OK. I am totally confused at this point. This article says the FAA has not upgraded their '70's vintage air traffic control system. WHICH systems have they upgraded and which have they not? Are the ones not upgraded compliant?

What in the hell is going on??

R.

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U.S. Airlines Warn Of 'Gridlock' In The Sky 2.11 p.m. ET (1818 GMT) October 14, 1999

WASHINGTON  U.S. airline passengers, who already deal with record delays, could face gridlock in the sky without a major overhaul of the nation's air traffic system, an industry group warned Thursday.

The Federal Aviation Administration blames weather and out-of-date ground facilities for growing delays. But a report by the Air Transport Association pointed fingers at outdated equipment and cumbersome decision-making at the FAA for making the summer of 1999 the worst ever in terms of late flights, with 100,000 passengers delayed each day.

Such delays cost airlines and the public $4.5 billion last year, the report said, and it predicted a nearly 10 percent increase over that figure for this year.

"The air traffic delays experienced this summer by our passengers and the airlines that serve them were the worst in history,'' said ATA President Carol Hallett.

"The federal government's (air traffic control) system is broken,'' Hallett said in prepared remarks. "For the last 30 years an effort has been made to use weather as an excuse for poor (air traffic control) performance.''

The report said that, if the system is not fixed, "the resulting delays will virtually eliminate the dependability of airline schedules and the system will descend into gridlock.''

The report blamed the FAA for failing to update its 1970s-vintage air traffic control system and for using a decision-making process that the ATA said unnecessarily kept planes from flying during some weather conditions.

"They've been trying for 18 years to modernize the air traffic control system,'' David Fuscus, an ATA spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "We've got an air traffic control system from 1970 and although it's safe, it's very inefficient.''

Frequently the FAA keeps planes on the ground based on weather forecasts, but even if the severe weather fails to materialize, the flight restrictions remain, causing widespread delays in some cases, the report said.

The FAA has acknowledged some responsibility for the problems. Last month, the agency reported poor communications and lack of standardized equipment and training were hampering management of the system's 56,000 flights per day.

That exacerbated the impact of severe weather, the cause of around 75 percent of delays, which the FAA's control system dealt with poorly, the agency reported.

At a Congressional hearing Thursday, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said the agency was working to overcome those problems but that modernization will take about eight years.

"Tangible benefits are expected in the eastern portion of the United States within five years,'' she said.

"Hard choices will have to be made at all levels of government with communities across the country to ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to accommodate anticipated

demand,'' she said.

Air controllers laid at least some of the problems at the feet of the airlines themselves.

"The inefficient hub and spoke system used by airlines to schedule flights is a major source of delays,'' said Randy Schwitz, executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

He said that scheduling decisions are the sole province of airlines.

"To maximize profits, airlines are intentionally overloading the system,'' he said. "Delays from airline scheduling occur at every major airport.''

"It is like trying to cram 10 pounds of sand into a five-pound bag,'' he said. "All scheduled flights will not be able to depart or arrive on time.''

The ATA report listed the eight U.S. airports with the most delayed flights from January through August of this year. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport had the largest number, with 38,471, while Minneapolis-St. Paul had the highest percentage increase from the previous year, 126.9 percent.

Others on the list included Detroit Metro, Dallas-Fort Worth International, Washington Dulles International, Cincinnati Tower, New York LaGuardia and Philadelphia International.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), October 14, 1999

Answers

Yeah, yeah, yeah...link.

www.foxnews.com/nav/wires_news.sml

-- Roland (nottelling@nohwere.com), October 14, 1999.

Well isn't that more screwed than a whore at closing time....

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), October 14, 1999.

* * * 19991014 Thursday

Roland:

Upgrading air traffic control systems (ATCS) is not the same as Y2K remediation.

I haven't seen enough details disclosed from FAA re what the ATCS remediation process entails/entailed.

Was the ATCS production software merely "fixed" to accommodate correct date comparisons/computations?

Were the ATCS computer platforms--that IBM said were unable to be remediated--replaced as well?

I believe this posted item focuses more on the dysfunctionality of the ATCS as a whole. It doesn't explicitly mention anything related to Y2K issues.

There shouldn't be any point of confusion derived from this loosely written piece.

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus1@yahoo.com), October 14, 1999.

compliant but broken

-- hahahahahahahah (something@new.still), October 14, 1999.

I wonder if the cost of delays in relation to the number of delays can give us a metric to measure possible Y2K effects by? After all, Y2K is likely to cause alot of delays as well. I imagine we'll have to take in to account that things that travel by airliner are ussually urgent.

Just my musings.

Keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.not), October 14, 1999.

Robert, why don't you send those questions to Fox News. Maybe they will do a story on it. I know it is a long shot, but you brought up some good questions.

-- Darla (dnice@hgo.net), October 14, 1999.

I don't know about the fixing of the FAA ARTCC system, but I can give you a bit of perspective about how the system works. I spent 37 years in the industry, but have been retired for the last 6+ years. To go from Laguardia (LGA) to O'Hare (ORD), and for those who don't know that is New York to Chicago. There is a very specific route that is used almost all the time doing that flight. It is called the prefential route and almsot every city pair has one. Out of LGA you go up over Buffalo and across the southern portion of Canada to Sarnia/Port Huron, then over Flint, MI to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and into ORD.(It may be different now as I haven't flown that for over 10 years.) If you have weather on that route that is causing big problems, they don't reroute you, they tend to hold you on the ground because when aircraft start detouring weather with their own airbourne radar it takes more time and airspace to do this. Also if some weather is at ORD, then holding begins to come into play and you get airspace saturation. So it makes sense to space aircraft out a great deal more. Now right south of this route LGA ot ORD is the east bound route back from ORD to LGA, so you can't allow the aircraft to infringe on that area too much even tho you have altitude protection, either 1000' or 2000' depending on how high you are. If you are airbourne, is is possible to get a reroute to avoid weather if you have enough time to wait and fuel already on board to fly the new routing. Additional fueling could cost you at least a half hour and you may miss your slot to leave. And occasionally the dispatchers, who are the ground folks who have a joint responsibility with the Captain for the safety of the flight, can get a new routing from the Air traffic control folks, but often not right away as it tends to screw the system up further. The reason being for this problem is that most places like ORD have four arrival fixes where all the aircraft arrive over. If too many are rerouted, then some of the other arrival fixes get saturated and you cause rippling problems. The airways are very sharply defined space you are allowed to fly in and there are very specific points you are required to fly over, even tho it looks like there are millions of miles of open sky up there. Also the airlines tend to be their own worst problems as they want the banks of flights to arrive and depart within a very specific time frame to make connections and to maximize profit. Works well most of the time, but throw in snow or thunderstorms and it comes apart in a hurry. Hope that helps some.

-- Gene on Cape Cod (carvgene@gis.net), October 14, 1999.

Zoobie..........high five! LOL

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), October 15, 1999.