Technology of Tomorrow's Commercial Air Traffic Control

Abstract

Air traffic control today depends on radio, radar, and human interpretation thereof. In bad weather, with enlarged air blocks, delays of one to two hours are common, and four-to-eight-hour delays are not uncommon. Were there a means to continuously identify longitudinal position of each aircraft to the order of a few hundred feet on the ground and ½ nautical mile in the air (and even closer on landing and takeoff), and velocity to the order of ½ foot per second, most delays would disappear since aircraft would operate under better than VFR conditions and with improved flight-control inputs. The economic benefits to the airlines in delay time saved would provide a basis for funding the equipment to work the problem in these terms. Tomorrow's commercial inertial navigation can be expected to perform with accuracy measured in hundreds of feet. Using such a system, one can envisage each aircraft knowing its coordinates, velocity, etc., and so informing the air-traffic-control center via data links with the whole operation at computer speeds.