From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 13:58:47 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Free Flight
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960318185538.0073ff30@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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The latest Wired and last week's news reports covered the FAA decision to
sloooowly move from the current Positive Control ATC system to one called
Free Flight in which aircraft pick there own routes and separation is
maintained by GPS, computers, and telecommunications.  Collision avoidance
telecoms as opposed to collision avoidance radar.  Every plane knows where
it is in 4 dimensions (don't forget time) and knows its performance
capabilities.  They communicate with each other and the ground to keep away
from each other.

The question is why?

Why abandon a central command and control system with defined airways and
checkpoints, orders and acknowledgements?  Is this some sinister triumph by
free market ideology creeping into the ATC system as it did into New
Zealand's Labour Government of the 1980s or even into the Chinese Commies
brains?  Not quite.

It is simple.  The system was breaking down already even before the 40-50%
traffic growth projected over the next few years.  Even if the FAA weren't
totally incompetent as a computer buyer, a centralized system suffers from
real congestion problems as growth occurs.  Trying to cram more traffic down
fixed routes is a real problem.  Likewise finding enough commanders to seize
and hold the high points of the ATCS.  The change has been proposed because
the system would collapse without it.  Freedom is their only chance.

Note the same effect in the future as trade, travel, data flows, etc. double
and redouble.  At some point on the growth curve, free flight becomes the
only possibility.

DCF

"What *was* Vince Foster doing on November 22, 1963"?