Perhaps unwittingly, airline passengers who experienced the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Aviation System Notification (NOTAM) system outage in January and the Southwest Airlines meltdown in December were part of history. .
NOTAM’s suspension was the first time the FAA has suspended all U.S. domestic flights departing after 9/11. According to FlightAware, this ground stop of just a few hours caused major delays in the air transportation system, with three of his five flights delayed or canceled, with an average delay of almost 90 minutes.
A few weeks ago, following an unprecedented amount of flight cancellations over a week-long period as a result of the Southwest Airlines meltdown, airlines abandoned automated decision-support tools in favor of employees manually scheduling flights, Forced to undo a complex network of aircraft, crew schedules. From Dec. 22-29, Southwest canceled just over half of its scheduled flights, resulting in more than 15,700 cancellations and a $620 million loss in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. There was an immediate loss and an additional loss of $300-350 million was expected in the first quarter. A Southwest executive said it was due to “lower carryover earnings due to operational disruptions.”
Both failures stem from the same underlying challenges facing the sprawling and increasingly outdated U.S. air travel network. As we delve deeper into these events, we must find solutions to update outdated IT systems and business practices, and change the way the FAA is funded as regulatory activity underpins the entire U.S. air travel system. I have to.
NOTAM failed when an FAA contractor deleted files from a critical flight planning system. The system relies on “failed old hardware,” according to the FAA. This comes after multiple industry players called for more federal funding to the FAA, with Airlines for America and other organizations pointing out the need for credible funding freed from the election cycle. Thankfully, we can use the successful NextGen project, a program within the FAA to modernize the US National Airspace System (NAS), as a model for reform.
The Southwest meltdown occurred when a slow blizzard with wind chills of -40 degrees Fahrenheit passed through Denver and Chicago, the two largest warehouses. This overwhelms outdated flight management systems that operate primarily within point-to-point airport networks, making them more susceptible to disruption than the hub-and-spoke models used by other airlines. For context, on Dec. 24, by the third day of the weather event, Southwest, which also managed an unusually large number of employees calling in sick, was forced out of American Airlines’ mainline service for an hour. We’ve cut 55 flights per hour compared to just 4 flights per hour.
Investigations by Southwest and the U.S. Department of Transportation to determine the root cause are ongoing, but what is clear is that, like the NOTAM failure, the Southwest system needs an upgrade and can adapt under load. I mean, it didn’t. The airline, which he plans to spend $1 billion on upgrading IT and replacing flight scheduling systems this year, also needs to be willing to transform its business model. Southwest Airlines, for example, could more aggressively cancel flights before major weather events and amend labor contracts to allow pilots to electronically confirm assignments during snowfall. Interestingly, other airlines have examples of how to make air travel more robust.
A robust network helps isolate delays and helps airlines return to normal operations more quickly. We interviewed Timothy L. Jacobs, former director of crew systems and technology at American Airlines. Together with his colleagues, he designed a robust network for the airline using “hub isolation”. and “aircraft crew” The concept of assigning the same aircraft and crew for round trip trips using the same hub, for example, Dallas to Boston, Boston to Dallas, and so on. If the Dallas to Boston leg is cancelled, both the crew and the aircraft can remain in Dallas, making it easier to prevent delays from spreading to other hubs. In contrast, Southwest Airlines’ point-to-point network makes it more difficult to contain flight disruptions.
The Southwest meltdown highlights the complexity and interconnectedness of the air transportation system. This partly explains why modernizing air traffic control (ATC) systems is so difficult and requires reforms in funding. This is where NextGen comes into play. The FAA uses NextGen to modernize his NAS with new capabilities such as “precision satellite navigation, data link communications for air traffic controllers and pilots, and an integrated weather system.”
NextGen grew out of a 2003 congressional mandate for the FAA to work with multiple organizations and federal agencies to develop a plan to modernize NAS by 2025. While the FAA and its industry partners have achieved important milestones over the past two decades, the Office of the Inspector General for 2021 said, “The FAA will continue to work on the extension of the program, which has caused delays in spillovers with other programs. Due to the delays, we have found that we are struggling to integrate key NextGen technologies and features. Both due to a lack of funding and a lack of reliable financial flow to the FAA. However, there is disagreement as to whether the FAA should continue to lead these efforts. In 2014, the FAA’s Management Advisory Board recommended establishing a separate organization modeled after NAV CANADA. Established in 1996, NAV CANADA is a civilian organization responsible for the operation and management of Canada’s civil airspace. Proponents of ATC privatization in the US are not only spending collection Commissions from airlines, drone operators, and other potential new users of the airspace. This provides a fairer and more stable source of funding, decoupled from politics.
You can see NextGen’s success and help plan for future modernization without creating a new regulatory body. In Charlotte and Dallas, North Carolina, he speaks to Tim Niznick, director of analytics for American Airlines’ Integrated Operations Center, who worked on the NextGen project, recommending when to pull aircraft back out of gates to avoid long departure queues. I heard. Efficiently merges onto an empty ‘highway’. Going into the project, the researchers hypothesized that a measurement approach would work, much like the traffic lights used on highway ramps to control vehicular merging, but a virtual I’ve found that cues work better. Niznik likens this to ‘Waze for the sky’. Knowledge of sky congestion helps airlines better plan routes, take-off times and gate turnaround times.
This may seem simple, but Niznik says: [systems] Within the FAA, we combine surface and sea operations. Niznik said the project’s success was due to strong stakeholder participation, an agile software development process, and a reliable source of funding for NASA, which co-led the project with the FAA, to meet unforeseen challenges. We believe there are multiple factors, including the fact that we had
In the wake of these two historic failures of our air travel system, I believe it’s time to recognize that major technological and financial reforms are needed, from the airline level down to the FAA itself. believe. The Southwest Airlines and FAA meltdowns demonstrate the dangers of leaving outdated infrastructure and practices in place. This year, as the FAA’s reauthorization approaches, the aviation industry and its regulators will build on the lessons learned from successful projects, provide adequate and stable funding from Congress, and harness research and new technology. , hope to make history again, this time in a positive way. Get the priority they deserve.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily Scientific American.
