For Airlines, Hands-On Air Traffic Control

For Airlines, Hands-On Air Traffic Control

For Airlines, Hands-On Air Traffic Control
Tami Chappell/Reuters

Delta Air Lines uses G.P.S. technology to reduce the time its planes spend on the runway.


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By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: September 5, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta Air Lines said its jets take off an average of 10 minutes after pushing back from the gate — three minutes faster than in previous years.
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Geoff Oliver Bugbee for The New York Times

A device that U.P.S. installed in the cockpit of one of its cargo planes to display traffic information.
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Using new technology, planes take off following a narrow route, so that that jets right behind them taking different routes do not have to wait as long. That makes the system move a bit faster.

“The pilots say, ‘Wow, this is kind of neat,’ ” said Joseph C. Kolshak, executive vice president for operations at Delta.

Delta, and also Alaska Airlines and U.P.S., is demonstrating pieces of the possible future of the nation’s air traffic system, hinting at what aviation might be like — if the airlines and the federal government can get the details worked out.

All three airlines use refinements based on the constellation of G.P.S., or global positioning system, satellites. Many of these save at most a few minutes. But in a crowded system plagued by delays, that may be enough to help smooth out bottlenecks.

The carriers’ use of satellite navigation and other tools and techniques represents a step toward replacing a 50-year-old system of radar and radio beacons.

In the process, they are pulling along a slow-moving government agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, that is eager for better air traffic control systems but short on money and the authority to put changes in place.

It is a revolution in technology, but also in politics. Previously, the F.A.A. usually bought new systems on the ground and told airlines to equip themselves to use them; now the airlines are taking the initiative to outfit their planes, with safety regulation from the F.A.A.

Airlines are even developing their own approach patterns for airports, which has almost always been a government job.

U.P.S. Airlines, working with Aviation Communications and Surveillance Systems, based in Phoenix, is developing a landing pattern based on separating planes by time, not distance, so they land at the briefest safe interval.

“We’re going to create the future, because we think we know where it’s going to go,” said Karen Lee, director of operations at U.P.S. This is in contrast to the traditional way of doing business, typified by “the F.A.A. tells us what the roadmap is,” she said, then “we’ll start building the stuff to do it.”

This is not quite do-it-yourself air traffic control, because everything requires F.A.A. analysis and approval.

But the agency is encouraging airlines to innovate, and is getting itself out of the picture, in many ways. For example, last Thursday it awarded a contract to a team led by the ITT Corporation, worth $207 million initially and possibly up to $1.8 billion, to build and operate a national network of radio receivers to accept signals from airplanes in flight.

Each plane would give its position as determined by G.P.S. The ITT contract is part of a system that would process that data to allow controllers and pilots in flight to see a display showing where all the planes are.

Another big step for the agency, which it hopes to take this year, is to publish a proposed rule giving the schedule for when airplanes will have to be equipped for satellite navigation and surveillance.

No one knows how much this will cut delays and improve capacity. But there are glimpses. One is in Juneau, Alaska.

For years, airplanes could not safely find the runway there, nestled between mountains, unless clouds were at least 1,000 feet above the ground and visibility was more than two miles.

And if there were clouds, there was only one way out, to the west, with a quick U-turn, which could be frustrating for travelers.

To assure that the plane could accomplish that maneuver under worst-case conditions — an engine failure on takeoff — Alaska Airlines often had to leave passengers or freight behind at the airport.

Today, Alaska Airlines’ planes land there as long as clouds are 337 feet above the surface and in visibility down to one mile. And they can take off in either direction. Of the approximately 3,600 flights the airline operated in and out of Juneau last year, 754 could not have been tried in years past.

“It’s a thing of beauty,” said Kevin Finan, acting vice president for flight operations at Alaska Airlines.

The more reliable operations happened because of a system developed largely by the airline. Through a combination of G.P.S., traditional navigation aids and instruments on board that give the plane’s position by measuring each turn, Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737s know their position within 600 feet, the airline equivalent of the head of a pin.

In contrast, the older system required pilots to draw a mental map of the plane’s position, using compass cards and a display of how far the plane was from some land-based radio beacon, and a paper chart showing the mountains in the area.

Now the planes have a map that shows the mountains, the weather and the plane’s position.