TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW'S COMMERCIAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

William G. Denhard

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Air Traffic Control today dependes on radio, radar, and human interpretation thereof. In bad weather, with enlarged air blocks, delays of one to two hours are common, and four-to-eight-hour delays are not uncommon. Were there a means to continuously identify longitudinal position of each aircraft to the order of a few hundred feet on the ground adn 1/2 nautical mile in the air (and even closer on landing and takeoff), and velocity to the order of 1/2 foot per second, most delays would disappear since aircraft would operate under better than VRF conditions and with improved flight-control inputs. The economic benefits to the airlines in delay time saved would provide a basis for funding the equipment to work the problem in these terms. Tomorrow's commercial inertial navigation can be expected to perform with accuracy measured in hundreds of feet. Using such a system, one can envisage each aircraft knowing its coordinates, velocity, etc., and so informing the air-traffic control center via data links with the whole operation at computer speeds.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 18, Number 3
Pages:	281 - 291
Cite this article:	Denhard, William G., "TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW'S COMMERCIAL AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fall 1971, pp. 281-291.
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