U.S. Air Traffic Control Poorly Coordinated: Study

Updated 1:58 AM ET September 2, 1999

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An air traffic control study released Wednesday finds poor communication and lack of standardized equipment and training hampering management of the system's 56,000 flights per day.

The study by the Federal Aviation Administration, with assistance from the major airlines, confirms problems that led to last month's steps to centralize management of the system and reduce excessive spacing of aircraft.

Visits to 34 air traffic control facilities over three weeks ending Aug 6. found poor communication throughout the system between traffic managers in various regions and the Federal Aviation Administration's command center in Herndon, Va.

In particular, plans to avoid severe weather, the cause of around 75 percent of delays, were slow to be implemented and poorly coordinated, the report said.

The study also found a lack of standardized computer aids for traffic management and inadequate training for controllers in thinking about the national picture in making local decisions.

"There is less than maximum efficient use of the National Airspace System," the report concluded.

Bad weather, increased flights and changes in controller equipment have resulted in sharp increases in delays this year that have left passengers and airlines fuming.

Preliminary data for the first eight months of the year show delays running 19.5 percent ahead of the same period last year. A delayed flight is regarded as one more than 15 minutes late.

Delays were particularly bad starting in April, leading several airline executives to approach FAA Administrator Jane Garvey directly about the problem.

Last month, Garvey announced she would give the air traffic command center authority over regional centers on traffic patterns.

She also announced there would be limits on the use of miles-in-trail spacing restrictions that have put up to 90 miles (145 km) between planes when five miles (8 km) is the legal minimum.

FAA has also committed to giving more information to airlines on how long ground delays and aerial holding patterns will last.

"I'm not about to sit here and do nothing about what is clearly an issue," Garvey told reporters. "It (the report) is a tough look at ourselves but I think it was the right thing to do."

The Air Transport Association, which represents the major airlines, welcomed the steps already taken but said there was still a long way to go. "It's really too early to see tangible results," said ATA's Bob Frenzel.

The report was particularly critical of the system's busiest high-altitude control center located in Cleveland, which airlines and other centers have accused of unnecessarily restricting traffic through its area.

The interaction between Cleveland, the Herndon command center and other facilities demonstrated "a lack of trust across the board," the report said.

Garvey and National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Mike McNally said Cleveland had undergone a difficult change in controllers' computer screens in April that was still being felt.

McNally agreed controllers needed to become involved in traffic management but he faulted airline scheduling practices for some of the problems.

"You can't schedule everyone to take off at 7 o'clock," he said. "There's enough blame to go around."

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Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 02, 1999

Answers

The air travel industry is a good example of how growth has outstripped the available infrastructure. When you look at the cost and complexity of building a jet-capable airport, combined with the inevitable NIMBY politics, you get more and more flights crammed into the same space. It is no surprise there are problems, the amazing thing is that we have managed to make it work as it is.

Also we botched the ooportunity, back in the '70s, to build high-speed train networks. It is ridiculous to take a plane from Raliegh to Atlanta and then to Chicago, just to hop a puddle jumper to Cedar Rapids, yet that is how it goes. A straight flight would have taken about an hour and a half, instead I have to get on and off three airplanes. One delay and I miss my connection, the whole trip took me about the same 12 hours it would have taken to drive!

So I stopped flying airlines some time ago. Ther will be lots of angry, stuck passengers around New Year's and I won't be one of them.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), September 02, 1999.

Amazing how they can talk all around the subject and not bring it up: Look at how they brought up the new (y2k-comliant-but-not-yet-installed-everywhere) radarscreens:

< Garvey and National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Mike McNally said Cleveland had undergone a difficult change in controllers' computer screens in April that was still being felt.>>

__

"Distrust" from the operators who are manning the "latest and greatest" software and hardware from the FAA:

...but they claim their y2k implementation was 100% completely successful .....

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 02, 1999.

do not notice the grizzled man behind the controls ...

-- FAA (fibs@are.ace), September 02, 1999.

Saw a report on this subject on the CBS worl new's yesterday, they mentioned that delay's are at an all time high, up 35%! It's just a coink'a'dink that this is happening now, right? Come 1-2000 watch the delays go up 90-120%, but I'm just a doomer idiot.

-- CygnusXI (noburnt@toast.net), September 02, 1999.

This bothers me. It feels like some kind of pre-emptive guilt-bomb. The FAA has taken a long, hard look at itself and decided that the air traffic controllers are the problem. So the solution is to shorten the separations, which the controllers are inserting to give themselves enough time-per-flight to cope with the new system? It feels like an assembly line speed-up.

If we have problems later this year, will the FAA point to this PR gimmick and say "see, we tried to solve the problem, but the controllers are incompetent"? That 5-miles is not the RECOMMENDED separation, it's the MININUM, like a maximum speed limit that you vary according to conditions. Is a controller who stretches out flights going to be labelled obstructionist? Is this a move to take power away from the front-line controller, and move it up a level into the bureaucracy?

My dad died as a commercial pilot, killed by someone else's mistake. My sister is up there all the time as a flight attendant. I don't want to lose any more family members to help Jane Garvey make points.

-- shhh (not@liberty.tosay), September 02, 1999.

It's those dang squirrels again.

-- Margaret (janssm@aol.com), September 03, 1999.

Shhh -

And wouldn't it be interesting to know what the true separation was in the United incident was that happened yesterday where "severe turbulance" was blamed for the injuries that occured were caused by "wake turbulance" from another plane. Just caught part of it on the 11PM news last night so don't know where it happened, just that there were some injuries and wake turbulance the cause. This is asking for trouble.

-- Valkyrie (anon@please.net), September 03, 1999.