Why 40-Year-Old Tech Is Still Running America’s Air Traffic Control

[Alan C.]

Why 40-Year-Old Tech Is Still Running America’s Air Traffic Control

 

At any given time, around 7,000 aircraft are flying over the United States. For the past 40 years, the same computer system has controlled all that high-altitude traffic—a relic of the 1970s known as Host. The core system predates the advent of the Global Positioning System, so Host uses point-to-point, ground-based radar. Every day, thousands of travelers switch their GPS-enabled smartphones to airplane mode while their flights are guided by technology that predates the Speak & Spell. If you're reading this at 30,000 feet, relax—Host is still safe, in terms of getting planes from point A to point B. But it's unbelievably inefficient. It can handle a limited amount of traffic, and controllers can't see anything outside of their own airspace—when they hand off a plane to a contiguous airspace, it vanishes from their radar.

The FAA knows all that. For 11 years the agency has been limping toward a collection of upgrades called NextGen. At its core is a new computer system that will replace Host and allow any controller, anywhere, to see any plane in US airspace. In theory, this would enable one air traffic control center to take over for another with the flip of a switch...

. . .

This technology is complicated and novel, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that NextGen is a project of the FAA. The agency is primarily a regulatory body, responsible for keeping the national airspace safe, and yet it is also in charge of operating air traffic control, an inherent conflict that causes big issues when it comes to upgrades. Modernization, a struggle for any federal agency, is practically antithetical to the FAA's operational culture, which is risk-averse, methodical, and bureaucratic. Paired with this is the lack of anything approximating market pressure. The FAA is the sole consumer of the product; it's a closed loop.

The first phase of NextGen is to replace Host with the new computer system, the foundation for all future upgrades. The FAA will finish the job this spring, five years late and at least $500 million over budget.

 

[AncapFTW]

Every plane could easily be given a satellite link and a GPS, and have that info automatically sent to a central computer, but no, let's use super outdated tech because, Bureaucracy.

[BD91]

Every plane could easily be given a satellite link and a GPS, and have that info automatically sent to a central computer, but no, let's use super outdated tech because, Bureaucracy.

 

Just for a bit of devil's advocacy here, part of the problem lies in the bug-prone nature of digital systems when compared with analogue systems; if this central system were assembled there would also need to be so many layers upon layers upon layers of fail-safes and redundancies. Because with digital all you need is a 1 or a 0 to show up out of place to cause a total meltdown scenario. A project of that scale would take serious time & effort. Not saying I disagree with you, just throwing that bit in.

[Wuzzums]

NASA's spaceships also run on incredibly primitive technology. It's not because they're lacking in some area or another, it's that new ideas come at the cost of human lives to implement and it's far safer to use something that they know works 100% then try something new.

 

I think it's the same with air traffic controllers. Ever since the ATC system was implemented, how many air traffic related accidents have been recorded? Airlines are an anti-fragile system, meaning with each new accident the airlines as a whole become safer and safer because we learn from the mistakes. ATC stood the test of time, in 80+ years of operation it had only 23 recorded accidents (worldwide). To think that a system like that can be easily replaced by some smartphone app is absurd.

[Snafui]

I was a "scope dope" while in the military in a tactical radar group:

 

• We used modern tech to fool old tech into thinking tracks were real. 
• Stealth works by fooling old tech, not modern tech.
• There are so many reflections and duplicates in old tech that it can cause panic--often.
• If digital signatures were used, while there might be some flaws, it couldn't be much worse--you just don't hear about it until people die.

 

And the first time I saw the live radar return I never wanted to fly again... the skies are crowded when you view them that way.