Today’s domestic air travel system is taxed to the breaking point. In 2001, 570 million people flew on commercial airlines, and U.S. aviation officials expect domestic airline traffic to double by 2010. That’s more people than the system can handle.
Many airports already can’t handle the volume of air travel that occurs on their runways. At least two dozen of the major hub airports are classified as “seriously congested.” That means they’re at the limit of their capacity for takeoffs and landings during the most popular travel times.
With many airlines already operating at a loss, the situation looks desperate for the major carriers. Adding planes and runways to existing airports won’t fix the problem. For example, whenever there’s a delay at one airport, all of the others in the same hub-and-spoke system are thrown off schedule. What’s needed is a new business model for the commercial aviation industry.
One new approach that might work is the Small Aircraft Transportation System concept, or SATS. SATS is a partnership among NASA, the FAA, and about 60 other organizations.
To create the infrastructure that would allow for travelers to bypass hub-and-spoke airports, the SATS program strives to prepare small airports for larger numbers of small planes. The U.S. Congress has funded the program with $69 million for a five-year proof of concept period that ends in 2005.
This highly decentralized web of airports contrasts markedly with the highly-centralized set of 24 major hubs that accounts for 80 percent of commercial airline traffic. Various ideas concerning the actual piloting of these small planes have been offered. For example, the industry could encourage a huge increase in the self-service private pilot population, or it could establish a national air taxi service. An even more dramatic and exciting solution involves self-piloting aircraft in which “smart airways” come to resemble the emerging vision of the “smart highway.”
The cost to install an unmanned SATS ground station at one suburban or rural airport is expected to be half a million dollars, on average. That seems affordable when you consider the $5 million minimum investment needed for a single traditional radar installation, or the $1 million for a traditional instrument landing system, both of...
