Deregulation of the U.S. airline industry has resulted in ticket prices dropping by a third, on an inflation-adjusted basis. As a result some 1.6 million people fly on 4,000 aircraft every day. Airlines carried 643 million passengers in 1998, a 25% increase over 1993 and the FAA estimates that the nation¡¦s airline system will have to accommodate 917 million passengers by the year 2008. The growth in air travel threatens to overwhelm the presently inadequate air traffic control system, which has …showed first 75 words of 1847 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1847 total…the spacing between flights, imposing ground holds and using other techniques that reduce system capacity. The airlines alone waste $3 billion a year in fuel and crew time due to the delays. Wasted passenger time is estimated at several billion dollars more. The FAA¡¦s National Airspace System Architecture Version 4.0 looks very impressive on paper, but given their track record in regards to modernization, maybe we should be looking at alternatives to a thinly stretched bureaucracy.