The satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) permits accurate navigation. A device similar to the present transponder could use the information from the GPS and broadcast the exact location and altitude of each aircraft every few hundred milliseconds. Nearby aircraft could take this information, compare it with their own location, and display the results to the pilot(s), a simple programming task.
The current "rules of the road" for visual flight would tell pilots how to avoid other aircraft. The display unit could also watch for potential conflicts and give directions to the pilot on how best to handle them.
Sherwood R. Kaip
El Paso, TX
Why make the air traffic control system one big government corporation, like the Post Office? Why not make each facility a separate government corporation? Air traffic control facilities already hand flights off to other facilities under other management chains and even other systems in other countries.
Whatever competitive pressures exist will be amplified, and local airports will be better able to work closely with local air traffic control facilities without having to go through a huge bureaucratic chain of management. The government will find it easier over time to let go of 100-percent ownership of the facilities, as many find themselves under pressure to seek investors (through bonds or stocks) to finance modernization and expansion.
Recent and future advances in radio technology will make local (and regional) competition possible. This will be easier to accomplish when the entire system is not a monolithic national corporation.
Brooke King
Albuquerque, NM
Poole would have us believe that the entire ATC system is falling apart and only "the heroic efforts of overworked and often underpaid controllers and technicians" are preventing a major calamity. The only solution Poole offers is to privatize ATC.
As an instrument-rated private pilot I too follow the machinations of the FAA's ATC, but I can tell you from personal experience that the system works. Yes, the FAA has been slow to incorporate some newer technology, such as the Microwave Landing System, and there are the occasional highly publicized accidents and near-accidents. But per passenger mile, flying is probably the safest form of transportation. The United States has some of the safest air travel in the world, and it's getting better.
Would Poole's privatized ATC be any better? He tantalizes us by asking if we would choose a flight "guided by highly skilled air traffic controllers, using the latest high-tech radars, satellite-based navigation, and state-of-the-art computers? Or a system in which the busiest towers and control centers are staffed by some of the least experienced people, running equipment that relies on vacuum tubes, depending exclusively on ground-based radio beacons, and using computers two or three generations old?"
Poole would have us believe his description of the older, overworked system accurately describes ATC here in the United States. At best, he exaggerates.
While every controller is different, they have all been well trained and get experience working at lower-traffic airports before moving to the big regional airports. And it's doubtful that every one of the more-experienced controllers automatically applies for the lowest-stress (i.e., smallest airport) job available. Some people want to be "where the action is," or enjoy their work and don't want to have to move to a different location.
Poole makes it sound as if all of ATC's electronics depends on antiquated vacuum tubes. But most of the electronics used by ATC is solid-state. Some ATC equipment, such as high-power radar transmitters and display screens, still uses "vacuum tubes," but virtually every computer in the world has a "vacuum tube"--a cathode-ray tube --in its monitor. Radar transmitters typically use traveling wave tubes, or klystrons. Even though they are "tubes," they are still very often the best way of generating the high power needed for effective radar. Even space-borne transmitters still use TWTs because the solid-state alternatives either cannot generate the required power or are too new to have established reliability.
Poole says the ATC system depends exclusively on ground-based radio beacons and implies that this method of navigation is inadequate. Neither claim is true. Transoceanic airline flights have used inertial navigation system for years, and ground-based radio navigation equipment works just fine and is easy to monitor and repair. Satellite navigation, the only other alternative, isn't used as much because it is still too new and has its own reliability problems.
It is true that more and better equipment is available and should be installed. Poole correctly points out that federal procurement regulations have delayed getting the right equipment for the FAA to modernize where it is appropriate. But this is also true for any government purchasing operation, especially the military.
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