In its 75 years, FAA goes from radio to satellite air traffic control
Published 12:01 am Tuesday, July 12, 2011
In the early days, bonfires were used to guide planes in for landing on grass runways.
By the time the U.S. government took over air traffic control, radio dispatches between pilots and people on the ground helped guide airplanes across the country. Seventy-five years later, the Federal Aviation Administration is looking to move from radar to a satellite-based navigation system to control the roughly 50,000 daily flights across the United States.
“Our system literally hums,” said Randy Babbitt, administrator for the FAA, who was on hand Monday at the Seattle Terminal Radar Approach Control facility to mark the 75th anniversary of air traffic control.
When the Bureau of Air Commerce took over operation of air traffic control on July 6, 1936, the country had just 15 air traffic controllers at three locations: Newark, N.J., Chicago and Cleveland, Ohio. Today, the FAA employs about 15,000 air traffic controllers at hundreds of locations.
Most of the FAA’s air traffic control sites use radar to help planes take off and land. But “Seattle is on the cutting edge of NextGen (air traffic control),” Babbitt said.
Seattle-based Alaska Air, with the help of the Boeing Co. and SeaTac, is among the carriers with jets equipped with global positioning systems that assist with more efficient flights. Using radar system, airplanes have to descend and then level off and repeat that process all the way until landing. Using the GPS-based system, planes will have smoother, more continuous descents, which both cut noise and fuel-consumption.
The new approach is expected to save airlines $7 billion in fuel costs at Seattle, Babbitt said. That figure accounts only for airplanes that already are equipped with the new systems. It will also cut about 22,000 tons of carbon emissions, about the equivalent of taking 4,000 cars off the streets, Babbitt said.
But both the FAA and airlines still have work to do. Airlines are expected to foot the bill for upgrading airplanes that don’t already have the new systems. And the government is updating its air traffic control sites. Babbitt believes the fuel-savings makes a compelling business case for most airlines to upgrade.
For more on Boeing’s efforts with NextGen, read this Herald archive story: tinyurl.com/5wed96q.
