Pilots May Be Allowed To Set Routes Faa Approves Two-Year Test Of More-Direct Airplane Routes

Every high school geometry student learns the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The government is ready to allow airplane pilots to use that information.

If a two-year test is successful, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to allow carriers to ignore indirect but long-established routes and fly where they want.

It may sound like a dangerous free-for-all, but the agency expects the free-flight system to ease congestion and therefore be safer. Some flights between distant cities will be quicker, not only because of the principles of geometry but because the lack of traffic will allow planes on some routes to fly faster.

The 24-month test for planes in Alaska and Hawaii is to begin in 1999. If successful, expanding it to the rest of the country will take more than a decade.

“The test gives us an airspace where all, or almost all, aircraft are properly equipped to use the system,” said George Donohue, the FAA’s associate administrator for research and acquisitions.

The Air Lines Pilots Association, a Herndon, Va.-based union representing 46,000 pilots, applauded such a move toward pilot-charted flights, but warned that communication between ground control and pilots will be the key to making them work.

“When do the ground controllers hand over to the pilots and when do the pilots hand over to the ground?” asked a union official who asked not to be identified. “Everybody’s got to know when that happens.”

“We support anything … that will provide greater capacities and better efficiencies,” the official added. “In concept, this will do it.”

Several airlines already have conducted a small test in the South Pacific.