Miles O’Brien:
Well, some of the things you have to think about are replacing the radar systems. These old radars, some of them are 50-, 60-year-old technology or 50- or 60-year-old radars, for that matter.
They have a built-in latency in them, some of them as long as 12 seconds, before the whole radar to spin around. That’s what we’re talking about here. And that latency is what requires aircraft to be separated further than they would be if it was replaced by a satellite-based system, GPS-type system.
The FAA has been slow to move in this direction. And that’s one thing. It would be a lot better if air traffic controllers weren’t keeping track of aircraft with paper strips, which they use to stack up, to keep track of flights that are coming their way. There’s an awful lot of verbal communication. They use binoculars to make sure that aircraft are in the right place at an airport.
And there are automatic sensors that can be installed that can warn them of a potential collision. All these things are what you need for a modern air traffic control system with the capacity that this system requires right now.
