FAA faces funding hurdles

WASHINGTON – The Federal Aviation Administration is creating a new air traffic system that officials say will be as revolutionary for civil aviation as was the advent of radar six decades ago. But the program is at a crossroads.

It’s getting harder to pry money out of Congress. The airline industry is hesitating over the cost of equipping its planes with new technology necessary to use the system. And some experts say the U.S. could lose its lead in the manufacture of high-tech aviation equipment to European competitors because the FAA is moving too slowly.

Seventy-five years ago this week the federal government, spurred by the nascent airline industry, began tracking planes at the nation’s first air traffic control centers in Newark, N.J., Chicago and Cleveland.

Air traffic control took a technological leap forward in the 1950s with the introduction of radar. That’s still the basis of the technology used today by more than 15,000 controllers to guide 50,000 flights a day.

Under FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System program, known as NextGen, ground radar stations will be replaced by satellite-based technology. Instead of flying indirect routes to stay within the range of ground stations, pilots will use GPS technology to fly directly to their destinations.

Planes will continually broadcast their exact positions, not only to air traffic controllers, but to other similarly equipped aircraft within hundreds of miles.

When planes approach airports, precise GPS navigation will allow them to use more efficient landing and takeoff procedures. Instead of time-consuming, fuel-burning stair-step descents, planes will be able to glide in more steeply with their engines idling. Aircraft will be able to land and take off closer together and more frequently, even in poor weather, because pilots will know the precise location of other aircraft and obstacles on the ground. Fewer planes will be diverted.

Together, the suite of new technologies and procedures being phased in will significantly increase the system’s traffic capacity, FAA officials predict.

And, the FAA predicts, NextGen will save significant time, fuel and money. It also will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and noise.

“It really is a revolution in air transportation,” Deputy FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in an interview. “The decisions we’re making in the next several years will set the foundation for the next 75 years of air traffic control.”

Paying the tab for NextGen – estimated at as much as $22 billion for the government and another $20 billion for the airline industry through 2025 – may be FAA’s biggest hurdle. The program has widespread support in the Obama administration and Congress, but it isn’t immune to budget cuts in the current climate of austerity. The House wants to reduce FAA’s budget authority by $1 billion a year over the next four years, while the Senate has favored higher funding.

The FAA has set a deadline of 2020 for airlines to install key equipment that will tell controllers and other aircraft the location of their planes. But the agency has been slow to set technical standards and a deadline for other equipment that will be necessary to realize the full benefits of NextGen, industry officials said.