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Internet Travel Monitor - Events & Legislation
September 12, 2007
Editorial: New Air Traffic Control Needed Now
WACO, TX – U.S. air passengers are experiencing the worst delays in the history of American aviation.
But if harried airline passengers think that today’s delays in take-offs and landings can’t get worse, they are sadly misinformed.
Congress must come to the rescue to prevent commercial aviation from going into complete gridlock.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. air traffic was moving in the direction of gridlock. The downturn in air travel following the terrorist attacks bought the antiquated air traffic control system a few extra years.
Now that air traffic has fully recovered, the limitations in America’s radar-based air traffic control system have again become obvious.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, more than a billion passengers annually are expected to fly on commercial aircraft by 2015, a 36-percent increase over today’s overburdened system.
Over the same period, the FAA predicts that private jet travel, which includes business, air taxis and pleasure travel, will grow at twice the rate of commercial air travel.
For such a costly, irritating and dangerous problem, there is a surprising amount of agreement over the problem’s cause and the remedy.
The major disagreement is over who will pay and how much. Only Congress can make those decisions.
The current radar-based air traffic control system requires ground-based air traffic controllers to interpret blips on radar screens or visually follow commercial and private aircraft to ensure safe distance and order.
The FAA has plans to replace radar-based traffic control with the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NexGen. It would use a satellite-based global positioning system to more accurately track aircraft, allow more aircraft in the same airspace with improved safety, save fuel, reduce noise, lower pollution, improve efficiency and reduce delays.
Not only would this new system give controllers access to more accurate tracking information on airplanes in the air and on the ground, but the same technology would give pilots that information, allowing them to better avoid mid-air and ground collisions.
While no one disputes the considerable benefits of the NexGen system or the estimated $15 billion to $25 billion cost to build a nationwide system, there is no agreement on who should pay for it.
The airlines want private jet operators to pick up a big portion of the tab. Private jet owners want the bill charged to the airlines and the airline trust fund, which heavily relies on passenger ticket tax. Other proposals call for higher aviation fuel taxes.
Congress needs to ignore the lobbyists and settle on a fair funding plan that takes into account the growing burden of private jet travel on the system.
An FAA reauthorization bill needs to be completed before the Sept. 30 deadline. Congress should not delay making a funding decision on this issue.
Copyright 2007 Waco Tribune-Herald. All rights
reserved. From http://www.wacotrib.com.
To view the Internet Travel Monitor Archive, click http://www.tripinfo.com/ITM/index.html.
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