FAA Greenlights Satellite-Based Air Traffic Control System

coondoggie writes "As one of the massive flying seasons gets underway the government today took a step further in radically changing the way aircraft are tracked and moved around the country. Specifically the FAA gave the green light to deploy satellite tracking systems nationwide, replacing the current radar-based approach. The new, sometimes controversial system would let air traffic controllers track aircraft using a satellite network using a system known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B), which is ten times more accurate than today's radar technology. ADS-B is part of the FAA's wide-reaching plan known as NextGen to revamp every component of the flight control system to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky."

Comments

Re:what's tracking going to do?

[mcrbids]

You understand wrong.

The problem of air traffic in the United States is a combination of a number of things: insufficient airport runway capacity, overused "super hubs", predictive overselling of tickets, and antiquated air traffic control systems. All these factors contribute, some (much) more than others.

I'm a private pilot, so let's be honest - there's plenty of room the air. I fly through very busy (Sacramento and San Fransisco, CA) airspace frequently, I've never had a "near miss". Nag about 40-year-old technology all you want; it works rather well. And in the small-ish airplanes I fly, there are lots of small airports for me to fly to where there is no congestion, no hope of congestion, and rarely any other aircraft "in the pattern". (Airports have an expected approach and landing sequence, usually based around an imaginary box shape around the runways, this is called 'the pattern' by pilots)

But when you are talking about congestion, you are really talking about runway capacity, because although there's plenty of room in the sky, there are a relatively small number of airports. Combine that with the tendency of airlines to create "mega hub" airports for connecting flights (EG: Atlanta, GA) and the problem of runway shortages become paramount.

A decent runway is about 1 or 2 miles long. It's basically a 2-4 lane freeway for just a mile or so. Adding more runways dramatically increases air capacity. A 1.5 mile runway is vastly cheaper than 100 miles of railroad, but services a similar amount of traffic over the same distance. Aviation infrastructure is ridiculously cheap compared to highways, trains, and other forms of travel. (except maybe by boat, which is cheaper still but much slower)

Why is this hard to understand?

Many large, busy airports have 2 or more runways, and often they split traffic based on type. My small, single-engine 4-seat Cessna 172 with its landing speed of about 60 Knots gets the short runway, while SouthWest airlines flight NNN with its landing speed of 125 Knots gets the big one.

Notice that my small plane takes 2x as long to approach the runway as the big jet? Adding a small, short, "General Aviation" runway to this large, busy airport adds as much as 3x the capacity anytime a small plane (like mine) lands there. (my plane, plus the two commercial planes that would have landed there, anyway)

Technology advances in combination with commercial flight restrictions (show me your SHOES!) mean that there are more small-medium sized planes in the sky, flying shorter trips, and generating more traffic where it counts - at the runways.

Add runways. They are cheap, especially when compared to the cost of other forms of infrastructure....