Only the federal government could make this a $35 billion project. The technology is already there! If they got out of the way this system would be in place in a year.

Excellent post Andrew. It's common sense approaches like this that are needed to get the majority of people on board with action on climate change. If you explain to them how it will benefit them personally, as well as the country, then you will find more people getting on board with doing something to address climate change. Efficiency, mandatory caps on carbon emissions & heavy investment in our infrastructure will put us on the right path.

I'm sorry - the facts in the post are simply not true. I would be interested to know what your sources are. Airlines are quite capable of flying direct routes with the navigation equipment that they currently have and have been able to for a long time. It is most often the case that airlines follow extremely direct routes, if they do fly an indirect route is not because of a lack of adequate nav equipment. Fuel costs are now more than 30 percent of an airline's expenses - they are very concerned with saving fuel, not for environment's sake, just financial. The days of flying from radio beacon to radio beacon - or 'radio ranges' have been over for 60 years or so. I hope the reference to "follow[ing] sweeping arcs" isn't a reference to routes that are drawn on a flat map -- in three dimensions these routes are quite direct.

There are ways to streamline operations slightly. GPS isn't going to make a dent - and biofuels don't change the fact that flying big airplanes at 500 mph takes ENERGY and a lot of it. So fly less - fly slower... and support airship development!

Andrew, is this only a problem in the US, or is everyone else also still relying on 1940s radar systems instead of upgrading to satellites and GPS?

Yes, I agree that the airline industry as a whole needs to rethink its use of fuel and the footprint it leaves on the environment. In addition to the GPS systems, another item of technology that could help with the reduction of waste is the recently introduced Internet service.

Hopefully the broad range of information and entertainment available will help eliminate those weighty, ad-heavy, paper gobbling in-flight magazines that I rarely see anyone looking at anymore. They are a total waste of paper, not to mention fuel. And most airlines don't even publish their own magazines, so these magazines serve the advertisers and the publishing company reap the ad revenue. And the passengers are the ones who pay for them in hidden ticket costs whether they want them or not.

These magazines weigh from a half to three-quarters of a pound. If that amount is multiplied by the number of seats (say 200) and flights (say 4,000), then the total weight per day by each airline is over half a million pounds of paper it is flying around. The waste of fuel each a day, let alone over a year, is enormous. The airlines could make a very positive environmentally friendly statement by removing that waste of paper from the seat pockets.

Congress. Congress. Congress. Congress. Congress.

Our leaders (I use this term loosely) in Congress have failed miserably in pushing this technology which has been available for years and keeping the FAA and others moving this direction. The new ATC system has been decades in planning and is still not implemented.

Why? Ask your elected representative; the people who we hire to get this stuff done.

There probably ought to be a requirement to have a pilot's license with an instrument rating before being allowed to comment on this thread.

All major airliners have instrument-certified Aviation GPS units in them. As for small private aircraft...I don't have exact figures, but I'd wager that nearly *every* private pilot has or uses at least a portable (VFR) Aviation GPS.

For purposes of this article, only Instrument flight plans (IFR)--which all commercial airliners fly on--need to be considered.

The problem is definitely *NOT* the aircraft--virtually all of them are equipped properly for direct GPS flights.

The problem is the FAA & Air Traffic Control (ATC), or rather the bureaucracy and challenge of guiding thousands of airplanes through the air while providing necessary spacial separation to keep them from crashing into each other.

The somewhat "zig-zaggy" routes the article complains about are like highways in the sky, and ATC has "preferred routes" between most airport areas to facilitate that safety and separation. Also, there are numerous parts of the country--and I mean hundreds--where you are simply not allowed to fly over, sometimes at any altitude because they are restricted military training areas--so an absolutely direct routing may not be possible.

Believe it or not, the established routes are generally fairly direct--the article really overstates the difference to be saved. It otherwise makes inaccurate gross generalizations about how much GPS would save when, if fact, GPS is already regularly and extensively used. The real problem is in safely separating air traffic and lining up those big aluminum tubes in a way that is predictable and safe--but also requires everybody to get in a handful of lines to arrive in an orderly manner, rather than a hundred different airplanes all converging on a single airport from 100 different directions. GPS can't and won't solve that problem.

Also, while flying enroute, even if the flight plan is a little bit ziggy-zaggy, ATC generally tries to help you "cut corners" wherever possible--they want you done and finished just as much as you want to be, so if they can issue a "direct clearance" anywhere in the flight plan (allowing you to bypass some of the zigs or zags for a more direct routing), they most always do so.

Otherwise, the arrival procedures (called an "approach" for any given airport are designed to do 2 things: (1) Make the flight paths into an airport predictable and safe, since everyone is doing the same things, and (2) Provide a known path with known safe altitudes to guide in an aircraft even when they can't see (i.e., in clouds & fog). GPS has added to this capability a bit, but fundamentally doesn't change it. Obstacles are obstacles, and flight paths need to be designed in a way that doesn't always allow for a direct routing if you wish to safely avoid those obstacles.

In summary, GPS is *already* used extensively. And it wouldn't shorten routes or save fuel any more than it already does.

What the article means to argue is for a new ATC system called "ADS-B" which would presumably eliminate the need and expense for ground-based radar to track where planes are, because the planes themselves could transmit their position to ATC. It would save money there on the upkeep of ground-based radar and navigation beacons (transferring that cost to airlines to install on-board ADS-B equipment), but otherwise would not save any real amount on fuel due to the reasons outlined in the previous paragraphs.

The fact is, the problem isn't lack of GPS--virtually everyone already uses it extensively, and routing is already about as direct as it can be, given the need for separation into & out of metropolitan airports. ADS-B would save the cost of land-based infrastructure, but won't save fuel anymore than the already widely-used GPS already does.

I thought it important to inject a dose of facts and real-world experience to this posting. Hopefully you found it enlightening. I know because I have had to plan and fly these routes, and in every case, I always prefer to go "direct" as much as possible because it does save time and money (fuel) to do so. But practically speaking, its not strictly possible, even though I *do* have GPS, and ATC knows I have it. Restricted areas, terrain, separation, and safety all work prevent a strictly direct routing.

But given those restrictions, GPS already makes it as close to possible as it can. And it already does.

- RJW

Just thought I'd add a couple of clarification points to RJW's comprehensive post above (and for the record, I'm Commercial Multi Instrument, CFI rotor).

At the heart of the matter is moving and landing as much aluminum as possible in the shortest amount of time. While greater use by ATC of "GPS Direct" and WAAS to provide Cat 1 Approach precision (along with RVSM) will allow for reduced lateral and altitude separation, and thereby increasing enroute and approach traffic density, finite runway resources and in-trail requirements for wake turbulence avoidance will still act as a "limiting factor" on how much efficacy can be squeezed from the system.

Ultimately, better scheduling of flights, lowering operating cost by reducing maintenance costs and fuel burn per seat-mile flown will likely yield much greater savings to the airlines than the time savings of a few"corners cut" in the air.

-avi