Perhaps unknowingly, airline passengers who experienced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Notice to Air Systems (NOTAM) system outage in January or the collapse of Southwest Airlines in December were among Of the history.
The NOTAM outage was the first time the FAA has shut down all US domestic departures since 9/11. This ground stop of just a few hours caused huge delays in the air transport system, resulting in the delay or cancellation of three out of five flights, and average delays reaching almost 90 minutes, according to FlightAware.
A few weeks earlier, the unprecedented volume of flight cancellations that occurred over more than a week following the collapse of Southwest forced the airline to abandon its automated decision support tools and get back to the employees manually piece together its complex web of flights, planes and crew schedules. From December 22 to 29, Southwest canceled just over half of its scheduled flights, causing more than 15,700 cancellationsan immediate loss of $620 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 – and an additional expected loss of $300-350 million in the first quarter due to “operating disruption-related revenue deferral” according to Southwest executives.
Both failures stem from the same fundamental challenges facing a sprawling and increasingly antiquated U.S. air transportation network. As further investigations probe these events, we need to find solutions that update the outdated computer systems and business practices they exposed, and we need to change how we fund the FAA, including regulatory activities underpin the entire US air transportation system.
NOTES failed when FAA contractors deleted files from the vital flight-planning system, which relies on “failing vintage hardware”, according to the agency. This comes after several industry stakeholders called for increased federal funding for the FAA, and Airlines to America and other organizations noted the need for reliable funding independent of the electoral cycle. Fortunately, we can use the successful projects of NextGen, the Next Generation Air System, an FAA program that modernizes the US National Airspace System (NAS), as a model for reform.
The southwest collapse occurred during a slow move blizzards with minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit cold winds passed through Denver and Chicago, two of its largest deposits. This has overwhelmed its outdated flight management systems, which operate in a mostly point-to-point network of airports, which is more vulnerable to disruption than the hub-and-spoke model used by other airlines. For context, on December 24, the third day of the weather event, Southwest, which was also managing an abnormally high number of employees Absence due to illnesscut 55 flights per hour compared to just four per hour on American Airlines’ mainline service.
While investigations by Southwest and the US Department of Transportation are underway to help identify root causes, what is clear is that, as with the NOTAM failure, Southwest’s system needed an upgrade and could not adapt when under stress. The airline plans to spend $1 billion this year on IT upgrades and replacing its flight scheduling system, but it must also be willing to reform its business models. For example, Southwest could more aggressively cancel flights before major weather events and fix work agreements, allowing pilots to electronically confirm assignments when snow falls. Fortunately, there are also examples from other airlines of how to make air travel more robust.
Robust networks help isolate delays, helping airlines return to normal operations faster. I’ve interviewed Timothy L. Jacobsformer director of crew systems and technologies at American Airlines, who along with his colleagues designed robust networks for that airline using “hub isolation” and “crew with aircraft” concepts for assigning the same aircraft and crew to round trips that use the same hub, for example, Dallas to Boston and Boston to Dallas. If the Dallas-Boston leg is cancelled, it’s easier to prevent delays from spreading to other hubs because you can keep your crew and plane in Dallas, where you want them to be for the next pair of flights. In contrast, Southwest’s point-to-point network makes controlling flight disruptions more difficult.
The collapse of Southwest highlights the complexity and interdependence of our air transportation system. This partly explains why modernizing the air traffic control (ATC) system is so difficult and why funding reform is so necessary. It’s here that next generation comes into play. With NextGen, the FAA is modernizing the NAS with new abilities such as “precision satellite navigation, data link communications for air traffic controllers and pilots, and an integrated weather system.”
NextGen grew out of a 2003 congressional convention mandate that the FAA is working with several federal organizations and agencies to develop a plan to modernize the NAS by 2025. And while significant milestones have been achieved by the FAA and its industry partners over the past 20 years, a report 2021 by the Office of Inspector General found that “the FAA has struggled to integrate key NextGen technologies and capabilities due to extended program delays that have resulted in ripple effect delays with other programs” . This results both from the lack of funding for NextGen, that several stakeholders, including the CEOs of american, delta, And United decried, and a lack of reliable sources of funding for the FAA. However, there is disagreement over whether the FAA should continue to lead these efforts. In 2014the FAA Management Advisory Board recommended that a separate organization, possibly modeled on NAV CANADA to be trained. NAV CANADA was founded in 1996 and is a private organization responsible for the operation and management of Canada’s civil airspace. Proponents of ATC privatization in the United States point to greater flexibility not only in spending, but also collection fees from airlines, drone operators and others potential new users airspace, which would provide a more equitable and stable source of funding, away from politics.
Even without creating a new regulator, we can look at the successes of NextGen to help plan future modernization. I spoke with Tim NiznikDirector of Analytics for American Airlines’ Integrated Operations Center, which participated in a NextGen project in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Dallas, which recommended when planes should pull out of gates in order to avoid long departure queues and blend more efficiently into the “highways” of the sky. At the start of the project, researchers hypothesized that a counting approach, such as traffic lights used on freeway ramps to control vehicle merging, would work, but found that virtual queues that represented information along the way worked better. Niznik likens it to “Waze for the Sky,” in which knowing congestion in the sky can help airlines better plan their routes and take-off times, and what time to pull out of the gate.
Although it may seem simple, Niznik notes that it “was a major overhaul of the airport’s operational system that connected different [systems] within the FAA to link surface and en-route operations. Niznik attributes the success of this project to several factors, including strong stakeholder participation, an agile software development process, and the fact that NASA, which co-led this project with the FAA, had a funding source. dependable that faced unforeseen challenges.
In the wake of these two historic failures of our air transport system, I think it is time we recognized that major technological and financial reforms are needed, from the airline level to the FAA itself. The collapses of Southwest Airlines and the FAA have shown us the dangers of leaving outdated infrastructure and practices in place. As we approach FAA reauthorization this year, I hope the aviation industry and its regulators will make history again – this time in a positive way – building on the lessons learned from successful projects, with Congress providing adequate and stable funding, and with research and new technologies getting the priority they deserve.
This is an opinion and analytical article, and the opinions expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of American scientist.