Managing the Skies

Public Policy, Organization and Financing of Air Traffic Management

Clinton V. Oster, John S. Strong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351920230
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technologie et ingénierie
• Subtopic: Aviation

Over the past two decades, the organization and provision of air traffic control (ATC) services has been dramatically transformed. Privatization and commercialization of air navigation has become commonplace. Far-reaching reforms, under a variety of organizational structures and aviation settings, have occurred across the world, most notably in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In contrast, innovations have lagged behind in other countries - including the United States. In addition, much recent attention has been given to aviation infrastructure and safety in Africa, in some parts of Asia and Latin America, and in rapidly growing air markets including India and China. In response, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and multilateral banks and institutions have launched a major effort to improve the performance and safety of civil aviation in developing economies. Managing the Skies has been written to provide a guide to what has been tried in air traffic management, what has worked, and what lessons might be learned. The book starts with an introduction to air navigation, its development and current state, as well as trends in aviation activity. It examines in detail the experiences of ATC in both mature and emerging markets across the world, considering many alternative models, efforts to restructure and comparisons of performance. The book contains several in-depth case studies to provide a truly global perspective of ATC practices. Particular attention is given to the FAA and its efforts and challenges in reforming ATC in the US, both historically and in the current climate. It addresses the issues of finance, organization, investment, and safety restructuring and reform options that are at the core of current debates involving air traffic control in the United States. Further to this, the authors discuss the alternatives available for future change. The book concludes by examining the cross-cutting issues of labor relations and organizational structures, presenting the lessons learned and considering what the future may hold. As the world experiences a resurgence in air travel and civil aviation, the issues discussed in Managing the Skies are particularly timely not only for industry and government leaders, but for the world's air travelers.

PART 1
Setting the Stage

With the forecast growth in air traffic, the air navigation service providers (ANSPs) throughout the world all face challenges of handling an increasing number of flights in a safe and efficient manner. Within the airspace they control, there also is an increasing number of international flights which will require them to interact more frequently with other ANSPs. The natural question that emerges is whether there are some approaches to organizing, funding, and operating ANSPs that are more effective and better suited to these challenges than others. That is the topic of this book.

This book is organized into five sections. Section One, which contains Chapters 1 to 3, sets the stage for the discussions that follow. There are few topics where the discussion is more laden with acronyms and specialized language than air traffic control. The result is that to the uninitiated, air traffic control seems like an incredibly complex topic well beyond their comprehension. Chapter 2 removes some of the mystery from the topic by explaining many of the more commonly used terms, by providing a description of the basics of how an air traffic control system works, and by explaining the basic differences in some of competing technologies. The goal is not to delve into the technical details, but to describe the basic functions and approaches that are common to air traffic control systems around the world so that the policy options about how to provide these services can be discussed and understood. In the last twenty years, as described in Chapter 3, many countries have moved away from traditional government agencies to a variety of organizational forms with a more commercial orientation as a means of providing these services.

Section Two of the book, Chapters 4 through 7, examines the international experiences with air traffic management in mature aviation markets. Air navigation and air traffic control services were once provided almost exclusively by government agencies. New Zealand and Australia were two of the first countries to change to a different form of provision and they are discussed in Chapter 4. Canada took a different approach which is examined in Chapter 5 and the United Kingdom took a still different approach, as discussed in Chapter 6. Europe presents a set of challenges with a large number of separate ANSPs operating in a relatively small geographic area that mirror many of the challenges faced in other parts of the world and is described in Chapter 7.

Section Three of the book examines international experiences in countries with emerging aviation markets. Chapter 8 sets the stage by looking at the challenges of establishing and operating air navigation systems in developing countries. Chapter 9 looks at Russia. Chapter 10 examines China. Chapter 11 looks at India and the challenges presented by rapid growth in air travel. Chapter 12 looks at the myriad of challenges in Africa and Latin America.

Section 4 of the book, Chapters 14 through 16, turn to the situation in the United States, the last major country in the world where air traffic services are still provided by a government agency and funded by excise taxes and general tax revenues. Chapter 14 reviews the history and evolution of the provision of air traffic control services in the United States. The problems facing the FAA today are not new problems and have their origins years, or even decades ago. Chapter 15 reviews the changes made to FAA’s organizational structure in 2004 and examines the challenges that remain for the FAA, if it is to be able to accommodate the expected growth in air traffic. Chapter 16 examines the possible alternatives for reform of the FAA and how well these potential reforms might do in confronting FAA’s major challenges.

The final section of the book, Section Five, Chapters 17 and 18, examines the cross-cutting issue of labor relations and the lessons learned. Chapter 17 looks at the challenges posed by labor issues and why labor relations are more contentious with some organizational structures and funding mechanisms than others. It also describes the major labor challenges ahead both in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Chapter 18 compares the strengths and weaknesses of the different organizational structures that are used in different countries throughout the world. This chapter then presents the major lessons that can be drawn from these comparisons and explores what the future might hold.

1
The Global Air Traffic Control Challenge

The Worst of Times and the Best of Times

The 2000–2001 period illustrated both the worst of times and the best of times for the air traffic control system, at least in North America. These were the worst of times because of the growing problem of delays in the air transportation system. In the first nine months of 2000, fully one quarter of all passenger airline flights in the United States, affecting 119 million passengers were either delayed, canceled, or diverted. The average delay for these flights exceeded 50 minutes. The media reported at the time that airline service had become so unpredictable that some business travelers were flying to their destinations the night before important meetings rather than in the morning so as to be sure not to miss them. Complaints about air travel were up 16 percent in 2000 over the previous year.

To be sure, there were many reasons for the delays including strong growth in air travel, weather, inadequate runway capacity at airports, and unrealistic scheduling by some airlines. But in late 2000 and 2001, the inability of the air traffic control system to keep up with the growth in air travel was getting more and more of the blame. The airlines were quick to point the finger at the air traffic management system operated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the delays claiming that there weren’t enough controllers or that there wasn’t enough room in the sky under FAA rules. There were also growing public concerns about safety as the number of runway incursions, or near misses on the runways as the media was referring to them, were increasing throughout the late 1990s.¹

At the same time, more and more people were beginning to question whether FAA was capable of addressing these problems. In 1995, US Government Accountability Office (GAO) had designated the air traffic control modernization program as a high-risk information technology initiative because of its size, complexity, cost, and problem-plagued past. Adding to the concern was that in 1999, FAA’s financial management had also been designated as high risk by GAO. Throughout the 1990s, a series of studies by independent commissions had called for major reforms in how air traffic control was provided in the United States. These problems were not confined to the United States. Much the same thing was also happening in Europe as delays attributed to air traffic control problems were growing sharply throughout the late 1990s.

As beleaguered as the air traffic control systems seemed to be in 2001, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 set the stage for what might be considered the best of times, at least in terms of air traffic control performance. The first hijacked aircraft hit the New York World Trade Center at 8:46 am on September 11. By 9:26 am, the FAA had banned all takeoffs by civilian aircraft and at 9:45 am, FAA ordered the first unplanned shutdown of US airspace in history. At the time, there were more than 4,500 aircraft – about 3,300 commercial and about 1,200 private – in the air using the air traffic control system under instrument flight rules (IFR).

Nothing like this had ever happened before. There were no procedures, there were no plans to follow, there had been no drills, and both Canadian and US air traffic control had to work together very closely to do things neither had done before. On a normal day in the US air traffic control system, about 20 aircraft are rerouted each hour. On September 11, controllers rerouted 1,100 aircraft in the first 15 minutes of the shutdown. Of the planes in the air at the time the order was given, nearly two thirds were landed within the first hour and the skies over the contiguous 48 states were clear of all commercial and private flights by about 12:15, only two and a half hours after the order was given.

Domestic flights weren’t the only challenge. With US airspace closed, the flights already en route to the United States from abroad had to be rerouted somewhere and Canada took up the challenge. More than 250 international flights carrying 44,000 passengers were diverted to Canadian airports. Atlantic Canada bore the brunt of the diverted trans-Atlantic traffic and the small community of Halifax, Nova Scotia alone took over 40 aircraft. The airport converted one of its two runways into a massive parking lot and packed the jets together as closely as possible. The community turned high schools, arenas, and churches into temporary shelters for more than 7,000 passengers. A similar story unfolded at the small community of Gander, Newfoundland where 39 aircraft were diverted. Vancouver handled many of the trans-Pacific flights.

The US and Canadian air traffic control systems did an astonishing job on September 11. They managed to clear the airspace by landing 4,500 commercial and private aircraft under highly stressful circumstances in less than three hours without a single accident or even a single report of a loss of separation. It was a remarkable performance and a testimony to the skill and dedication of the air traffic controllers in both countries. But the dedication and skill of the air traffic controllers won’t be enough to accommodate the expected future growth in air traffic unless some important changes are made to the air traffic control system, not only in the United States, but throughout the world.

Growth in Worldwide Aviation

In 2006, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), airlines around the world carried an estimated 2.1 billion passengers, of whom 743 million were in international service.² Between 2006 and 2010, passenger traffic was expected to grow at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent, so that by 2010, well over 2.5 billion passengers would be carried. Air cargo was forecast to grow at an even faster rate. The region with the fastest expected growth is the Middle East, with the Asia-Pacific region the second fastest. The slowest growth is expected in North America and Europe, but even in these more mature markets, the growth is expected to be between 4.3 and 4.4 percent per year. By 2010, Asia is expected to be the largest market, surpassing the US domestic market which has historically been the world’s largest. Even the United States, with slower forecast growth is expected to reach one billion passengers per year by 2015. By 2020, worldwide airline passenger traffic is expected to be at least double what it was in 2006.

This forecast growth is good news for the world economy. Aviation’s global impact is estimated at $2.96 trillion, equivalent to 8 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP).³ The industry is responsible for 29 million jobs and 25 percent of all companies’ sales are dependent on air transport. Air transport and particularly air cargo are especially import to economic growth in developing countries where surface transportation infrastructure is often lacking. But the benefits of air transport will come only if the growth can be accommodated.

Strains on the Air Traffic Management System

The forecast growth is troubling news for the world’s 160 Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) who provide the navigation and air traffic control services that allow these aircraft to fly safely and efficiently to and from their destinations.⁴ No air traffic management system currently in place can handle the volumes of traffic forecast for 2010 or beyond. For the worldwide aviation system to run smoothly, for the forecast growth rates to be achieved, and for the economic benefits of aviation to be realized, ANSPs throughout the world are going to have to expand their capacity to manage aircraft.

Expanding capacity or switching to more modern technologies pose far greater challenges in air traffic management than in perhaps any other sector of the world economy. Changing from one technology to another in air traffic control is difficult because the system must operate continuously with extreme accuracy and reliability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. An interruption of service even for a matter of seconds can put aircraft at risk – modern jet aircraft typically cruise at about 570 miles per hour or a little over 250 meters per second. No matter when a transition from one technology to another is made, there will almost certainly be planes in flight during the transition. To the extent that a new system requires aircraft to have different equipment than the system it replaces, then either all aircraft will have to have capability of using both the old and the new system or the two systems will have to be operated together until all the aircraft have been reequipped. In air traffic control, it’s not enough to develop an improved technology; a smooth transition from the old technology to the new technology must also be developed.

While domestic travel will usually be entirely within the air traffic management system of a single country, international flights will have to operate within the air traffic management systems of two or more countries. If an airplane is making the transition from the air traffic control system of one country to that of another, the systems of the two countries must be able to communicate with one another so that the aircraft can be smoothly “handed off” from one system to another. The aircraft must also be able to operate with the system of each country through which it passes. If one country upgrades the technology in its system, that new technology must also be able to communicate with the technology of the second country.

The air traffic management systems operated by the 160 ANSPs in the world comprise the network that will have to accommodate the forecast growth in air travel. Because traffic must flow over the network, the full benefits of upgrading one part of the network won’t be realized if the other parts of the network aren’t upgraded as well. It does little good for one country to increase the capacity of their air traffic management system if an adjacent country through whom traffic must also flow doesn’t upgrade their system as well. Air traffic management systems within the network that have outdated equipment or low capacity can become as bottlenecks in the system that can have ripple effects on systems thousands of miles away.

¹ “Near Misses on Runways Spark Debate at Hearings,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 1 2002, Page A-12.

² Fact Sheet: IATA www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/iata.htm.

³ Fact Sheet: Economic and Social Benefits of Air Transport...