Air traffic management plans advanced
The FAA and Boeing recently introduced separate plans for improving the nation's air traffic management system. The Aerospace Congress & Exhibition, hosted by The Boeing Co., will address those proposals along with many other technical and non-technical issues affecting the global aerospace industry.
by Patrick Ponticel, Assistant Editor
 Boeing's Sonic Cruiser concept jetliner would be 15-20% faster than conventional aircraft on routes of about 9000 mi. That would reduce by one hour a flight from New York to Los Angeles and by two hours a New York-Singapore flight. |
If we don't make improvements to the air traffic management system, what's the point in developing more and better airplanes? As someone who's in the business of developing more and better airplanes, David Swain poses that question not because he doesn't know the answer, but because he is trying to generate a consensus for change within the industry.
Change will be an underlying theme at the September 10-13 Aerospace Congress & Exhibition (ACE), for which Swain, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology at Boeing, is serving as Executive Chair. Sure to be the subject of much discussion at the conference will be separate air traffic management proposals released in June by Boeing and the FAA.
The FAA's Operational Evolution Plan (OEP) indicates that 1.9 million passengers, 40,000 ton of cargo, and 60,000 general aviation and non-scheduled flights move through U.S. airspace daily. The flexibility and capacity of the National Airspace System—NAS, as the FAA calls it—"are fully taxed," according to the report. The OEP also notes that 90% of delays occur at hub airports, which account for two-thirds of scheduled air traffic. The report emphasizes that improvements to the system will require dedication of resources by both government (FAA as well as airport owners) and industry.
The 10-year OEP addresses four major areas of focus with respect to the overall air traffic system's capacity/demand problem: arrival/departure rate; en route congestion; en route severe weather; and airport weather conditions. Building more runways, making more efficient use of existing ones, reducing gaps in aircraft spacing, and using secondary airports in major metropolitan areas are among the OEP's proposed broad solutions to the arrival/departure rate problem. En route congestion can be relieved in high-traffic areas by diverting some controller workload in those sectors to less busy ones and by reducing the vertical separation rule between aircraft above 29,000 ft from 2000 to 1000 ft. Solutions to the severe weather problem include better weather forecasting (thunderstorm predictions are wrong almost 70% of the time, according to the report), better distribution of weather information, more flexibility in routing, and faster identification of airspace and flights impacted by bad weather. Wider instrument approach capability and improved forecasting are among the solutions for the airport weather challenge.
The promised benefits of the OEP are a 30% increase in commercial operations, free flight capabilities, improved system flexibility, and a foundation for longer-term advancements in free flight concepts. To realize those benefits, the FAA will spend about $11.5 billion on capacity-enhancing facilities and equipment. NASA will contribute about $1 billion on research to improve the system. The OEP notes that "before benefits can be fully realized, aircraft must be sufficiently equipped to allow controllers to provide improved services. Mixed equipment makes it extremely difficult to provide better services during peak demand where some aircraft have the additional capability but others do not."
Boeing's air traffic management proposal is more technology-focused than the FAA's. One of the key components of the plan is an "extremely precise depiction of aircraft location and a prediction of its future position" using advanced satellites for surveillance, navigation, and communication. The plan also calls for a "dramatically restructured airspace" that would allow air traffic managers to plan strategically, contacting a pilot only for exceptions such as when an airplane requires rerouting from its predetermined flight path. Each manager, then, could oversee a sector containing more airplanes than is possible today.
"We're beginning to think we need to describe ourselves as more than an airplane company," Swain said. "We're in the transportation system business. We have to figure out how to make air travel as pleasant as possible. That's why we went down this path of getting involved in air traffic management, because if we don't make improvements to the system, we can continue up the airplane performance curve, but it won't matter."
Combined with the FAA's plans, Boeing's would create capacity for more than 15 years of traffic growth, an improvement that is equivalent to a 45% reduction in delays, according to the company.
Boeing's hope is that the air traffic management system of tomorrow leads to a greater accommodation for point-to-point travel, which aligns with the company's emphasis on smaller aircraft and its Sonic Cruiser concept. That contrasts with Airbus' plans to focus on development of larger aircraft, which are better suited to hub-and-spoke routing. Bill Rickard, Director of Boeing's 737 Freighter Conversion Development Program and General Chair of ACE, believes point-to-point will grow significantly, but not so much that it will completely displace hub-and-spoke. "The question is not so much will it be 'a' or 'b,'" he said, "but how it will divide between 'a' and 'b.'" The stakes are enormous in getting the answer right, Rickard said.
Boeing has used longer-range versions of the 757, 767, and 777 aircraft to begin the transition to point-to-point. Alan Mulally, Chief Executive Officer of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes group and a scheduled speaker at ACE, noted that in 1985, 85% of all flights between the U.S. and Europe were on 747s, DC-10s, or L-1011s flying into and out of only major cities. Today, 767s and 777s account for 60% of transatlantic flights and connect a vast array of smaller cities. Continental, for example, now uses a 777 to connect Newark and Hong Kong.
The next step in Boeing's transition toward point-to-point could be a new family of aircraft based on the Sonic Cruiser. It would fly faster, higher, quieter, and farther than current Boeing aircraft. Its speed to destination is enhanced by the fact that it would fly at 40,000 ft, avoiding the weather and congestion problems at lower altitudes.
