The Wall Street Journal
Why Even Sunny Days Can Ground Airplanes
Flight 88 Got Stuck On a Congested Route;
A Legacy of the 1920s
By PAULO PRADA and SCOTT MCCARTNEY
September 28, 2007; Page A1
On Aug. 23, a sunny day in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Delta Air Lines Inc.'s Flight 88 pushed back from the gate on schedule, awaiting clearance for its 12:40 p.m. takeoff to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The weather was cloudless in New York, too. But for the next three and a half hours, the aircraft, with 135 passengers, sat on the ground, taxiing back and forth between the gate and the runway. Why? Thunderstorms over Rochester, N.Y. -- 260 miles northwest of Kennedy Airport and nowhere near Flight 88's flight plan. "There was good weather in Fort Lauderdale, good weather in New York, and most importantly, good weather en route," recalls Gary Edwards, Delta's chief dispatcher. "But we were still delayed."
(snip)
After this summer's travel troubles, much attention has been paid to the myriad hitches that contribute to airline delays: from old air-traffic-control technology, to the growing number of corporate and regional jets, to labor tensions among air-traffic controllers, and overscheduling by airlines. Yesterday, following two days of congressional hearings on airline delays, President Bush met with Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters and pressed her and legislators to find solutions to the problems. Yet one fundamental shortcoming in the nation's air-traffic system has gone little discussed: the federal map of routes, largely unchanged since the 1950s, that airplanes are required to follow.
Just like rush-hour freeways on the ground, the nation's airways, particularly on the East Coast, have become choked with traffic. Block one with a small thunderstorm and jets sit on the ground waiting for hours because there's no room for them on other routes... Never have such constraints been as apparent as this summer, during which fewer than 70% of commercial flights arrived on time, according to figures compiled by the Department of Transportation through July. (On-time arrivals for each of the past three years have hovered at about 77%.) Fixing the problem requires addressing issues that involve a roster of players including airports, airlines, air-traffic controllers, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
(snip)
Before it could depart for New York, Flight 88 had to wait as air-traffic controllers rerouted planes flying east toward JFK that were affected by bad weather on their route. But by pushing those planes south, some as far as Atlanta, controllers then had to squeeze them through one of the country's worst airspace bottlenecks: around Washington, D.C. The airspace there is particularly tight because blocks of nearby sky are used sporadically for military training and often unavailable to commercial flights.
(snip)
The nation's airways evolved from air-traffic routes established in the 1920s when the government was developing airmail service. Pilots followed established ground routes, generally flying low enough to trace actual roads and spot one geographic landmark, then another. In 1926, the Air Commerce Act authorized the government to build a network of other navigational aids, beginning with bonfires that were later replaced by illuminated towers and, eventually, radio beacons and radar. Even now, the concept remains the same: Today's pilots, while flying at much higher altitudes, still follow the same routes, flying from one radio transmitter to another. As they move along, aircraft get passed from one air-traffic controller to another. Each controller, in turn, is responsible for a specific chunk, or sector, of airspace.
But with so many planes in the sky, controllers don't have as many holes in the conga line to move planes from one airway to another if a particular flight path gets congested. Add thunderstorms or other disruptions, and the problem gets worse. Airways are so close together, especially in the Northeast, that it's hard for jets to deviate from the route without butting into another airway. Another problem is that airways are extremely wide -- eight miles across -- because of the inaccuracies of radar.
(snip)
Experts say the solution is a satellite-based navigation system that would allow planes to abandon the highway maps and fly freely since a computerized system can check for conflicting flight paths. Known as NextGen, short for Next Generation Air Transportation System, such a system would allow navigation points to be moved to avoid storms. Planes could fly closer together since they would broadcast their exact position using satellites for accuracy rather than relying on slower and less-accurate radar hits used now. But creating that infrastructure will be complex. The FAA last month awarded the first contract, valued at $1.8 billion, to ITT Corp., for the initial phase of upgrading equipment to a satellite-based system. To replace the entire domestic radar system with NextGen, taxpayers will be expected to foot a bill expected to run as high as $22 billion by 2025.
(snip)
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119093585795041925.html (subscription)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
