The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it would adopt a radically different concept of air-traffic control in which pilots would pick their routes, altitudes and speeds, and air-traffic controllers would intervene only if flight plans conflicted.
Proponents argue that this concept, called free flight, would save time for passengers and money for airlines by easing delays. Over the next 10 years it would gradually replace the 35-year-old "positive control" system in which a controller at a radar screen orders every change a pilot makes.Under positive control, planes do not fly from one airport directly to another; they fly from one checkpoint in the sky to the next. As a result they end up flying extra miles in long lines and bunching up at the checkpoints, producing delays.
New technology to allow free flight is needed to enable the nation's air-traffic system to handle the 40 percent increase in flights expected in the next 20 years, said the agency's administrator, David Hinson.
Hinson was backed up by representatives of the pilots, the air-traffic controllers and the airlines.
"We will not be able to maintain our premier status in the world unless we take action now to provide improvements on our airspace," said Robert Baker, executive vice president of American Airlines.
Baker said that this year there would be 63.2 million landings and takeoffs and that by 2007 the number would reach 74.5 million. Shaving a few miles and a few minutes off each flight would add up to a major improvement for both airlines and passengers, he and others said.
A NASA study cited on Friday by the aviation agency found that letting planes pick their own routes would have saved $1.28 billion last year for the airlines.
Michael Baiada, an aviation consultant who advocates free flight, estimated last year that airline productivity, as measured by how long it takes to move planes from one point to another, had dropped 8 percent in the past 15 years.
The aviation agency often finds it difficult to change its systems without the agreement of the many factions interested in airspace: airlines, cargo haulers, the Air Force, private plane owners, business jet operators, unions for pilots and air traffic controllers, and even the airport authorities. For the moment, all these groups support free flight.
The aviation agency said the new system would begin operating gradually in the coming years as more planes navigate by using the Global Positioning System, a network of satellites launched by the Pentagon, rather than the antiquated system of radio beacons now in use.