For literally decades now the Federal Aviation Administration has been promising it is going to do something about the long outdated air traffic controller system. About the only thing it has accomplished, however, is its skill at coming up with excuses why the system is still not ready. Meanwhile private companies are concluding they can’t wait for the FAA any longer and FedEx Corporation recently went ahead and deployed its own high tech system in use at a private airport it runs.

The New York Times reports that FedEx is actively testing an air control system that relies on Global Positioning System to make landings much more efficient. Using a specially-equipped Boeing 727, the GPS system is able to tell the plan where it is at any given moment to within three feet, resulting in landings that are basically on the same spot every time. As FedEx’s Robert L. Ranchor told The Times, “All the tire rubber is all going to be in the same spot. They’re going to have to scrub it off more often.”

Currently the system is being tested only in clear weather daytime landings, but once FedEx is certain about the precision of the landings, the GPS-based system could revolutionize air flight. Today airplanes can only make straight ahead landings and inclement weather conditions such as fog typically shut down airports. Not only would the GPS system allow perfect landings even in thick fog, but it would allow for a variety of landing paths allowing for arrivals to occur more efficiently.

Moreover the system is extremely cost-efficient. The actual price for using a GPS system is about the same as a standard radar system, but a GPS system serves an entire 25-mile radius compared to a radar system which serves only a single runway.

Where FedEx has enjoyed a great deal of success, however, the FAA has crashed and burned. In 1995 the FAA announced a $475 million project to create a super-GPS system that would be have an accuracy of 7 meters and be in operation by 1998. That system is still in the ubiquitous “under development” stage, and apparently FAA contractors have had problems writing the software to manage the system.

Leave it to a private company to take existing resources, like the now aging GPS system, and design a solution that drastically outperforms what a government bureaucracy with a bloated budget can do.

Source:

FedEx Is Moving Ahead of U.S. to Improve Airport Landing. Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times, January 21, 2001.

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