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New ATC System To Rely On AT&T Cell Towers

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-see-me-now dept.

longacre writes "The FAA has awarded the long-anticipated first contract for development of its NextGen air traffic control system: a $1.8 billion deal with ITT Corporation, beating out bids from aerospace heavyweights such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. ITT's design will make use of hundreds of specially modified AT&T cellular phone towers which, in addition to their normal communications duties, will relay an aircraft's position to air traffic controllers and other aircraft in real time. The initial contract is only enough to wire and test the so-called ADS-B system in the Philadelphia area and around the Gulf of Mexico — hooking up the rest of the country will take an estimated 20 years and $20 billion."

11 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty expensive... by Slashidiot · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Wow, 20 billion is quite a lot of money. I guess they are expecting really high benefits from that. But I think that a better air traffic control can get you no more than a 30% increase in capacity. From TFA:

    Doug Church, an official with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says that while his organization welcomes technological advances, he's concerned that NextGen not be viewed as a panacea. "An airport can still only handle so many flights," he says. "What we need is more concrete on the ground" in the form of new runways and airfields, he says. I think this guy is pretty much spot on. With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways. I'm sure there is another way of getting rid of the bottleneck of air traffic control capacity. Just hire more people! In Europe we are managing quite well with "traditional" ways...
    --
    Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
    1. Re:Pretty expensive... by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out. What's needed is for airlines to move away from the hub and spoke model, and fly smaller planes directly between routes. ADS-B will help quite a bit with this.

      On an unrelated note, I think IIT should have bid out the contract for tower locations, instead of just handing it to ATT.

    2. Re:Pretty expensive... by Slashidiot · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well, the hub and spoke model works, and there are good reasons to keep it. It makes operation way cheaper, and the CO2 emissions are way lower. If the problem is that the area around the main airport in big cities is unavailable and the airport cannot grow, solving air traffic control problems is not going to get you too far.

      It probably makes more sense to build a big airport further from the cities and build good high speed trains to get you inside the city. Hurray for intermodal transport!

      --
      Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
    3. Re:Pretty expensive... by Forseti · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, as long as your local government is smart enough to manage such a project intelligently, and that half the project doesn't get canned after the next election. Quebec/Montreal spent obscene amounts of money of it's Mirabel airport and now we're about to decommission it because the high-speed train and connecting highway was never completed, so people keep using the old Airport on the island...

      --
      Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
  2. The real cause of delays... by jbwolfe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    FTA: "the entire overhaul will cost taxpayers up to $20 billion over 20 years. But the airline industry insists that any early advances can't come soon enough.

    You can say that again. From a users perspective, they have been doing things the same way for as along as I've been involved (20 years)- well overdue for some significant technological advances! It really doesn't strike me as a difficult problem as it boils down to to a space/time/position equation.

    And again: "We are at catastrophic levels in terms of congestion," says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for major U.S. airlines. "The controllers are using age-old procedures and separation standards that they put into place decades ago.""

    While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic.

    --
    Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
    1. Re:The real cause of delays... by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic. You may or may not be aware of this, but large numbers of smaller planes have been pressed into service over the last several years. Smaller turboprops may be cheaper to fly, but they still use up gates, takeoff/landing slots and Traffic Control resources.

      These smaller planes carry less people without having a proportionatly smaller airport footprint (for lack of a better word).
      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
  3. Relies on Mode S? by EmagGeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It sounds like this system is just picking up the Mode-S transponders in modern planes, and relaying that information to ATC. Aircraft equipped with modern GPS, even general aviation aircraft, also pick up these Mode-S transmissions and plot other aircraft on the GPS display.

    Right now, only Mode-C is required by law, and even then only within 30 nautical miles of a Class B airport. Mode C just transmits your altitude information and it is up to radar to determine your x-y position. Mode S is much more accurate because GPS is accurate to feet, where radar is only accurate to hundreds (or maybe thousands) of feet in x-y, and not accurate at all for altitude (which is why we have Mode C).

    I can't imagine it'll actually cost 20 Billion to retrofit cell towers with Mode S receivers and internet relays. A land-based Mode S receiver is probably $100, and they can ride the data on AT&T's EDGE or 3G network for next to free. This seems like a cash grab to me.

  4. Dont see how this will help by tyler_larson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, it sounds like they're spending $1.8 billion to create an infrastructure to do what our current infrastructure does, except using cell phone towers. How is this better than radar + mode C or mode S?

    --
    "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
    RFC 1925
  5. Re:Uh... (bubble-buster inside) by BlueParrot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Keep laughing, Nokia started out as a wood-pulp mill...

  6. Build More Airports by p0tat03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... and the public transit systems to tie them into urban centres. There is no reason why airports have to be within a metropolitan area, if there's a fast monorail/train/rapid transit from the city to the outskirts, there is PLENTY of cheap land left to build airports.

    Or better yet, start re-developing our aging and deteriorating rail networks. IMHO there's no good reason much of the east coast is dominated by air travel at all. I'm not sure about Americans, but here in Canada traveling from Toronto to Ottawa (about 450km) takes about the same time by air as by rail (including check-in, security times, etc). Rapid rail transit, IMHO, is THE answer to short and medium range travel. The only time one should have to step on board an aircraft is when flying halfway across the continent. Even going all the way across the state should be well within the means of fast rail travel (not to mention cheaper).

    Hell, on a train I get on-board WiFi, a HUGE amount of legroom, seats that don't try to squeeze me, and non-dry non-stuffy air. Not to mention a soothing, quiet clickety-clack of the rails instead of the roar of jet engines. Oh, and no security, no travel restrictions... It is a superior way to travel in almost every way.

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion