GPS-guided flight control holds promise, but some balk

The pilot probably has a more sophisticated guidance system in his car than in his plane.

Now the Obama administration has embarked on the single most ambitious and expensive national transportation project since completion of the interstate highway system, a program called the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).

The NextGen concept sounds simple: Replace an air traffic system based on 60-year-old radar with a satellite-based, Global Positioning System network that would be far more versatile and efficient. In reality it is an extraordinarily complex undertaking, threatened with delay by airline fears that the government won’t deliver the system in time to justify their expenditures.

NextGen demands the largest investment ever made in civil aviation: between $29 billion and $42 billion for equipment, software, and training by 2025. The cost would be shared by a federal government struggling with budget constraints and an airline industry that has been drained by years of recession and inflated fuel prices.

NextGen is described as the antidote to gridlock in the air travel system, which is forecast to be serving 1 billion passengers a year by 2021, up from 713 million last year.

With GPS precision, planes would be able to travel packed skies in safety at much closer distances. They would be able to fly direct routes, instead of the current system, which relies heavily on flying to waypoints before turning to a final destination.

Direct routing would save airlines billions in fuel costs and minimize pollution. It would permit more precise choreography of planes at airports, reducing the amount of fuel wasted waiting for takeoff or burned because planes waiting to land are ordered into holding patterns.

For passengers, NextGen would cut flight delays, eliminate time spent on the runway waiting to takeoff, shorten the flight time once airborne, and bring fuel savings that promise to keep ticket prices lower.