The Future of Aviation

Today, Marion Blakely, the current Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, gave a keynote at the Women in Science symposium. She spoke briefly about some challenges of being a woman in science, and how there will always be tradeoffs in terms of the work-family balance, but mostly she was quite positive about the issue. Then she introduced some of the changes that's going on in aviation and the FAA, and some really interesting challenges that they face:

• Technology: The tech being used today is mostly still the same as those used the 1950s. Air traffic controlling and radar are still the same. This poses a problem in terms of scale, as they expect the number of passengers to increase to 1 billion from about half that now in 2015, and as the number of small jets is increasing. The routes being used today still use a waypoint system that was developed in the 1950s to help deliver mail. In order to reroute to increase efficiency and be able to bring aircraft closer together, they have to overthrow the old tech. Radar updates a plane's position every 6-12 seconds, which is not precise enough for safety. Also, pilots now have little situational awareness; they don't know of other planes near them, and rely on the air traffic controllers to tell them. The FAA is planning to move to satellite based, automated systems, with transponders on the aircraft. (Really exciting problem from a networking/systems standpoint! Reminds me of the news of the military putting a router in space. Think of the synchronization/routing/packet loss issues!)


• Growth in private flight: she mentioned the X PRIZE winner, Burt Rutan, and microjets, which are 6-seaters that are available for ~$1 million, as things to watch. Within 2 years we might see the first commercial flights into space on Virgin Galactic(a!). It's an inherently risky business, so how much should the FAA regulate it? Is this a matter of adventure sports or transportation? At least they have to insure the people on the ground are not put in danger.

• Environmental issues: Though there are new propulsion systems available that are energy efficient, commercial liners are replaced every 20-25 years, and general aviation who knows when, so one can't hope for great changes in that direction soon. However she said they were investigating using alternative fuels, from a safety standpoint as well. And she mentioned how changes in the flight operation can be a big change: usually on descent, planes will dive to a certain altitude, stop, dive again, stop, which requires a lot of restarting of the engines. She saw in Louisville, UPS had coordinated their planes to descend smoothly, such that all the planes were evenly spaced going down and timed perfectly. It decreased emissions by 30% and also the noise level below a certain altitude.


• Private sector spurring change: helicopters flying in the Gulf of Mexico to oil rigs charged a lot for extra safety measures. They installed transponders on the craft and ground stations on the rigs. Now aircraft flying over that area also want to take advantage of those ground stations to plan better routes.


• Safety: right now it's the safest time ever to fly. The most dangerous part of a flight is the trip to the airport. In terms of security from human factors, they're working on reducing the delay from the sidewalk to boarding to 30 minutes.

There were some other points about the economics of paying for all this, how in the U.S. has a tax on the tickets when most other countries have fees, but I can't recall the specifics. Her presentation was great though, very informative and delivered very competently, in a comforting Southern drawl. It seems you get to learn about a lot of fields in aviation, as she talked about how the air currents in the U.S. are particularly difficult so lead to more delays, to the new Boeing aircraft that's coming out, to issues of policy and organization.