Poole, Jr., who directs transportation studies at the Reason Public Policy Institute, compared and contrasted two approaches to the challenge of modernizing the U.S. air traffic control system.  Here is what he wrote recently in an online opinion piece.

Is Expanding ATC Capacity Threefold Really Do-Able?

"For me, the most exciting session at the recent annual meeting of the Air Traffic Control Association [October 31-November 3 in Washington, D.C.] was Tuesday morning’s plenary session on ATC 20 years hence. While several speakers talked about technology advances, two presenters stood out because their visions made such a stark contrast. The first of these was Doug Fralick, Director of Safety & Technology for the controllers’ union, NATCA. Having heard the previous speaker talk about the needed transformation in the role of the controller (analogous to the change in the pilot’s role over the past 20 years, thanks to much better technology), Fralick was having none of it. “Human-centric” ATC is still our best bet for the next 20 years, he maintained. Besides, weather will remain a major source of problems. And anyway, the real need is for a lot more runways (yet we all know expanding airports is becoming exceedingly difficult). In short, we’ll just have to muddle through with the system more or less as it is today.

It was the perfect set-up for Mike Lewis, Director of Future Systems at Boeing. Lewis took on the challenge of expanding ATC capacity in the terminal area, and made the startling claim that we can increase this capacity threefold (3X) in the next 20 years. How? Contra Fralick, it’s by making ATC “network-centric,” not human-centric. That means we need to create and fully exploit “shared precision information.” Translated into everyday English, that means recognizing that today’s standards for how far apart planes must be kept by ATC are not laws of nature. Rather, they are a function of how good our information is about where each plane is (and will be one second later), where bad weather is (precisely), where wake vortexes are spinning behind a plane (exactly), etc. If we can know these things much more precisely, in real time, we can fly planes much closer together, safely.

Lewis then laid out seven key steps which, used together, would deliver 3X today’s airport capacity (as assessed by simulation modeling at Boeing). They are:

1. Remove visibility as an issue (via tools like NASA’s synthetic vision);
2. Provide arrival time precision within +/- 2 seconds (as Boeing recently tested in Sydney and Melbourne);
3. Make use of all nonhazardous air space via much better real-time weather information;
4. Reduce final-approach spacing to 2 miles, from the 3-6 miles used now due to wake turbulence;
5. “Pave down the middle”—i.e., add new runways between existing ones (Raytheon is working on a system for landing an echelon of planes on three closely spaced parallel runways.);
6. Enable safe multi-aircraft operations on runways (e.g., a regional jet landing closely behind a 777 taking off near the end of a two-mile runway).
7. Use all available capacity of all airports (e.g., better-coordinated use of the airports in each metro area).

He told us that the big-payoff items in this list were numbers 4 and 5, accounting for about three-quarters of the total capacity gain. And he also noted that although much of the technology is nearly in hand, breakthroughs are needed in (1) short-term weather forecast accuracy and (2) wake vortex detection and prediction.

The business case for revamping ATC along these lines, he said, is overwhelmingly positive. Three times the capacity means three times the revenue, but he maintains that this technology-intensive system would require little or no increase in staff and less expensive infrastructure than today’s costly-to-maintain ground-based infrastructure.

This is the kind of vision that results from viewing ATC as a high-tech service business. It’s this kind of outside-the-box thinking that aviation needs to escape the perfect storm now engulfing the fledgling ATO."

Mr. Poole’s comments were published in the Reason Foundation's "ATC Reform Newsletter" on November 30, 2004.  12-03-2004.

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