Air Traffic Safety and Control Issues

Each day, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) controls the take-offs, landings, and flights of over 50,000 aircrafts. To accomplish this mission safely and efficiently, the FAA must have a sufficient number of adequately trained air traffic controllers working at its air traffic control facilities. Over the next decade, the FAA will need to hire and train nearly 17,000 controllers to replace over 15,000 current controllers, most of whom will be retiring. This massive hiring effort will occur as the FAA begins to implement the next generation air transportation system (NextGen), which will integrate new technologies and procedures into air traffic operations and fundamentally change the role of air traffic controllers from controlling individual aircraft to managing air traffic flow. This book explores the current air traffic safety and control issues facing the Federal Aviation Administration today.