Funding

• The modernizing effort in air traffic control began in the 1980's. Since that time modernization schedule delays of five years and price hikes have become normal if not expected. Throughout this time little progress has actually been made to benefit the systems of Air Traffic Control. Through fiscal year 1996, Congress provided $22 billion of the $35 billion the FAA estimates it will need to modernize by 2003, or 63 percent of its modernization budget. But of its 147 modernization projects, the FAA had completed only 74 by March 1996, totaling $5.1 billion, only about 15 percent of the program's overall cost, the GAO reported. With each year the funding is put off, the cost of the objects needed triples (Hite 3).
  
  
• With the long overdue purchase of the needed equipment it will once again become obsolete after a few more years. For example, after an eleven-year wait, the centerpiece of the modernization effort, the Advanced Automation System, was restructured in 1994. During its wait the cost of the Automation System tripled from $2.5 billion to over $7 billion (Profit 27).

Many reconstruction plans have been dropped because of price hikes. A plan to implement a Voice Switching and Control System, which started six years behind schedule, was dropped from the reconstruction agenda after officials found that the unit price jumped six-fold from $10.3 million to $63.2 million.




• ATC system has suffered degradation of service and complete outages, due to power failures and computer problems. Some of the equipment running the Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) is very old, not maintained by the manufacturer any more, and only with difficulty maintained by the user, and many of the skilled engineers are reaching retirement age (Ladkin). This development is called legacy equipment, which is equipment that is poorly maintained by its elderly users, but will continue to be used even after the death of those who know how to fix it. This is an actual problem that must be faced by air traffic control. ATC is forced to work with the equipment that it has, no matter how old it is, just because it cannot receive any other equipment. The reconstruction plans of ATC officials have been destroyed because of inadequate funding. ATC cannot proceed to become an efficient and productive system until it is given the money to establish itself and its reconstruction plans.