<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" If you&amp;#039;re among the 27 million travelers taking to the skies this Thanksgiving, chances are you&amp;#039;ll have ample time to cool your heels at an airport--and to grumble into a cellphone about a flight delay that&amp;#039;s threatening your holiday plans.  But consider this: While the 2007 holiday season is projected to be the worst ever for flying, that iPhone in your shivering hand has become part of the government&amp;#039;s ambitious, high-tech plan to help you take off on time by 2010. The Federal Aviation Administration recently awarded a $1.8 billion contract to ITT Corporation to lay the groundwork for NextGen, an overhaul of the country&amp;#039;s overloaded air traffic control system from aging radar towers to GPS that would use real time to pack in the sky without sacrificing safety. One of the reasons for ITT&amp;#039;s surprise win--it beat out aviation heavyweights Lockheed Martin and Raytheon--was its partnership with AT&amp;amp;amp;T, which will lend hundreds of cell towers to anchor the new surveillance technology for tracking planes in the air. &amp;quot;They have an extensive network of towers which provides almost a built-in infrastructure,&amp;quot; says FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto. Piggybacking on an existing system is also keeping the budget down, he acknowledges: The FAA&amp;#039;s initial investment in the project is $207 million for the first three years, during which the ITT team will prepare for the rollout of what is known as ADS-B, or automatic dependent surveillance broadcast, which uses onboard receivers for GPS signals so pilots and controllers can share accurate data. And while some of that information will transmit via AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s own processing centers, ITT will install many of the 794 ADS-B ground stations in AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s telecommunications towers. (ITT&amp;#039;s partners in surveillance radio and aviation weather services will provide additional equipment and software.) ITT is moving beyond initial experiments with the system to install mini-fridge-size ADS-B units across Philadelphia and the Gulf of Mexico in hopes of having a prototype ready by 2010 and a nationwide GPS fix by 2013. &amp;quot;We are working under a very aggressive deadline,&amp;quot; says John Kefaliotis, director of business development and air traffic control programs for ITT. As the team leader of NextGen rollout for the FAA, he has felt increased pressure to produce results as record delays continue--just one in four flights arrived on schedule through September (although some numbers suggest recent improvements), and airline travelers are expected to increase 50 percent over the next decade. Once GPS tracking becomes the norm, he says, the NextGen system should &amp;quot;provide the potential for a very significant increase in capacity.&amp;quot; The FAA concedes that rewiring air traffic control won&amp;#039;t show dramatic reductions in delays until the GPS project is closer to completion--the entire overhaul will cost taxpayers up to $20 billion over 20 years. But the airline industry insists that any early advances can&amp;#039;t come soon enough. &amp;quot;We are at catastrophic levels in terms of congestion,&amp;quot; says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for major U.S. airlines. &amp;quot;The controllers are using age-old procedures and separation standards that they put into place decades ago.&amp;quot; Nowhere is this more apparent than in the crowded airspace around New York City, which aviation experts say accounts for 75 percent of all chronic delays. This key area, through which one third of all U.S. air traffic passes, was at the heart of measures announced by President Bush last week, among them briefly opening military airspace to create a kind of express lane along the East Coast. The administration previously had called for a cap on peak-hour operations at JFK airport, where flights increased by 20 percent after the government lifted long-standing limits on rush-hour air traffic, but airlines objected. Skeptics note that the FAA&amp;#039;s new air traffic control system fails to address both the tendency of airlines to overschedule flights during peak hours and the looming shortage of air traffic controllers--many who replaced striking workers in 1981 are facing mandatory retirement. Doug Church, an official with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says that while his organization welcomes technological advances, he&amp;#039;s concerned that NextGen not be viewed as a panacea. &amp;quot;An airport can still only handle so many flights,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;What we need is more concrete on the ground&amp;quot; in the form of new runways and airfields, he says. And then there are the airlines themselves: The FAA recently proposed rules mandating that all aircraft in controlled airspace carry the necessary avionics to link to ADS-B by 2020. Five years later, every flight across America should be fully on board--and, with some high-tech help, on schedule. PLUS: In-Depth Reporting, Graphics and Plans on the FAA&amp;#039;s NextGen System "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a2312/4232577/>