America’s air traffic control system has essentially not changed much since the 1960s — and that’s more than a little alarming. Numerous attempts to upgrade the system have failed, so the nation still relies on decades-old technology at a time when American aviation is suffering from some of the worst delays in its history. And the situation will only get worse, say experts: Airlines have turned to smaller airplanes and are putting them in the sky more often — with the load expected to either double or triple by 2025. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) first moved toward a modernization program in 1981, but attempts to make major technological leaps forward have fallen short, despite the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has listed modernization of air traffic control as a “high risk” project since 1995; One attempt at modernization went so poorly that it has been taught to students as “a case study for failure,” according to an FAA press officer. Experts have said that multiple obstacles hindered previous efforts — such as an FAA culture resistant to change, a shortage of technical expertise, and cumbersome federal budget rules. The Bush administration and Congress agreed on a new concept in 2003 known as NextGen, a computerized system relying on global satellite positioning that significantly boosts capacity by enabling planes to safely fly closer together on more direct paths. NextGen, which is expected to cost between $15 billion and $22 billion by 2025, could face a host of challenges. Despite the potential for saving up to $10 billion annually on fuel, air carriers have raised objections and expressed wariness at relying upon unproven technology. Air traffic controllers, who historically have had a rocky relationship with the FAA, would face fundamental changes in their job duties under NextGen. And lawmakers face opposition over how to fund the program, whether through increased taxes on fuel and tickets or by instituting a per-flight user fee. An FAA spokesman told the Center that the agency is optimistic about its latest effort. Unlike past modernization attempts, he said, NextGen is comprised of a "portfolio of separate stand-alone products," meaning that if one part does not work effectively, it will not compromise development of the entire system.

Follow-up:
An FAA Reauthorization Bill that would allow the agency to spend billions from the aviation trust fund has been held up for well over a year, making both the funding and the continued development of NextGen an issue for the Obama administration. “The next president needs to make the NextGen initiative a national priority,” said House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat. The GAO reiterated its recommendations in a presidential transition report released in November 2008. While the agency gave the FAA credit for “significant progress… in implementing businesslike operations and procedures related to system acquisitions,” GAO auditors warned that the effort remains “enormously complicated due to the technological complexities, numerous stakeholders, and broad scope.” President Bush signed an executive order in November that “accelerated the implementation of NextGen” according to the FAA, which later that month “gave the green light to nationwide deployment” of NextGen’s satellite surveillance system. “NextGen is real and, as of today, NextGen is now,” said the FAA’s Acting Administrator Robert A. Sturgell. The FAA now hopes to complete the program by 2013.

Photo credit: Federal Avaiation Administration

When the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its original “Most Wanted” list of proposed safety improvements in September 1990, combating the role of human fatigue in transportation mishaps was included. Since then, not a lot has happened. So when the NTSB released its most recent “Most Wanted” list in 2008, human fatigue was still there. ”Human fatigue has been a persistent factor in far too many transportation accidents,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker in September 2008. “And, if anything, the problem is growing, not shrinking.” The main target of NTSB scrutiny, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), continues to provide what the 2007 “Most Wanted” list called an “unacceptable response” to the problem. In 1995, the FAA proposed a rule to update the flight and duty regulations for airline pilots, but no action has been taken. Likewise, the FAA recognized as a result of its own 2000 study that a quarter of airline maintenance personnel were fatigued or exhausted at work, but nothing has happened on that front either. The NTSB cites accidents such as Corporate Airlines Flight 5966, which killed 13 people near Kirksville, Missouri, in 2004, in arguing that measures to reduce fatigue are “long overdue.” For decades the NTSB has also pushed other components of the Department of Transportation (DOT) to act on fatigue. For instance, the NTSB urged the DOT to consider mandating the use of on-board recorders in the trucking industry to enforce compliance with hours-of-service rules and reduce fatigue-related accidents — such as a 2005 I-94 Wisconsin crash that killed five and injured 35 others. The DOT responded through its Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which proposed a rule be imposed only on carriers with a pattern of violation. NTSB believes the proposed rule, still pending, does not go far enough, but FMCSA said that the estimated costs imposed by a broader mandate would exceed its benefits. The U.S. Court of Appeals also struck down two FMCSA rules extending truckers’ daily driving limit from 10 to 11 hours. Meanwhile, an FAA spokesman said the agency continues to address fatigue concerns and pointed to an Aviation Fatigue Management Symposium it held this summer. "I think we all acknowledge that even with an outstanding safety record, we're not where we need to be when it comes to understanding and dealing with fatigue," said Acting Administrator Robert A. Sturgell at the forum.

Follow-up:
Congress has held hearings addressing fatigue in multiple modes of transport, and in October 2008 President Bush signed the Railroad Safety Enhancement Act, which addresses human fatigue factors for rail — a focus of the NTSB “Most Wanted” list in 2007. FMCSA issued a third rule in November 2008 again extending the truckers’ limit to 11. The agency said the rule would require at least 10 hours rest between shifts and is “based on an exhaustive scientific review.”

The nation’s airports have been plagued by an alarming rise in dangerous runway incidents, but the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) response has been criticized as inadequate by a host of oversight bodies. So-called runway incursions — incidents in which aircraft, vehicles, or persons create a collision hazard — have appeared on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Most Wanted list of issues demanding improvement ever since 1990. At least 112 people have lost their lives due to incursion accidents since the issue first appeared on the NTSB list. Thousands more have faced harrowing close calls; among airports, Los Angeles International and Chicago O’Hare experienced the most incursions between 2001 and 2007. After a substantial rise in runway incursions from 1999 to 2001 (from 329 incidents up to 407), the FAA acted to curb the trend through regionally-based runway safety efforts, an education program, and creation of a runway safety office at agency headquarters. But the incursion rate began to rise again after 2003, and 2007 saw a 12 percent increase in incidents over the year before. That prompted criticism from the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the NTSB, which called the FAA response “unacceptable.” The FAA had not updated its runway safety plan after 2002 despite planning to do so every two to three years, and it let the director’s chair in its Office of Runway Safety sit unfilled for nearly three years as staff levels halved, leading the inspector general to name runway incursions as a Top Management Challenge of 2008. Although the FAA was pursuing technological fixes, the GAO reported in February 2008 that “further progress has been impeded by the lack of leadership and coordination, technology challenges, lack of data, and human-factors related issues.” An FAA spokesman said the agency is “trying to get to the root causes of runway incursions,” which it says typically stem from a combination of factors such as failed equipment and human errors. The agency is also installing advanced equipment at the top 35 airports by 2010 to address radar failures during poor weather.

Follow-up:
After issuing multiple recommendations to the FAA in a House hearing last February, the Government Accountability Office updated its reporting in September 2008. The incursion rate for the year was slightly higher than in 2007 and human factors issues need to be further addressed, but investigators found that the FAA “has given higher priority to improving runway safety than it did during the previous two years.” An October 2008 NTSB update still classified the FAA response to improving runway safety as unacceptable, while the GAO highlighted the issue for the Obama administration in a presidential transition report.

Photo credit: National Transportation and Safety Board

Critical airline maintenance is being performed by private companies without proper oversight and frequently without certification by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to a series of government reports. A December 2005 audit by the inspector general (IG) at the Department of Transportation (DOT), FAA’s parent agency, found that “non-certificated” repair facilities, assigned work by the airlines, "are now performing more significant work than anyone realized” — a practice which contributed to a January 2003 Air Midwest crash that claimed 21 lives outside Charlotte, North Carolina. The IG audit found that these facilities did not follow the same regulatory requirements as their certified counterparts, including annual FAA inspections and quality control supervision. And even when FAA-certified mechanics performed maintenance at these sites, vital overlapping layers of safety were absent — a factor the National Transportation Safety Board said contributed to the Air Midwest crash. Airlines failed to properly monitor work at these facilities and neglected to properly train employees, according to the audit. While the FAA agreed with most of the IG’s recommendations, effective policies haven’t always been adopted. In March 2007, the IG told Congress that the FAA still needed to develop a method for determining which “non-certificated” facilities were performing critical maintenance. Meanwhile, airlines have doubled their outsourced maintenance from 2004 to 2008. "We have made a number of adjustments that I think have improved the effectiveness of our oversight," a senior DOT official told Congress in 2007. An FAA spokesman noted the agency's responses to IG recommendations, including proposed new regulatory language for contract maintenance programs in air carrier manuals, as well as a proposed rulemaking project requiring FAA approval for contract training programs. Both proposals are scheduled for completion by the end of 2009.

Follow-up:
Senators Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, have twice attempted unsuccessfully to pass legislation bolstering oversight of both domestic and foreign maintenance facilities. In 2008, the FAA issued a change to its Operations Specification guide requiring carriers to list all of the certified and uncertified repair stations they employ, but canceled it after the airline industry expressed concerns. A DOT spokeswoman said recommendations to the FAA from its 2005 audit remain “open.” And while a September 2008 audit highlighted FAA plans to demand airlines provide additional information on private maintenance facilities, DOT expressed concern that the information would not be accurate and complete.

Photo credit: Transportation Security Administration

After flight delays soared to record-breaking heights in the summer of 2007, inconveniencing millions of travelers and costing the U.S. economy as much as $41 billion, the Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Office of Inspector General called for “urgently needed” improvements from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). But long-term answers to chronic air travel delays remain elusive. The rate of late arriving and canceled flights climbed each year between 2002 and 2007, coming to a head in the summer of 2007 when there was a 28 percent jump in flight cancellations and a 25 percent rise in long delays on the tarmac, compared to a similar period in 2006. Over the course of 2007, 163 million passengers were delayed a total of 320 million hours. Nearly 25 percent of all U.S. flights were delayed in 2007, costing airlines $8.1 billion in direct operating costs. Airspace congestion and over-scheduling were among the culprits, according to the inspector general. For instance, in selected 15-minute increments at Chicago O’Hare and Minneapolis-St. Paul, scheduled departures totaled two to three times what those airports could reasonably accommodate. The FAA has instituted caps on takeoff and landing slots at some of the nation’s busiest airports, but that alone has not solved the problem. While the long-term solution lies largely in modernizing the air traffic control system, the inspector general said a number of short-term solutions are crucial — such as a plan to negotiate with the Department of Defense (DOD) for use of restricted airspace and a system for better understanding and monitoring current airline scheduling practices. An FAA spokesman noted that 70 percent of delays are caused by bad weather, but said the agency was responding by working with the Pentagon, using new software to help direct specific aircraft during bad weather, conducting voluntary negotiations with airports to spread out peak periods, and working to redesign airspace in New York.

Follow-up:
The Government Accountability Office recently acknowledged that the DOT and the FAA had taken significant steps since summer 2007 to alleviate problems. Flight delay and cancellation rates declined in summer 2008. An FAA plan requiring airlines to auction off up to 20 percent of slots at New York airports in January 2009 — to alleviate congestion there and raise money for other improvements — was blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals in December pending full review of the case brought by an airline trade group and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Photo credit: Transportation Security Administration

Revelations that Southwest Airlines flew thousands of flights in violation of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directives brought to light a “relaxed culture” of oversight that investigators later termed “symptomatic of much deeper problems.” When the airline industry and the FAA agreed in the 1990s to work together on safety, their new joint programs depended on “the integrity of the people using them,” the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) told Congress in April 2008. But separate probes by the OIG, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee found alarming evidence that the necessary integrity was often missing, and that relationships between airlines and FAA inspectors were often far too cozy. In the case of Southwest Airlines, investigators eventually concluded that 46 of its aircraft flew more than 60,000 flights in violation of FAA directives before officially notifying the agency — and then even flew another 1,451 miles after notification. When Southwest voluntarily notified the FAA that its fleet had fuselage problems on March 15, 2007, the responsible FAA supervisor failed to ground the aircraft for the next eight days. Two FAA whistleblowers told congressional investigators of a close relationship between the supervisor and Southwest’s compliance manager. One whistleblower, FAA inspector Douglas E. Peters, alleged that the supervisor allowed Southwest to continue flying for two weeks after the agency discovered a problem with rudders on Southwest planes. An oversight committee report further asserted that FAA took no follow-up action to ensure that Southwest aircraft had been brought into compliance with federal law until the agency learned of the congressional investigations nearly eight months later. Though the FAA safety chief said he did not know the gravity of the potentially systemic problems, Peters told Congress that at least some senior management knew about the Southwest situation for years. Staff from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee interviewed additional FAA inspectors who said they sometimes do not bring enforcement action for fear of retribution or because “management won’t do anything.” The FAA’s chief safety officer expressed “disappointment and regret over FAA’s failure.” In response to a request for comment, the FAA pointed to a September 2008 press release announcing safety commitment updates and audit results showing a 98 percent safety compliance rate at U.S. carriers. "This audit gives us confidence that, overall, the system is safe and in almost every instance the airlines are complying with our safety directives," said Acting Administrator Robert A. Sturgell in the release. “But “even with this tremendous level of safety and compliance,” he added, “we have work to do.”

Follow-up:
Neither the inspector general nor a blue ribbon panel appointed to study FAA’s approach to safety advocated scrapping the partnership program, but each made a series of recommendations. OIG suggestions included periodically rotating inspectors, more closely evaluating previous violations, and revising the revolving door policy for inspectors. The FAA is taking action on most recommendations, but is not establishing an independent body for investigations, according to the inspector general.

The Highway Trust Fund — the funding source that pays for most of the nation’s highway improvements — received an emergency infusion of $8 billion from Congress in fall 2008, but the program still faces a long-term cash crisis. The problem, say government watchdogs, is an outmoded revenue-raising model that relies largely on a federal gas tax that has not been adjusted since 1993. This has allowed inflation to eat away at the available money while also leaving the fund short of money when Americans drive less, as in the current economic environment. Overall spending out of the fund has topped revenue since 2002, and the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the trust fund would need transfers of a whopping $100 billion from general fund revenues from 2010 to 2018 to cover projected spending unless reforms are made. In 2008 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed transportation financing as a “high-risk area” and reported that the Highway Trust Fund “faces a fiscal imbalance at a time when both congestion and travel demand are growing.” The Department of Transportation (DOT) has repeatedly warned Congress to change a funding approach that is now “ineffective and unsustainable.” In January 2008, a National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission recommended increasing the gas tax over the short term, and focusing long-term on a variety of user fees such as “congestion pricing,” for vehicles traveling at peak times in crowded metropolitan areas. A gas tax hike — never an easy sell politically — is likely to face even tougher going in hard economic times, but clearly new funding streams are needed. “It’s not too late, but we’re running out of time,” said a DOT communications official.

Follow-up:
The question of how to finance the Highway Trust Fund will be up for debate next year when Congress takes up a broad reauthorization of surface transportation programs. In late 2008, GAO listed surface transportation as one of 13 “urgent issues” demanding the attention of President-Elect Obama and the 111th Congress.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency